fVvRNELL Movement T.P.O'CONNOR.M.R CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. THE PARNELL MOVEMENT BEING THE pistovxj of the I visit Question fxom the geath of (D'Coimel! tor the ^xzsznt %imz BY T. P. CTCONXOK, M.P. AUTHOK OP GLADSTOINE'S HOTSE OF COMMONS," " THE LIFE OF LOED BEACOXSFIELD," ETC., ETC. WITH SKETCH OF THE AUTHOB BY THOMAS XELSOX PAGE. NEW YORE CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 104 & 106 Fourth Avenue Copyright, 1891, by CAS SELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, RAHWAY, N. J. I CO DA ?5l CONTENTS. ci of CHAPTKR I. THE FALL OF O'CONNELL « H. THE COMING OF THE FAMINE III. THE FAMINE „ IV. THE GREAT CLEARANCES (V) V. THE GREAT BETRAYAL —7 VI. RUIN AND RABAGAS o 5* VII. REVOLUTION VIII. ISAAC BUTT IX. FAMINE AGAIN ., X. THE LAND LEAGUE , XI. THE COERCION STRUGGLE , XII. THE FRUITS OF COKRCION , XIII. THE TORY-PARNELL COMBINATION XIV. THE HOME RULE STRUGGLE XV. THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES XVI. THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY XVII. A FEW CLOSING WORDS INDEX 1 1 PAC 7 15 30 45 84 111 134 139 164 175 212 240 264 274 292 319 359 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. By Thomas Nelson Page. One of the disadvantages under which an author labors who re- lates the history of any great movement in which he has himself been an actor is that he is withheld from recording fully the part he himself may have performed. TVhen Thomas Power O'Connor prepared the history of the won- derful Irish party of the present time ' ' which is associated with the name of Mr. Parnell," and which he called, " The Parnell Movement," he omitted from the series of brilliant portraitures of the Irish leaders who made that movement, and constituted that party, one who was perhaps, in fact, as he appears to Americans to be, the most versatile and brilliant of them all — himself. The rise and success of no one of the eminent chiefs of the Irish party was under greater difficulties or has been more complete than that of the author himself. Born and reared in straitened circumstances, laboring under the necessity to contribute to the maintenance of his family, — a burden which he cheerfully supported, — he has risen by the sheer force of his energy and genius to be the most brilliant writer, the ablest journalist, the most eloquent orator, and the most accomplished parliamentary speaker in his party, if not in England. Thomas Power O'Connor, M. A., M.P., was born on the 5th day of October, 1848, in the town of Athlone. His parents were poor but educated and refined people, earnest and devout, filled with true Irish devotion for Ireland, thoroughly familiar with her history, and hold- ing her in enthusiastic affection. A few years after the birth of their eldest son they moved to Gal- way, where young O'Connor spent his early life. There, surrounded by the remnants of a once flourishing civilization, bred on the glorious memories of Ireland, which have been an inspiration to so many of her sons ; trained by the careful hands of his devoted parents, he grew from boyhood to youth. He was gifted by nature with a brilliant imagination, and often, as he roamed about the old town, which was fast sinking into decadence and the prosperity of which had departed, his young spirit was moved by the memories of her former greatness, and yearned to contribute to its rein- statement. Recognizing his gifts, his parents determined to bestow upon him a good education, and at an early age O'Connor was sent to the college of the Immaculate Conception, Athlone. There, even as a boy, he exhibited the qualities which have steadily carried him to eminence, and soon became noted not only for his cleverness and application to the regular branches of study, but for his unusual talents as a speaker and writer. At the end of five years he went to the Galway Branch of the Queen's University of Ireland, taking im- v vi SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. mediately a scholarship. Here, as at the former institution he had attended, he quickly made his mark, and became noted as a classical scholar as well as for his proficiency in mathematics and his remark- able faculty for acquiring languages generally. He is still, after the interval of many years, an excellent classical scholar, and not only reads and writes both French and German, but speaks them fluently. But it was not as a mere scholar that he gave great promise. His ambition took a higher range, and impelled by it, he at once joined the Debating Society of the College and flung himself with characteristic fervor into its exercises. Here, though one of the youngest members - of the society, he immediately made a reputation. It is an interest- ing fact that the subject of his first speech was America. At that time the Civil War was raging, and America was too interesting a theme to be overlooked. John Mitchell and many others had es- poused the Southern side; Meagher, Shields, and Sheridan, with yet a greater number, were on the Northern side. The question for debate was, " Which side is worthier of the sympathy of the world ? " O'Connor espoused the part of the South, and by his eloquence carried the day. He sat dowo with a reputation as the best orator and debater in the society. Even at that early date those who heard his speeches remarked that clearness, logical sequence, vigor of expression, and chaste diction, which are still his notable characteristics, and render him remarkable as a polished orator even in the House of Commons. At the age of eighteen O'Connor took the degree of B.A. and for a time thought of entering the civil service. Had he done so, the . Crown would have gained a servant equal in ability to any in its - employ, and Ireland might have lost one of her ablest advocates. -Filled, however, with energy, he, in the intervals between his studies, taught himself shorthand, and leaving college addressed himself to the field of journalism. He secured a position as a reporter, at first without any remuneration, and then at a salary of $5 per week, which, owing to his ability, was afterward doubled. This was the highest price he received during his journalistic labors in Ireland, though he often worked thirteen and fourteen hours out of the twenty-four. To the strong family attachment of his people, he - added a social nature and he contrived generally (even on this small stipend), to keep with him and maintain in Dublin one or more of the members of his family. By the time he was twenty-one he craved a wider field for his ener- gies, and in 1869, with only $20 in his pocket, and undeterred by the fact that he was unknown and without any influence in London, and resolved to succeed or perish, he flung himself into the vast ocean of London life and London effort. He had not one friend and hardly an acquaintance in all that vast and multitudinous city. For weeks he trudged up and down the strange and crowded streets, vainly seek- ing the employment he felt to be his due. His little capital melted away, and still he was unable to obtain a hearing. Perhaps it was • this time of weary waiting which has ever since bound him as the - faithful friend and steadfast ally of all the desolate and oppressed. At length he obtained a position as a reporter on the Daily Telegraph at a salary of $10 a week. He was, however, in the sphere for which SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. vii nature intended him and no power could long keep him down. The Franco-Prussian war broke out, and his thorough knowledge of French and German now stood him in good stead. To this he added the genius of a born journalist. He wrote long and brilliant articles which attracted much attention. Gifted with a pleasant bearing, at- tractive manners, a keen insight into human nature, much fertility of resource, and an infallible journalistic instinct, he gained great repu- tation as an interviewer, often securing an important interview where all others had failed. An instance may be mentioned when a little later on he had risen and become associated with Dr. Hosmer in the conduct of the London agency of the ]Sew York Herald. General Grant was in England on his tour around the world, and was invited by the Queen to dine at Windsor. All the newspapers were on the qui vive to secure as accurate an account as possible of the ceremonial, but O'Connor alone obtained it at first hand. He made friends with one of the suite who was to be present at the dinner, and having secured an entrance to the castle was met by his friend who gave him an exact ac- count of everything. And to the astonishment of every one the Xew York Herald next morning contained a full and accurate relation in detail of the entire affair, written with admirable spirit and humor. He found that getting in was not so difficult; but getting out was a very delicate matter. Having been associated with Dr. Hosmer in the conduct of the London agency of the Kew York Herald, he was con- nected with that paper when Stanley on its behalf discovered Living- stone, and he did the work in London which then gave that paper such increased reputation. One of the periodical changes in the Herald office occurred, and he left the paper. For two or three years after this he was unconnected with any journal, and having no steady employment he was dependent upon occasional work. During this period he was often for days at a time subjected to actual want. To meet his necessities, he wrote at this time all sorts of "copy" : stories, sketches, literary criticism, political papers, — anything. Lon- don is a bad place for the "unemployed," and just enough of these sketches were accepted from time to time to keep him from starva- tion. Indeed, he underwent an experience which few men pass through and survive. He drank the dregs of Grub Street poverty. Through it all, however, his ambition still inspired him to persevere, and he" attended debating societies and kept to his studies with his heart sore yet still clinging to the dreams of his boyhood. At length he took one step. He secured a seat in the Reporter's Gallery of the House of Commons. It was not a great step, but it was on the way; and, from his coign of vantage high up over the Speaker's bewigged head, he gained an experience of the lower House of Parliament which afterward bore rich fruit for him, and, when a few years later he took his seat on the long benches below, enabled him, while yet a recruit, to handle himself like a veteran. While he was a Parliamentary reporter he conceived the idea which, carried out through his untiring energy, subsequently made his fortune. He determined to write a book. The exciting scenes in the House of Commons filled him with interest. Their picturesqueness appealed SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. to Lis literary instinct. His familiarity with the body and his de- light in its contests rendered it easy for him to write of it. He therefore sought, and found finally, a publisher who engaged to publish for him a work portraying stirring events in the House of Commons. He set to work with characteristic zeal ; but as he studied the sub- ject, beginning at his own time and going back, one picturesque figure stood forth as connected in some way with nearly every dra- matic scene which the House of Commons had witnessed in a genera- tion : the figure of Benjamin Disraeli, the stammering young Jew, who rose to be Earl of Beaconsfield and Ruler of England. His - work changed under his hand and became a " Life of Lord Beacons- field." He had hardly completed the work, which was in two volumes — of - which one was actually in press — when a great misfortune befell him. The publisher for whom he had written it suddenly died, leaving him with the fruit of two years' work on his hands. In this emergency the young author recast and rewrote the entire book. In this he signally demonstrated his extraordinary energy and endurance, never pausing for rest and recreation, and frequently writing for eighteen and twenty hours on a stretch. None but an iron constitution could have stood the strain of this intense and fierce application, and it left its lasting marks on that of even O'Connor. It was with difficulty even after this that the author found a pub- lisher, and then it was on terms by which, as is so often the case with young authors, the publisher gets all, or nearly all, of whatever pecuniary benefit may accrue. The book, however, created a sensa- tion. Lord Beaconsfield was at that time (1876-77) at the height of his power and fame. He had not long returned from the Berlin Congress, at which he had been the central figure ; he had from his window in Downing Street announced to England, " I have brought you peace with honor." His early career had been eclipsed by the dazzling triumph of his later years, and the life of Benjamin Dis- raeli had been almost obliterated from memory by the splendor of Beaconsfield the Prime Minister, and the idol of adoring Toryism. O'Connor's book was almost a revelation. It was a time marked by fierce political passion ; but even for this period the young Irish- man had spoken boldly. His knowledge of his subject, his apt and able criticism, his fearless denunciation, and his remarkable lit- erary ability made the work at once notable. It ran immediately through several editions. The Tory press assailed it with virulence, the Liberal Journals extolled it, and Liberal chiefs adopted it as a campaign text-book for the next campaign. The Spectator spoke of it as " a terrific exposure of the public career of Lord Beaconsfield" ; The AthencBiim referred to it as "a storehouse for all future writers of modern history." It is, indeed, a notable fact that O'Connor's pungent pen furnished the party literature for three successive cam- paigns. Lord Beaconsfield himself paid it the highest encomium. Some sycophantish follower inquired "if he had seen the 'book, and then, having denounced it, the Prime Minister said, with that sardonic humor so characteristic of him, "I have read it. But I do not SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. ix know why you should call it scurrilous. It is all true." From this time O'Connor was a marked man. The unknown young journalist had fought for and won against odds his place as a man of letters of rare ability, a writer whose pen possessed a power worthy of conciliation. Always holding liberal opinions and strong views about the amelio- ration of the condition of the working classes, O'Connor about this time became the President of an advanced Liberal Club which, though small in numbers, was composed of men, without exception, of such unusual ability that it exerted an influence far greater than might have been expected from its limited membership. Nearly every man in the club was in some way associated with the press, and, thus, whatever happened at the club and whatever the club did, received an extraordinary share of public notice till the club itself came to be regarded with great respect. A seat in Parliament having fallen in, the club proposed to its President, O'Connor, that he should stand for it ; but it was a borough which demanded a large outlay and he declined. He was then appointed chairman of a committee to wait on another brilliant journalist, of even more advanced opin- ions : Henry Labouchere, Esquire, to request him to stand. He also declined, but subsequently, some new developments having caused him to change his mind, he reconsidered his decision, and stood and was elected. Meantime, only a few weeks before the general election, the member for Galway who was standing for re-election suddenly disappeared, and remained lost, and O'Connor was hastily applied to stand in his place. He consented, and pledging for his expenses all the proceeds of his work on Lord Beaconsfield, as well as those of a work on Irish Literature which he had mean- time written, he hastened to his old home. The contest was a heated and close one, for against him the Tories put up a man whom Gal- way held in high esteem as a benefactor of the town, and who pos- sessed not only great wealth and influence, but also great popularity. The eloquent young Irishman, however, carried the day and was returned by a small majority. And thus within six weeks of the time when as a private citizen he had waited on Henry Labouchere to ask him to consider standing for the House of Commons and had received his refusal, the two met on the opposition benches. It was a notable Parliament. Another Irishman, a young "Wicklow landlord, unknown to fame but destined to play an extraordinary part, had but four years previously entered Parliament for the first time : Charles Stewart Parnell. The first night he ever entered the House, " The Irish Party," the history of which is contained in the following pages, had its birth. It owed its existence to an accident. That night Joseph Bigger, enraged at the action of the government, having got the floor, in order to prevent a vote kept it, holding it hour after hour and talking against time. At first the House jeered and laughed. Then it emptied itself into the lobbies and smoking-rooms, but as the determined Irishman kept on imperturbably and interminably, the House was aghast. The rules were defective and he could not be stopped. That night obstruction to legislation had its birth. That night Parnell saw" the power of mere obstruction, and the Parnell Movement began. X SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. The first night O'Connor entered the House his public career began. A reply to the speech from the Throne had been moved, and in obedience to a mandate from the Irish party the young recruit was pressed into service in the debate. He was already at home in the House, and spoke with a self-possession and vigor which was charac- terized by his opponents as "impudence"; but which aroused the enthusiasm of his friends. All admitted that the young member was destined to play an important part in the deliberations of the House. This prophesy he abundantly fulfilled. He was appointed one of the caucus which nominated Parnell to the Irish Leadership, and on this occasion made a speech which gave him a high rank in the councils of the Irish party, and made him one of the chiefs of that organization. His ability as a debater caused him constantly to be in demand in the tierce fight of 1881 against Coercion, and before the end of the session the young recruit had become in fact a veteran, having, during the discussion on the Government's Coercion Bill, made more than a hundred speeches, and having established a reputa- tion as one of the orators of the House of Commons. At the close of the session O'Connor was chosen one of the five delegates appointed by the party to come to America to enlist interest in and raise funds for the cause, Parnell being another. O'Connor took the Northwest and West as his field, and spent nearly seven months in the work, during which time he spoke in one hundred and twenty cities, raised a large amount of money, and aroused the interest and gained the support of vast numbers of Irish Americans and of many other Americans of all shades of opinion. He sailed for England full of hope for Ireland. But on his arrival at Queenstown the papers which were brought on board the vessel announced the Phoenix Park Murders, and all hope of the immediate success of Home Rule was dashed to the ground. Laboriously and painfully, however, the Irish party recovered from this shock and continued its struggles. In this, as formerly, O'Connor's part was prominent and notable. He was now regarded as one of the strong- est speakers, if not the strongest in his party, and was constantly in requisition. Two of these speeches in particular became from their effect memorable. One was his reply to Mr. Foster's skillfull}'- planned and carefully prepared indictment against Parnell. The leader was ill and unable to speak, and the member for Gal way was unexpectedly requested to make the attack. The House had been deeply impressed and the situation was grave. O'Connor retired to the smoking-room at 9 p.m. to consider his subject, and an hour afterward stood up to repel the onslaught of the Chief Secretary. Never did a speaker address an assembly under circumstances more adverse and depressing. The galleries were filled with enemies. A tempest of passion was raging in England against Parnell and the Irish party, who were denounced with equal fierceness by Liberals and Conservatives. O'Connor at first spoke to an audience disinclined to hear him; but as he proceeded he first caught their ear, then their interest, and in a little while had complete possession. He broke up the alliance between the Liberals and Tories. He effectively awaked the English party passions. The Tories jeered and laughed at the Liberals ; the Liberals retaliated with jeers against the Tories. SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. Sir George Trevelyan, one of the oldest and ablest members of the House of Commons, declared that never in all his experience had he known a speech produce such results. He had gone to dinner feeling that Mr. Parnell would perhaps be sent to the Clock Tower, so fierce had been the indictment of the Chief Secretary to which O'Connor was replying. "When he returned, he found an Irish member address- ing the House amid constant cheers and reiterated laughter. The other speech referred to was delivered during one of the debates on the Egyptian question. Khartoum had fallen; Gordon was dead, his memory enshrined in the hearts of the British people, the story of his heroism enriching their history. The tide of feeling ran high, threatening to overwhelm the Government. Gladstone had, however, to some extent restored general confidence and unity among the Liberal party by one of his most dexterous and masterly orations, and the Tories, with whom the Irish party were at the time in alliance, saw their hopes, just on the point of fulfillment, about to be suddenly dashed to the ground. On the closing night of the debate, at half past nine, O'Connor arose to speak. Gladstone, as he proceeded, listened to him pale and dis- turbed. The Tories, awakened to the importance and greatness of the young Irishman's speech, shouted themselves hoarse with delight. When O'Connor sat down he had made the most masterly oratorical effort of his life, and had established his position as one of the most brilliant orators in all England. Balfour, speaking of him, said, " Would to Heaven we had such a speaker in our own ranks." During all this time O'Connor had continued to labor at his profes- sion of a journalist. It was no uncommon thing for him to make several speeches and write from three to six columns of newspaper matter the same night. He is, indeed, one of the most rapid writers on the English press, beiug able to dash off at least a column an hour, which will, by its information, its vigor, its polish, its pungency, and point, appear the result of long thought and careful labor. His sympathy with the poor and oppressed, which is one of the great moving springs of his life, has always led him to champion the cause of the toilers, and in much of the agitation on their behalf in the great Metropolis which has resulted in bettering their condition, the young Irishman has been a leader. For the first two years of his Parliamentary life O'Connor wrote for the Pall Mall Gazette (then edited by, perhaps, the most accom- plished literary man in England, John Morley). accounts of the pro- ceedings in both Houses of Parliament, which Mr. Morley considered as among the most attractive features of that journal. Such was his power of detaching himself from his surroundings and such his skill that the authorship of the papers remained undiscovered. These sketches were subsequently published together in a volume entitled, " Gladstone's House of Commons." He, moreover, at one time acted as a London correspondent of the New York Sun, his work coming fully up to the high literary stand- ard of that brilliant journal. In 1884 he put into effect a plan he had been forming, of describing " the Movement which is associated with the name of Mr. Parnell." He determined to give a succinct history of the events by which that xii SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. movement was " preceded and prepared." This involved immense research, particularly in regard to the details of the Irish famine of 1847, which, with its disastrous results, he wished *c> lay before the world as a great argument establishing the necessitApf Home Rule. The knowledge displayed in the pages of this work, its marked lit- erary ability and its historical value, were recognized and admitted by the leading British journals irrespective of their political com- plexion. By this time O'Connor had become the leader of the Irish in England. In 1882 he had been elected President of the Irish National League of Great Britain, a position which he has ever since continued to hold by successive re-election. Under his guidance that body has become consolidated and has steadily strengthened. In 1885 it was determined by the Irish party to throw their weight on the Tory side. It was difficult to tell how the Irish were going to vote at the next election. The famous manifesto, calling on the Irish voters of Great Britain to vote the Tory ticket, was from O'Connor's pen. This docu- ment was deemed a masterly arraignment of the Liberal Government, and was repeated, perhaps, in every newspaper in the world. It has ever since been employed as a standing weapon by the Tories against their opponents. In 1886 he was put up for re-election at Galway and was also put up for the Scotland Division of Liverpool, and was returned from both. It was deemed best to take the Liverpool seat, and he has since been the only Irish member sitting for an English constituency. During this campaign O'Connor spoke almost every night, and in nearly every constituency which he visited a Liberal was ousted, his eloquence and ability contributing largely to this result. He in conse- quence became an especial object of dislike on the part of that party. At the election of 1886, however, a wonderful change had taken place : Gladstone had become enlightened. He had thoroughly studied and mastered the Irish question and become a convert to the justice of Ireland's claims, and prepared his famous Home Rule Bill. A new edition of the Parnell Movement was demanded by the Liberals, who used it as a campaign document. O'Connor thus be- came perhaps the only writer in existence who ever wrote a work which has been used successively by two hostile parties as a cam- paign text-book. Up to a short time previous to this the Irish Party had always been looked upon as a mere guerilla-band, regarded with equal aversion and disdain by both the great English parties. From their masterly tactics and in view of the extraordinary and splendid powers exhibited by their leaders, disdain had given place to fear. The Irish cause, however, lacked a public organ in England and had suffered greatly from this want. It had never received recognition in the Metropolitan press, with the exception of The Daily News and, occasionally, the Pall Mall Gazette. O'Connor, with the instinct of a journalist combined with his love of Ireland, conceived the idea of starting a popular newspaper in London in support of Irish Home Rale and English Liberalism. There is in London a strong hostility to Irishmen, and his enterprise SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. xiii met with much opposition. With characteristic determination, how- ever, he persevered, and overcoming all obstacles, finally, by his own exertions raised the necessary capital, and in January, 1888, started the Star, an afternoon paper. Its success was immediate and phenom- enal. During the first week of its existence its daily circulation rose to 140,000 copies, and steadily increased — -on special occasions its circu- lation rising as high as 300,000 a day. One thing was unfortunate : O'Connor, who had never since he got his start taken time to make money, and who had not one sordid thought in his composition, had taken in with him as stockholders a number of persons of political aspirations, and several of political position. The paper was universally known as "T. P. O'Connor's paper." It was in fact his paper : his name made it ; his genius sustained it ; he was getting all the credit for it. A cabal was formed against him : he was not radical enough to suit some ; he was not conserva- tive enough to gratify others ; he was not mean enough to please any. He wittily said that, " Others were the victims of their own failures; he was the victim of his own success." He offered either to buy or sell. The latter proposition was accepted, and less than two and one half years from the first issue of the Star his interest, which was one fourth, subject to a charge of the entire capital sub- scribed, was bought by his opponents for $75,000, $25,000 being paid on conditionthat he should not edit an existing paper or start an afternoon paper for the period of three years. No higher proof of the estimate of O'Connor as a journalist, even by his opponents, could be demanded. In the autumn of 1890, William O'Brien and John Dillon having been arrested on a standing charge just as they were about to sail for America to try to raise funds for evicted tenants in Ireland, O'Connor was by the Irish party appointed, with one or two others, to repair to America in their place. He came and flung himself earnestly into the work until the paralysis of the movement, which grew out of the division in the Irish party at home. He has made arrangements to start a newspaper in London which it is safe to say has a brilliant future before it, as any paper he may edit is assured of success. The future is the province of only prophecy ; but so far as human foresight can extend, it is not too much to say that Thomas Power O'Connor is destined to rise to yet higher honors than he has- already attained, and to fill a yet larger place in our time. Of the present it may be said, and all who really know him will recognize its truth, that he is a man of high integrity, of broad views, and the loftiest aims ; a genial gentleman, a charming companion, a faithful friend, an accomplished scholar, a brilliant writer, a chaste orator, and a brave and devoted son of Ireland. In 1886 Mr. O'Connor achieved the greatest success of his life in winning against a number of competitors the hand and heart of a beautiful American woman, Mrs. Elizabeth Duval Pascal Wright, one of the loveliest and most accomplished of women, who has ever since been his greatest admirer and most efficient assistant. She is descended on both sides from old southern Huguenot families. She xiv SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. is the daughter of the late Judge Pascal of Texas and the grand- daughter of the late Governor Duval of Florida, both of whom were men of remarkable ability, and of high character and distinction. Her beauty and intelligence have given her an enviable social position in London. In her Mr. O'Connor has found the fulfillment of his brightest dreams, and his home, over which she presides, is one of the most charming in London. THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. CHAPTER I. THE FALL OF O'COXXELL. The main purpose of these pages is to describe the movement which Ik as- sociated with the name of Mr. Parnell. That movement cannot, however, be understood without some acquaintance with other movements, of which it is the child and successor. To the history of events in our own day, I have thought it best, accordingly, to prefix a sketch of some of the events by which they were preceded and prepared. For various reasons I have deeded it sufficient to start at the year 1843. The Irish people had good reason for the honour they paid to O'Connell after he had won for them Catholic Emancipation. When he arose, they were literally aliens in their own country. The passionate prejudices of the greater and stronger nation were against the Catholics ; the Protestant section of their own countrymen held all the land and all the positions of trust and power ; the Catholics were unarmed, and opposed to them were all the resources by land and sea of one of the world's greatest empires : and against all this, O'Connell, by the sheer force of his intellect, and with no other weapon than his. voice, had suc- ceeded. He was proclaimed the Liberator of his country ; all other forces in the nation and all other men were overshadowed by his single name ; and he established, without the assistance of a bayonet or of a musket, an omnipotence over the democracy as unquestioned and unquestionable as that of a Czar with millions of soldiers behind him. It was not long before O'Connell and the nation found that the glories of Catholic Emancipation were but a mdckery and an illusion. He had calcu- lated that with this lever he would have been able to wring with promptitude all the other reforms which he deemed necessary ; and the evils for which he demanded redress were sufficiently pressing. The tithes still existed ; and the clergymen of the opulent Protestant Establishment gathered their dues of wheat from a poverty-stricken Catholic peasantry, backed by sol- diers and police and guns, and sometimes amid scenes of mad passion and much bloodshed. O'Connell, in order to gain Emancipation, had committed the terrible mistake of consenting to the abolition of the forty-shilling free- holder: this had taken away from the landlords one of the most effective 8 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. reasons for sparing the tenant at will ; and evictions were perpetrated on an unusually large scale. In short, the material condition of Ireland was wor -iing for advancing this movement, the attempt would he resisted by force Meantime O'Connell's wordfl became bolder and nore encouraging as he went along. He declared at the monster meeting n Roscommon that the close of the struggle had almost come. ' The hour,' h * said, ' is approaching, the day is near, the period is fast coming, when — believe me who never deceived you — your country shall be a nation once moi'e.' 1 ' And this poetry of the orator,' sardonically adds Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, ' was translated into unequivocal prose by Mr. John O'Connell at the next meeting of the association. "The Repeal of the Union," he declared, "could not be delayed longer than eight or ten months." ' 2 The moment at last came when O'Connell's power and determination were to be put to the test. A meeting was announced for Sunday, October 5, 1843, at Clontarf — a suburb of Dublin made glorious in Irish hearts by ihe decisive victory of Brian Boru over the Danish invaders. The Ministry made up their minds to strike the blow which they had been long preparing : they proclaimed the meeting ; took every means to carry out their order by force — or, as some people even said, to provoke violence in order to make bloodshed inevitable. The meeting had been in preparation for weeks; but it was not until half-pa.fc three o'clock on the Saturday before the meeting that the proclamation was issued. It was only by the despatch of special mounted messengers that the people, who were swarming in from the surrounding country, were told of the action of the Government. There had already grown within the ranks of O'Connell's own following a section which bitterly differed from his policy, and in time broke his power. The Nation newspaper had been founded in October, 1842, by Mr. (now Sir) Charles Gavan Duffy, arid he had among his assistants Thomas Davis, John Dillon, and subsequently John Mitchel. The Young Irelanders, as they were called, represented an entirely new phase in Irish politics. The Nation for the first time presented the Irish people with a journal of real literary merit ; and the writers acquired an influence over the popular mind hitherto unknown in Irish journalism. Even in those days of high-priced newspapers and ill-developed communication, it circulated largely in the remotest towns in Ireland. It was devoured, not read. It convinced ; it inspired ; it roused loftiest hopes and fiercest passions. The writers, joining the Repeal Association of O'Connell, soon brought a new force into its councils. In the first place, they were determined not to sub- 1 Gavan Duffy, ' Young Ireland,' p. 349. a lb. THE FALL OF O'CONNELL. 13 mit with the same passiveness as was generally the custom to the dictator- ship of O'Connell. This brought them into collision, not only -oath O'Connell himself, but with the formidable group of men he had gathered around him. Many of these intimates of the great agitator were broken in health and fortune and character ; but O'Connell stood by them with the natural constancy of a man of keen affections to old retainers ; and one of the bitterest quarrels between him and the Young Irelanders was over the continuance in salaried positions of these men. The Young Irelanders made demands for the publication of accounts, which, though accompanied by strong professions of loyalty to O'Connell himself, produced, not unnatur- ally, irritation in his mind. In short, for the first time in his life, the ex- perienced veteran found himself face to face with young foes who had not the same regard as their elders for his past services, who depended not on his will, and who wielded an influence outside his control. There was in addition to these causes of personal difference a more important and fun- damental difference of principle. The Young Irelanders maintained that they were pushed by other forces, and especially by O'Connell himself, into the doctrine of physical force : at this moment the struggle over that question had not arisen. There was, however, the difference in the pre- ference of the younger section for resolute, and the older for moderate courses. John Mitchel, one of the Young Irelanders, writing many years after O'Connell's death, and in another land, deliberately repeated the opinion he Jjeld at the time as to O'Connell's duty on the day of the Clontarf meeting. 1 If I am asked,' he writes, 1 what would have been the very best thing O'Connell could do on that day at Clontarf, I answer : To let the people of the country come to Clontarf — to meet them there himself, as he had invited them ; but, the troops being almost all drawn out of the city, to keep the Dublin Repealers at home, to give them a commission to take the Castle and all the barracks, and to break down the canal bridge and barricade the streets leading to Clontarf. The whole garrison and police were 5,000. The city had a population of 250,000. The multitades coming in from the country would, probably, have amounted to almost as many. . . . There would have been horrible slaughter of the unarmed people without, if the troops would fire on them — a very doubtful matter — and O'Connell himself might have fallen. ... It were well for his fame if he had ; and the deaths of five or ten thousand that day might have saved Ireland the slaughter by famine of a hundred times as many.' These words represent the gospel of a large section of Irishmen for many a day afterwards ; they led to the almost contemptuous tone in which O'Connell's memory was treated by a vast number of his countrymen during a considerable period after the first outburst of worship after his death ; they formed the fundamental idea of the love of revolutionary methods and the hatred of Parliamentary leaders which is the under- current of much of the Irish history that followed ; above all, they added to the hideous disaster of 1846 and 1847 another element of woe in the thought of what might have been. The immediate consequence was the break-up of O'Connell's mighty movement. He himself and several of his colleagues were immediately afterwards prosecuted ; and the most shameful methods were adopted for obtaining a conviction. Out of the entire panel one slip, containing mostly Catholic names, was lost ; when finally there were left eleven Catholic* out of a panel of twenty-four, the Crown used their full power of challenge ; THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. every single one of the eleven was driven from the box, and the jury con- sisted exclusively of Orange Conservatives, who were as impartial in deciding the case of O'Connell in those days as would be a jury of Southern slave-holders in the case of an Abolitionist immediately before the Civil War in America. Then the judges were notoriously partisan. An accidental phrase is still remembered which brought this out in full relief. Chief Justice Pennefather, in alluding to the counsel for the defence, spoke of them as * the other side.' Of course, before such a judge and such a jury, conviction was a foregone conclusion. Everybody cried out shame on the iniquitous proceedings ; O'Connell walked into the House of Commons amid the debate upon the trial, which was at the moment being denounced by English Liberals as vehemently as it could have been by himself. It was generally expected that the verdict would be reversed on appeal — as it was ; and an effort was made to have a Bill passed which would have allowed O'Connell to remain out on bail until the case was finally decided. But the Bill was rejected — principally through the efforts of Brougham, who had a violent hatred of O'Connell ; and the end of it all was that O'Connell had to go to gaol. This was the beginning of the end. But it did not look so at the time. In his prison O'Connell held levees more like those of a prince than the unofficial head of a democracy ; bishops, priests, town councillors, rushed to see him from all parts of Ireland. ' Here,' writes Mitchel of the imprisonment of O'Connell and his companions in Richmond, ' they rusticated for three months, holding levees in an elegant marquee in the garden ; addressed by bishops ; com- plimented by Americans ; bored by deputations ; serenaded by bands ; comforted by ladies ; half smothered with roses ; half drowned in cham- pagne.' 1 And when the case was brought before the House of Lords the verdict was reversed ; Chief Justice Deninan denounced the proceedings of the law officers as reducing trial by jury to a ' mockery, a delusion, and a snare :' and O'Connell was released from prison amid circumstances of wild triumph. But all the same, the fact remained that O'Connell's conviction broke up his movement. The mighty dictator — to whom millions of men looked up, for whom thousands would have willingly died — had been dragged at the tail of a policeman ; and the hero of a thousand fights had been beaten for the first time in his life. The prestige of unbroken victory was gone. 'The Repeal year,' as Mitchel pointedly puts it, 1 had conducted, not to a parliament in College Green, but to a penitentiary in Richmond. O'Connell, too, left the prison physically and mentally a broken man. It was discovered after his death that he had been for years suffering from softening of the brain, and the date generally assigned for the first appear ance of the disease was that of his imprisonment. He was besides, as we have since learned, involved in. domestic trouble. 2 But though the fearful excitement of the Repeal agitation had broken down his robust frame, he remained still the same to his people. Keen observers remarked the feebleness of his own defence at his trial ; and when he began to address meetings again after his release, he was noted to carefully avoid all subjects upon which the people were most eagerly desirous of in- formation and direction. Here, again, most of the critics of O'Connell declare that he lost a great opportunity. Mitchel, and many men still 1 'Last Conquest of Ireland.' 8 Duffy, ' Young Ireland,' pp. 530-32. THE FALL OF O'CONNELL. li\ing, and with the hot blood of youth cooled by mature years, declare that he ought to have called upon the people to make some stand, and that the people not only would have obeyed, but at the time panted for the word. The population of Ireland at this period was eight and a half millions ; and though there was terrible poverty in the country, there had, as yet, not been anything like universal starvation. The masses of men who marched to the demonstrations are universally described as stalwart, bold, and well drilled ; and it is argued that by mere force of overwhelming numbers, and a frenzy that was national, they would have borne down the defences of the Government. In support of this view, and against the damning testimony of subsequent abortive attempts at insurrection, the argument is used that the means and methods of warfare have been revolutionized since that period. Soldiers in those days were armed with no better weapon than the ' Brown-Bess ;' and, as an ancient revolutionary may now in many a part of Ireland be heard to exclaim, with a sigh : ' In those days every man had his pike.' The first charge might have killed hundreds ; but after the first charge, soldiers at that time would have been impotent against a resolute people a hundred-fold more numerous. But, wisely or foolishly, O'Connell was determined not to permit any bloodshed. His courage was proved on too many a scene to be open to question ; but it was not the desperate courage that stakes hie, fortune, and a whole national issue upon a single cast of the die. Then his whole training had been that of a man who had found in words weapons more potent than armies and navies. The victories he had obtained were victories in law courts, and in deliberative assemblies ; and possibly, and probably, he honestly thought he would still be able to utilize the en- thusiasm of the people in wringing from Parliament, if not Repeal, a blessing so great and so needed as security to the tenant-at-will from starvation and eviction. There was one fatal obstacle to his success in a Parliamentary move- ment ; and this is a fact which should always form a central consideration with those who criticise adversely O'Connell'3 career. The half -million of people who gathered around him at Tara were not those to whom he had to appeal for the most potent weapon in the Parliamentary conflict. He had to pass away from them to the miserable handful of voters who, in all the smaller constituencies, had the fate of elections in their hands ; and at that time, and for many a day afterwards, personal interests begot of abject poverty, a spirit of clique or other mean or subsidiary motives, exercised deeper influence than great national issues. In the year 1843, when he was still at the very height of his power, his supporters in the House of Commons did not reach beyond the miserable total of twenty-six members. From this time forward the history of O'Connell is the history of Repeal decay. Arms Acts and Coercion Acts meantime took from the people what few weapons they had, and the Government filling gaols with prisoners, accelerated the break-up of that tide of passion, enthusiasm, and desperate courage, which, if taken at its flood, might then have led on to fortune. With disaster comes inevitable disunion. Between him and the Young Irelanders the quarrel that had besn long smouldering had at last broken into open flame. Sir Robert Peel, by the concession of a larger grant to Maynooth, still further disintegrated the forces of O'Connell by bringing pressure on the Vatican, and through the Vatican on some of the bishops ; and so, O'Connell's power began gradually to melt away. *6 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. CHAPTER II. THE COMING OP THE FAMINE. While thus all the national forces of Ireland were being reduced to impo- tence, there was coming over the country a calamity which was to complete the work of national destruction ; to inflict on Ireland one of the most widespread and one of the most terrible disasters recorded in human his- tory ; and to prove the need of a native legislature by the tragic testimony of a starving nation. There never was an event in human history which could have been more clearly foreseen, or that was more frequently foretold, than the Irish famine of 1846-47. The circumstances of which it was the final outcome had been in progress for centuries. The destruction of the Irish manufactures by the legislation of the British Parliament had thrown the entire population for support on the land ; and the fierce competition thus induced had raised the rents to a point far beyond anything the tenant could ever hope to pay. On the other side, the landlords, brought up to no profession, spendthrift, separated from the tenant by creed, race, and caste, aggra- vated all the evils of the system. According to testimony as unanimous as that on any human affair, they left to the tenant the whole improvement of the farm : the fencing, the building of houses and offices — all the work that from time immemorial had been done in England by the landlord ; and then, when the tenancy was determined either by the lease or by caprice, they rewarded the tenant by eviction, or a rise in the rent. The complaints of the neglect of their duties by the Irish landlords run with a monotonous iteration through the extensive literature of the Irish land question. Spenser railed against the Irish landlord in 1596 for his prefer- ence of tenancies at will to the grant of leases. • The exactions of the landlords, and the terrible want thereby caused among the people, sug- gested to Swift his perhaps most terrible satire — 'The Modest Proposal' — and his bitterest passages. In 1729 Mr. Prior wrote a pamphlet to ex- pose the evils which absenteeism inflicted. In 1791, the Protestant Bishop, Dr. Woodward, denounced rack-renting and the ' duty-work ' which the landlords exacted ; and so on with scores of writers on the subject. The land question had been the stock subject of politicians as of littera- teurs i innumerable Parliamentary committees had sat and investigated and reported upon it. To begin with the period after the Union, a Paidia- mentary committee, appointed on the motion of Sir John Newport in 1819, reported that there was great want of employment ; that the want of employment was due to the want of capital ; and that the want of capital was caused on the one hand by the absenteeism of a number of the land- lords, and on the other through the consumption of all their capital by the tenants on the improvement of their holdings. In 1823, another committee drew attention still more emphatically to the difference between the action of the English and the Irish landlords, and denounced strongly the preva- lent rack-renting. In 1829 there was another committee which considered a Bill brought in by Mr. Brownlow in favour of the reclamation of waste lands and the drainage of bogs — a favourite remedy of those days. In 1830 a committee reported that ' no language could describe the poverty ' in Ireland, and recommended the settlement of the relations of landlord and tenant on ' rational and useful principles.' There is an equally embarrassing riches both of speeches and of Bills. THE COMING OF THE FAMINE. I? In Xovember, 1830, Mr. Doherty, the then Solicitor-General for Ireland, described the houses of the tenantry as such as the lower animals in Eng- land would scarcely, and as a matter of fact did not, endure. The Duke or Wellington denounced the evils of absentee landlordism in the same year ; and in the following year Lord Stanley — afterwards, as Lord Derby, the obstinate advocate of the landlord party- — called scornful attention to the fact that during a crisis of awful distress in Mayo there had been but a subscription of £100 from two persons out of a rental of £10,400 a year, and described the rents at the same time as exorbitant. In the same year Lord Melbourne, who had been Chief Secretary for Ireland, maintained that all the witnesses examined before the different Select Committees on the subject had united in the statement that the disturbances in Ireland were due to the relations between the landlords and tenants. In the same manner Bill after Bill had been proposed. Mr. Brownlow's Bill was brought in in 1829. It passed through the House of Commons ; it passed the second reading in the House of Lords ; it was referred to a Select Committee ; but they, on July 1, reported that at such an advanced period of the session it was impossible to proceed any further. 1 In the following year Mr. Henry Grattan called upon the Government to bring in a Bill for the improvement of the waste lands. In the next year, 1831, Mr. Smith O'Brien introduced a Bill for the relief of the aged, hopeless, and infirm. In 1835 Mr. Ppulett Scrope asked in vain for a Land Bill ; in the same year Mr. Sharman Crawford brought in a Bill. 2 In the follow- ing year Mr. Crawford got leave to introduce his Bill again ; but it never got further than that stage. In the following year a Mr. Lynch recurred to the old proposal of a Bill for the reclamation of waste lands ; but he also failed. In 1842 a small attempt was made to deal with the question of the waste lands by the Irish Arterial Drainage Act. In 1843 came the Devon Commission ; this caused a pause in the efforts to amend the law. The Devon Commission recommended, as is known, legislation in the most emphatic manner ; but no legislation came. In 1845 Lord Stanley brought in a Bill. The Bill was read a second time, was referred to a Select Com- mittee, and was then abandoned. In the same session Mr. Crawford reintroduced his Bill, but had to abandon it. The next session, after some severe pressure, the Earl of Lincoln introduced a Bill ; this was destroyed by the resignation of the Ministry. It will be seen from this rapid sketch that the conditions of the problem were intimately known ; that all parties — except a few of the Irish land- lords themselves — were in favour of a change in the law ; that attempt after attempt had been made to create this change, and that attempt after attempt had failed. Meanwhile, landlords and tenants were carrying OT3 their warfare after their own lawless fashion. Allusion has been already made to the great clearances which followed the abolition of the forty- shilling freeholder ; eviction had also been made easy by legislation, of which more presently. In 1843 there were no less than 5,244 ejectments, withl4,816 defendants, from the Civil Bill Courts, and 1,784 ejectments from the Superior 1 1 Parliamentary History of the Irish Land Question,' by R. Barry O'Brien, pp. 36-7. 2 This Bill put no restriction whatever on the power of eviction ; it simply asked that when a tenant was evicted he should receive compensation for those permanent improvements which he had made with the consent of his landlord. In the case of improvements made without the consent of the landlord, the chairman of Quarter Sessions was to decide whether they presented a case for compensation. This was the basis of all the Land Bills which followed ; it was the high-water mark of Land Reform in those days. Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill will often recur in these pages. 2 IS THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, Courts, with 16,503 defendants — making a total of 7,028 ejectments and 31,319 defendants. And in the five years from 1839 to 1843, no less than 150,000 'tenants had been subjected to ejectment process.' 1 Unprotected by the law from robbery, and face to face with starvation, the tenants formed Becret and murderous organizations, and assassination and eviction accom- panied each other in almost arithmetical proportion. As poverty increased indebtedness, and indebtedness increased eviction, times of poverty and times of disturbance were synonymous terms. With disturbance the Legislature showed itself ready and eager to deal — when the remedy applied took the shape, not of remedial legislation, but of Coercion Acts. The year was the exception in which Ireland was living under the ordinary law. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended in 1800, in 1801, in 1802, in 1803, in 1804, in 1805 ; it was suspended again from 1807 till 1810 ; from 1814 to 1817 ; from 1822 to 1828 ; from 1829 to 1831 ; again from 1833 to 1835. Side by side with the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act there were other and special Coercion Acts ; frequently there were two Coercion Acts in the same year, sometimes in the same session : in the very first year of the Union Parliament no less than five exceptional laws were passed. These Coercion Acts were of a ferocious character : many of them abolished trial by jury ; some of them established martial law ; transportation, flogging, death, were the ordinary sentences. It is a singular and instructive commentary on the Act of Union, that the Union Parliament had not only passed five Coercion Acts in its first session, but that it had sat for bat two months when it passed a Coercion Act severer than any passed even in the stress of the rebellion of 1798. This was one of the terrible code known as the Insurrection Acts. Under the Act of 1800, courts -martial had the right to try prisoners ; two-thirds of the officers could pronounce sentence, and the sentence might be the sentence of death. To encourage these tribunals in doing their duty, the officers were instructed, in the words of the Act, ' to take the most vigorous and effective measures and they received still further encouragement by being made absolutely irresponsible ; 'no act,' decreed the Legislature, 'done by these tribunals shall be questioned in a court of law.' In 1817 a modified Insurrection Act was passed, which in some respects was worse than the preceding Acts. A body of justices — that is, of landlords — were entitled to form a tribunal if they were presided over by a Serjeant-at- law or a Queen's Counsel, and this tribunal had the right to pass sentences varying from one year's imprisonment to seven years' transportation ; they were, like the courts-martial, irresponsible, for there was no appeal and no certiorari. These courts were employed in the trial of persons de- scribed as ' idle and disorderly,' and the ' idle and disorderly ' were in- cluded in the following extensive category : (1) Anyone found out of his or her dwelling-house between two hours after sunset and sunrise, who could not prove to the satisfaction of the tribunal that he or she was upon his or her 'lawful occasions ' — the mere fact of being out was sufficient authority to a policeman to arrest and detain till trial ; (2) persons taking unlawful oaths, o r 1 This is how O'Connell puts it (Hansard, lxxxv., p. 520). By tenants, he probably means heads of families. Mr. Bernal Osborne, who spoke in the same debate subse- quently to O'Connell, puts the figures in another way. ' There were,' he said, ' 70,982 civil bill ejectments between 1839 and 1843, exclusive of the number of individual occupiers served with process. Counting,' he added, 'five for a family, this would show a total of 354,910 persons evicted in this period' (lb., p. 534). It will be seen presently what became of the persons evicted, and how they helped to bring about the Famine. THE COMING OF THE FAMINE. 19 (3) having arms, or (4) found between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. in a public -house or unlicensed house in which spirituous liquors were sold and not being inmates or travellers ; (5) persons assembled ' unlawfully and tumultuously ' ; (t>) persons hawking 1 seditious papers,' unless they disclose the persons from whom they received them. It would, of course, be assumed by many readers, especially English readers, that these statutes were severe only in wording or intention and not in practical operation. But there was not one of these Acts which was not carried not only to the full lengths authorized by the words and intentions of the Act, but to a large extent farther. In order to make the dread provisions of the Insurrection Act just described applicable to a locality, it had to be proclaimed ; and this is an instance of how such a proclamation was brought about : ' I am perfectly acquainted with that part of Kilkenny now under proclamation adjoining the Queen's County,' said Mr. John Dunn, a witness examined before th* Lords' Committee of 1S24. ' Had there been any disturbance,' asked one of their lordships, ' at the time the Act was put into execution?' 'Not in the barony of Innisfadden adjoining the Queen's County ; I am aware of none.' 1 Can you state,' goes on the examination, ' on what ground it was the Insurrection Act was applied for, so far as respects that barony, and the circumstances attending it?' 'I understand that some few trees — some two or three — had been failed in the domain of Lady Ormonde, and I am not aware of any other transaction at all that would justify the application of such a measure.' 1 Thus the felling of two or three trees was sufficient to expose everybody in this Kilkenny barony to the chance of being transported for seven years by a Queen's Counsel and a body of landlords to whom he was for any reason obnoxious, if he only happened to stay beyond nine o'clock in a public-house. An Irish writer who has written an excellent article on the coercive legislation of Ireland in the Pall Mall Gazette of September 18, 1885, will doubtless appear far-fetched when he says of the Insurrection Act of 1822-25, that if 1 it had been in force in England during she Anti-Corn Law agitation, Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright might) have been transported for seven years by justices or landlords interested in maintaining the tax on food. ? But the illustration is literally and strongly justified, for in 1814 the Insurrection Act was used by Sir Robert Peel to put down the Catholic Board and to prevent popular demonstrations ; that is to say, to suppress all agitation against the exclusion of the millions of Irish Catholics from any share in the government of their own country ; and chat was an agitation as legitimate, legal, and constitutional as that for the repeal of the Corn Laws. There were several Acts for the purpose of putting down xhe disturbances which the terrible sufferings of the tenantry g?nerated, and some of these Acts permitted the sentence of ' whipping.' Here, again, it will be though b that the words were formal and minatory ; but, says O'Connell, who lived all through these coercion laws, 4 1 have known instances where men have been nearly flogged to death. 1 2 Besides the Insurrection Acts, supplemented by suspensions of the Habeas Corpus, there were special Coercion Act3 for every form of defence that the tenantry could devise. It has become the fashion of modern English statesmen to eulogize O'Connsll ; when he was alive, English statesmen met him at every point in his career by every agency of coercion 1 Report Lords' Committee, 1S24, p. 452. Quoted by O'Cornell (Hansard, Ixxxt. p. 503). 8 Hansard, lxxxv., p. 503, 2—2 20 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. that the Legislature could devise. It has been seen how the Insurrection Act was employed by Peel in 1814 to put down the Catholic Board in which O'Connell had a part. Between 1825 and 1836 no less than four Acts of Parliament were passed for the purpose of suppressing political organizations which he had founded, and as the organizations were under the control of O'Connell, it is needless to say that they were legal, consti- tutional and peaceful in their methods. The Irish people, driven from open agitation, were then met by a disarming code, lest they should seek their emancipation by force ; and when, finally, they thought of secret organization, they were confronted by another code of laws with terrible penalties. Anybody who administered or aided in administering an oath for what were called ' seditious purposes ' might be transported for life by one of the tribunals consisting of landlords and a Queen's Counsel, and anybody who took the oath might be transported for seven years. Nor does this represent the complete case in the contrast between the action of the Legislature towards the landlord and the tenant. While every attempt had failed — no matter how moderate — to improve the con- dition of the tenant, the Legislature had passed law after law to increase the power of the landlord. Thus the 56 Geo. III., cap. 88, gave to the landlord a power of distraint which he never had enjoyed up to this period. Under this Act the landlord could distrain the growing crops of a tenant, could keep them till ripe, could save and sell them when ripe, and could charge the tenant with the accumulated ex- penses. This terrible Act was the starting-point of the great evictions which have been the chief causes of agrarian crime in Ireland. Two years afterwards came another Act to complete the evil work begun. The 58 Geo. III., cap. 39, established the power of civil bill eject- ments. The previous Act had given the landlord the means of ruining the tenant by the seizure of his crops ; this Act enabled the landlord to complete the ruin by turning the tenant off his holding. The 1 Geo. IV., cap. 41, extended still further the power of civil bill ejectment ; the 1 Geo. IV., cap 87, enabled the landlord to get security for costs from defendants in ejectments — that is to say, took away in a large proportion of cases any chance from the tenant of resisting the demand for the verdict of eviction; the 1 and 2 Wm. IV., cap. 31, gave the landlord the right of immediate execution in ejectment cases ; the 6 and 7 Wm. IV. gave still further facilities for civil bill ejectments ; and thus the whole eviction code was made entirely complete, without chink, without flaw, without possibility of improvement. 1 These, then, were the legislative benefits by which the Irish people were taught the enormous gain of having their interests attended to by an Imperial and United Legislature. It should also be remarked that these Eviction Acts, and some of the worst of these Coercion Acts, were passed when the late Sir Robert Peel was Chief Secretary ; for, as we are told in Cates's ' Dictionary of General Biography,' 'in 1812 Peel was made Chief Secretary for Ireland — an office which he held with much advantage to the country till 1818.' 2 The 'advantage' to the country was the preparation of the famine. Let us now put the whole case in tabular form by way of making it more intelligible. For the Landlord. 1800. Habeas Corpus suspended ; Coercion Act. 1801. Habeas Corpus suspended ; two Coercion Acts. 1 O'Connell, in Hansard, lxxxv., pp, 522, 523, 3 P. 857 (second edition). THE COMING OF THE FAMINE. 21 1802. Habeas Corpua suspended ; two Coercion Acts. 1803. Habeas Corpus suspended ; two Acts 1504. Habeas Corpus suspended. 1505. Habeas Corpus suspended ; one Coercion Act. 1S07. February 1, Coercion Act. „ Habeas Corpus suspended ; August 2, Coercion Act. 180S. Habeas Corpus suspended. 1S09. Habeas Corpus suspended. 1814. Habeas Corpus suspended ; one Coercion Act. 1815. Habeas Corpus suspended ; Insurrection Act continued. 1S16. Habeas Corpus suspended ; first Eviction Act ; Insurrection Act continued. 1817. Habeas Corpus suspended ; one Coercion Act ; second Eviction Act. 1S18. Second Eviction Act. 1S2U. Third Eviction Act ; same year, fourth Eviction Act. 1822. Habeas Corpus suspended ; two Coercion Acts. 1S23 to 1828. Habeas Corpus suspended, and one Coercion Act in 1823. 1529. Habeas Corpus suspended. 1530. Habeas Corpus suspended ; Importation of Arms Act. 1831. Whiteboy Act ; Stanley's Arms Act ; fifth Eviction Act. 1532. Importation of Anns and Gunpowder Act. 1533. Habeas Corpus suspended ; Suppression of Disturbance Act ; Change of Venue Act. 1534. Habeas Corpus suspended ; Suppression of Disturbance Amendment and Continuance Act ; Importation of Arms and Gunpowder Act. 1835. Public Peace Act. 1S36. Another Arms Act ; sixth Eviction Act. 183S. Another Arms Act. 1S39. Unlawful Oaths Act. 1840. Another Arms Act. 1841. Outrages Act ; another Arms Act. 1S43. Another Arms Act ; Act consolidating all previous Coercion Acts. 1844. Unlawful Oaths Act, 1 For the Tenant. 1829. Mr. Brownlow's Bill dropped in House of Lords. 1S30. Mr. Grattan's demand for an Improvement of Waste Lands Bill refused. 1831. Mr. Smith O'Brien's Bill for the Relief of the Aged dropped. 1S35. Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill dropped. 1836. Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill dropped. ,, Mr. Lynch 's Reclamation Bill dropped. 1S42. Irish Arterial Drainage Act passed. 1845. Lord Stanley's Bill dropped. „ Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill dropped. Nor had outraged Nature neglected to give abundant, warning of the Nemesis she exacts. The famine of 1846-47 differs in degree only from the famines which had recurred at almost regular intervals in preceding periods of Irish history. Beginning with the las*, century, it was the chronic starvation among a considerable portion of uie people that drew from Swift in 1729 the savage satire already alluded to ; and in the year of the publication of ' The Modest Proposal ' there had been three years of dearth, and the people were reduced to the last extremity. In 1725, 1726, 1727, and in 1728 the harvests were very bad ; and in 1739 there was a prolonged frost that produced in the following years a famine which was 1 This list I have compiled from O'Connell (Hansard, lxxxv., p. 505), and from a pamphlet by Mr. I. S. Leadam, quoted by Mr. Healy in his pamphlet, ' "Why there is a Land Question and an Irish Land League,' pp. 6S, 69, first edition. O'Connell's calculation is that there were seventeen Coercion Acts up to August, 1837. There were nearly double that number — if not of Acts generally called Coercion, at least of Acts of an exceptional and restrictive character. Thus O'Connell enumerates three Coercion Acts in the first year after the Union : there were five. Nor does he include Arms Acts in his list ; though, of course, Arms Acts are Coercion Acts. Thus, in 1807, he mentions two Coercion Acts ; there were, besides, two Arms Acts. 22 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. one of the worst on record. Of that famine — the famine of 1740-41 — we have many contemporaneous descriptions. According to one writer, four hundred thousand persons died. Bishop Berkeley has left behind touching descriptions of the misery that came before his own eyes and smote his lcving heart ; and another writer gives a picture as terrible as any even in the history of famines. 1 I have seen,' says this writer, ' the labourer en- deavouring to work at his spade, but fainting for want of food, and forced to quit it. T have seen the aged father eating 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 infec- tion ; and J have seen the hungry infant sucking at the breast of the already expired parent.' 1 In 1822 there was again a serious famine of considerable dimensions. Colonel Patterson, stationed at the time in Galway, tells how hundreds of half -starved wretches arrived daily from a distance of fifty miles, many of them so exhausted by want of food that means taken to restore them failed, owing to the weakness of their digestive organs (quoted from John Mitchel's 4 History of Ireland,' p. 15). And certain official returns of the time state that in the month of June, in Clare County alone, 99,630 persons subsisted on daily charity ; and in Cork, 122,000 (Alison's 'History of Europe,' quoted in John Mitchel's 'History of Ireland,' p. 154). Yet there was in 1821 a good grain crop, amounting to 1,822,816 qv^ters, and in 1822 to more than 1,000,000 quarters (Thorn's 'Directory,' quoted by John Mitchel, p. 123). 2 It was the peculiarity of the Act of Union and of the land legislation that it was ultimately a curse as great to the landlord as to the tenant. In the pages which immediately follow there will be terrible stories of cruelty by the Irish landlords ; and these stories will often tempt the reader to ask whether the men who perpetrated such crimes could have had the same flesh and blood as himself. The landlords of Ireland were no less human beings than the Southern planters who upheld the slavery of the negro, or than the noblesse whose tyranny produced the horrors of the French Revolution. Like their serfs, they were the victims to some extent of circumstances. Behind their action in the days of the famine, there stood at least a century of extravagance. In the last century the Irish squire never dreamt that the time would come when the native Parliament of Ireland would be destroyed, and acted as if Ireland were to be always his chief home, and Dublin always the capital to which the Parliament of his country would bring the fashion and the society of Ireland. The result was that he spent more in proportion to his means on the construction of his house than probably his English brother. The aristocratic mansions in Dublin — which, if they be fortunate, are now occupied as public offices, and if unfortunate, have sunk to the degradation of tenement houses — were finer in the days before the Union than most of the houses which were then occupied by the aristocracy that dwelt in London. 1 Lecky, ' History of England,' ii. 218, 219. 2 Cobbett, in his ' Register,' remarked upon this strange phenomenon of abundant food and widespread starvation. ' Money it seems,' he wrote, ' is wa&ted in Ireland. Now, people do not eat money. No, but the money will buy them something to eat. What ? The food is there, then. Pray observe this, and let the parties get out of the concern if they can. The food is there ; but those who have it in their possession will not give it without the money. And we know that the food is there : for since this famine has been declared in Parliament, thousands of quarters of corn have been ex- Eorted every week from Ireland to England.'— Quoted in Mitchel's 1 History of reland,' p. 153. THE COMING OF THE FAMINE, 23 Tben came the Union ; the price for which a large number of the Irish nobility betrayed the liberties of their country wa3 a step in the peerage. With the departure of the Irish Legislature Dublin ceased to be the seat of Irish fashion ; the Irish peer suddenly found himself obliged to live in the richer and more expensive country, in the larger and more expensive metropolis ; and then began the creation of debt, alleviated occasionally by the Irishman's proverbial luck in the capture of a rich parti. When the famine came, a vast number of the Irish landlords were inextricably in debt ; the Encumbered Estates Act had not yet been passed ; and accord- ingly there was no means whatever of rescue. It often happened, therefore, that the nominal and the real owner were two different persons. The nominal owner was an O'Flaherty or a Blake ; the real owner was the Hebrew gentleman resident in London from whom the O'Elaherty or the Blake had borrowed as much, or more, than the estate could bear. The Irish landlord of the period — as to a very recent date — was insolent, tyran- nical, ignorant ; a spendthrift, a gambler, often a drunkard ; but he often stood to be shot at for deeds which were the natural sequence, not of his own follies and vices, but of the follies and vices of those who had gone before him. The future of Ireland which all these causes were preparing was fore- cast in several of the official reports already alluded to, and above all in the Report of the Devon Commission. A few extracts from these reports will complete the picture of Ireland in the days before the famine. These extracts will be very few and very brief, but they are sufficient to justify the assertion already made, that the famine was inevitable without land reform ; and that its advent could fail to be foreseen only by invincibly ignorant Ministers and Parliaments. ' I have seen a great deal of the peasantry,' said the well-known engineer Alexander Nirnmo, whose name is perpetuated by a pier in the town of Galway, in his evidence before the committee of 1824. ' I have sometimes slept in their cabins, and had frequent intercourse with them, especially in the south and west of Ireland. I con- ceive the peasantry in Ireland to be in the lowest possible state of existence ; their cabins are in the most mis erable condition, and their food is potatoes, with water, very often without anything else, frequently without salt ; and I have frequently had occasion to meet persons who begged of me on their knees, for the love of God, to give them some promise of employment, that, from the credit, they might get the means of supporting themselves for a few months until I could employ them.' 1 1 Nothing can be worse than the condition of the lower classes of the labourers, and the fanners are not much better," said ilr. J. Driscoll before the 1824 committee. 'They have nothing whatever, I think, but the potatoes and water; they seldom have "salt. The committee before whom this and the like evidence was brought re- ported : That a very considerable proportion of the population, variously estimated at a fourth or a fifth of the whole, is considered to be out of employment ; that this, combined with the consequences of an altered system of managing land, is stated to produce misery and suffering which no language can possibly describe, and which it is necessary to witness ia order fully to estimate. 2 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 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 1 P. 226 of the Report. Quoted by O'Connell (Hansard, lxxxv., p. 507). 2 Pp. 380, 381 of the Report of 1824. Quoted by O'Connell (Hansard, lxx2fY„ |). 50S). THE FARNELL MOVEMENT. who have been ejected have been rendered miserable, but they have carried with them and propagated that misery. They have increased the stock of labour, 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 subsistence ; but what is perhaps the most painful of all. a vast number of them have perished of want. 1 The Poor Law Inquiry of 1835 reported that 2,235,000 persons were out of work and in distress for thirty weeks in the year. 2 Finally, the Devon Commission reported that it 1 would be impossible to describe adequately the sufferings and privations which the cottiers and labourers 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.' 3 The evidence which I have now quoted as to the Land question may be best summed up in the words of Mr. Mill: 'Returning nothing,' he writes of the Irish landlords, ' to the soil, they consume its whole produce minus the potatoes strictly necessary to keep the inhabitants from dying of famine.' 4 It was this state of relations between landlord and tenant that gave to the potato its fatal importance in the economy of Irish life. The compromise between the two sides was that all the wheat and oats which were grown on the land and all the stock should 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. The potato was found to be particularly 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 ; it supplied a vege- table which, alone among vegetables, supported life without anything else. The potato meant abundant food or starvation, life or wholesale death. It was the thin partition between famine and the millions of the Irish people. The plant that had so dread a responsibility had its bad qualities as well as its good ; it was fickle, perishable, liable to wholesale destruction, and more than once already had given proof of its terrible uncertainty. It will be seen by-and-by that the readiness of the potato to fail played a very important part, and, indeed, 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. There was, however, no anticipation of disaster in 1845. The 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 countries that in those days appeared remote — in Belgium or Germany, in Canada or the Western States of America. It was not until the autumn of 1845 that it made 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 1 Quoted by O'Connell, ib. Report of Select Committee of 1830, p. 8. Quoted bj O'Connelh ib., pp. 508, 509. 2 Quoted by Mr. Labouchere, ' Annual Register,' 1847, p. 9. 3 Quoted by O'Connell (Hansard, lxxxv., p. 50P). 4 Quoted in Healy. ' Why there is a Land Question,' etc., p. 55. THE COMING OF THE FAMINE. 25 fey thunuer. At last traces of the disease began to be discovered. A dark spot — such as would come from a drop bf acid — was found in the green leaves ; the disease then spread rapidly, and in time there was nothing in many ot the potato-fields but bleached and withered leaves emitting a putrid stench. The disease first appeared on the coast of Wexford, and soon reports of an alarming character began to come from the interior. It was still a hopeful sign that a field of potatoes remained sound long after all the sur- rounding fields had been touched by the blight. The plague, however, was stealthy and swift, and a crop that was sound one day, the next was rotten. As cime 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 proposed by scientific men — ventilation, new plans ot 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 ob- stacles, omnipotent over all opposing forces. O'Connell and the public bodies of the country called tne attention of the Government to the impending calamity. The Royal Agricultural Society — an association of landlords — declared that a great portion of the potato crop was seriously affected. The Dublin Corporation called a public meeting under the presidency of the Lord Mayor, which O'Connell at- tended. He there drew attention to one of the facts which excited the most attention, and, afterwards, the fiercest anger of the time. This was, that while wholesale starvation was impending over the nation, every port was carrying out its wheat and oats to other lands. Side by side with the fields of blighted potatoes in 1845, were fields of abundant oats. In one week — according to a quotation from the Mark Lane Express in O'Con- nell's speech — no less than 16,000 quarters of oats were exported from Ireland to London. O'Connell joined in the proposal that the export of provisions to foreign countries should be immediately prohibited, and that at the same time the Corn Laws should be suspended, and the Irish ports opened to receive provisions from all countries. Here it is well to pause for a moment on this point. In favour of the proposal of closing the ports, O'Connell was able to adduce the example of Belgium, of Holland, of Russia, and of Turkey under analogous circum- stances. Testimony is as unanimous and proof as clear as to the abundance of the grain crop as they are to the failure of the potato crop. 'Everyone,' said Lord John RusspJI, in a letter he wrote to the Duke of Leinster in 1847, 'who travels through Ireland observes the large stacks of corn which are the produce of the late harvest.' 1 This corn was scattered far and wide. John Mitchel quotes the case of the captain who saw a vessel laden with Irish corn at the port of Rio in South America. On this point, more will be said by-and-by. The complaint of the Irish writers is that this wholesale exportation was not arrested, and on this they founded charges against the Ministers of the period, some grotesque, but some most true. It is grotesque to charge it as a crime against the English people that they ate the food which was sup- plied to them from Ireland : they obtained the right to eat the food by having paid for it But the charge is just that it was the land legislation which the Imperial Parliament had passed and maintained that rendered necessary the export of these vast provisions amidst all the stress and 1 Quoted in ' History of the Irish Famine,' by Rev. J. Q'Roorke, p. 24§. 26 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, horrors of famine. There was scarcely a single head of all these cattle, there was scarcely a sheaf of all this corn, the price of which did not go to pay the landlord over whose exorbitance and caprice the Legislature had again and again refused to place any legislative restraint. The Irish land system necessitated the export of food from a starving nation. The Imperial Par- liament was the parent of this land system ; the Imperial Parliament was then responsible for the starvation which this exportation involved. The appeals which O'Connell, the Dublin Corporation, and other bodies in Ireland addressed to the Government, grew in intensity and urgency as the crisis advanced, and as the reports began to reach Dublin of numerous cases of starvation throughout the country. These appeals met with dila- tory answers. The Government were noting all that took place ; then they were inquiring ; finally they had appointed a scientific commission to inves- tigate the facts of the case ; and so on. Meantime the destroying angel was advancing with a certain and swift wing over the doomed country. It was one of the necessary consequences of the Legislative Union that Ireland was inextricably involved in the struggles of English parties. And it 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 dis- aster and these urgent prayers for relief came from Ireland, 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 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 Ministerial crisis : Peel resigned ; Lord John Russell was unable to form an Administration ; and Peel again resumed office. The result of 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. Assuredly under such circumstances, O'Connell and the other leaders of the National Party were justified iri drawing a contrast between this deadly delay and the promptitude that a native Legislature would have shown. ' If,' he exclaimed at the Repeal Association, 1 they ask me what are my propositions for relief of the distress, I answer, first, Ttmud-rbjht. I would propose a law giving to every man his own. I would give the landlord his land, and a fair rent for it ; but I would give the tenant com- pensation for every shilling he might have laid out on the land in per- manent improvements. And what next do I propose ? Repeal of the Union.' 1 And then he went on with still greater force : ' If we had a domestic Parliament, would not the ports be thrown open — would not the abundant crops with which Heaven has blessed her be 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 ?' 2 But Ireland had not won her Legislature ; and she had accordingly to wait patiently until January 22, when it suited the English Premier to call Parliament together. The mysterious replies of the Ministers — the perfect paralysis of independent effort which these suggestions had caused in ! ' piatory of Ireland,' by John Mitchel. h. 205. 3 Jh, THE COMING OF THE FAMINE. 27 Ireland — all tended to turn the eyes of the Irish people with feverish long- ing and expectation to this event. The opening hours of the session were sufficient to damp all these 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 in- creased protection to life, and to bring to justice the perpetrators of so dreadful a crime.' I will deal with the justification for the new Coercion Bill when I come to describe the memorable struggle that took place on that measure. Meantime, let it suffice to say that the characteristic contrast between the tender solicitude of the Government for the land- lords, 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. 1 The only notice,' exclaimed the Nation, ' vouchsafed to this country is a hint that more gaols, more transportations, and more gibbets might be useful to us. Or, possibly, we wrong the Minister ; perhaps when her Majesty says that " protection must- be afforded to life," she means that the people are not to be allowed to die of hunger during the ensuing summer — or that the lives of tenants are to be protected against the extermination of clearing landlords — and that so " deliberate assassinations " may become less frequent — God knows what she means — the use of Royal language is to conceal ideas.' The measures proposed by the Government for dealing with the distress were, first the importation of corn on a lowered duty through the repeal of the Corn Laws ; 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 Government replied in the worst and haughtiest spirit of official optimism. ' Instructions have been given,' said Sir James Graham, ' on the responsi- bility of the Government to meet any emergency.' 1 Only one good measure was covered by the generous self-complacency of this round assertion. Under a Treasury minute of December 19, 1845, the Ministry had in- structed Messrs. Baring and Co. Go purchase £100,000 worth of Indian corn. This they introduced secretly into Ireland, and its distribution proved most timely. Still the Irish members pressed for more definite assurances and larger proposals. But their suggestions and Peel's beneficent intentions were frustrated by the fatal entanglement of Irish sorrows in the personal ambi- tions and the partisan warfare of St. Stephen's. Peel had put forward the Irish famine as 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. AT, the Protec- tionist Party in Parliament, all the organs of the landlords in Ireland, united in the statement that the reports of distress were unreal and ex- aggerated. ' The potato crop of this year,' wrote the Evening Mail of November 3, 1845, ' far exceeded an average one ;' ' the corn of all kinds is so far abundant ' — which, indeed, was quite true — 'the apprehensions of 1 Mitchel, ii. 205. THE PARNELL MOVEMENT a famine are unfounded, and are merely made the pretence for withholding the payment of rent.' Some days after it repeated, ' 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, 1 was a gross delusion — a more gross delusion had never been practised upon any country by any Government.' 1 ' The cry of famine was a mere pretence for a party object.' 2 4 Famine in Ireland,' said Lord Stanley, was ' a vision — a baseless vision.' 3 The second great obstacle to the proper consideration of measures to meet the distress was the Coercion Bill. It was quite true that there had been several atrocious murders in Ireland ; but the provocation to out- rage had been terrible. A passion — that looked something like an epidemic of homicidal mania — had seized many of the landlords for wholesale clear- ances at the very moment when the people were confronted with universal hunger. One of the very worst of these cases had taken place within a few days of the discussion on the Coercion Bill. A Mr. and Mrs. Gerard had turned out in one morning the entire population of the village of Ballinglass, in the county of Galway — 270 persons in number. Neither the old, the young, nor the dying had been spared ; and even after the eviction the tenants had been pursued with a frenzied hate. The roofs had been taken off their sixty houses ; and when the villagers took refuge under the skeleton walls they were driven thence, and the walls were rooted from their founda- tions. Then they took shelter in the ditches, where they slept for two nights huddled together before fires — some of them old men eighty years of age, others women with children upon their breasts. They were forced from the ditches as from their hearths. The fires were quenched, and the outcasts were driven to wheresoever they might find a home or a grave. The proposals of the Coercion Bill of the Government were certainly startling. Under the Bill the Lord-Lieutenant could proclaim any dis- trict, and could order every person within it ' to be and to remain ' within his own house from one hour before sunset to one hour before sunrise. No person could with safety visit a public-house, or a tea or coffee-shop, or the house of a friend. A justice of the peace had the power to search for and drag out all such persons. The penalty was as terrible as the offence. Any person outside his own house, whether wandering on the highway or inside another house, was liable to be transported beyond the seas for seven years. ' From four or five o'clock,' said Earl Grey, criticising the Bill in the House of Lords, 4 ' in the afternoon, till past eight on the following morning, during the month of December, no inhabitant of a proclaimed district in Ireland was to be allowed to set his foot outside the door of his cabin without rendering himself liable to this severe punishment. He might not even venture from home during that time to visit a friend, or to enjoy at any place a few hours of harmless recreation. Nay, he dared not even go to his work in the morning, or return from his work in the even- ing, so as to gain the advantage of the hours of daylight, without rendering himself liable to arrest at the will of a police -constable, and to be kept in 'jonfinement, in default of proving what no man could prove — that he was out with innocent intentions.' Such a Bill, ferocious at any time, was still more ferocious in the circum- stances of Ireland at that moment. The man found outside a house between sunset and sunrise was liable to transportation for seven years ; and in this 1 Quoted by O'Rourke, p. 104. 3 /6., p. 80. 2 ' Annual Register,' 1846, p. 68. 4 Hansard, lxxxiv., p. 697. THE COMING OF THE FAMINE. 29 year the roads of all Ireland were crowded with wanderers, houseless, home- less, starving, and dying. Then the Bill enabled the Lord-Lieutenant to inflict taxation on the proclaimed district for additional police, for additional magistrates, for compensation to the relations of murdered or injured per sons ; and it was especially enacted that the taxation could be levied by distress, and levied on the occupiers only. The landlords, who, through absenteeism, or rack-renting, or the clearances, were the direct authors and instigators of the despair that led to the crimes, were especially exempted from all taxation. 1 Every tenant was liable ; and so resolute were the Government to inflict the tax, that the merciful exemptions by the Poor Law were abrogated. Under the Poor Law all persons in houses under £4 valuation were free from the rates ; under the Coercion Bill the occupier of any house, whether above £4 or under £4, was liable to the tax. And this at the moment when the inhabitants of the greater number of the houses in Ireland had not one meal of potatoes a day ! But cruel as was such a Bill at such a time, it would have been passed with a light heart, and by huge majorities from all English parties, if the exigencies of English party warfare had not at this moment produced a curious and a not very moral alliance between the English "Whigs, the English Protectionists, and the O'Connellites. The English Whigs were anxious to return to office ; the Protectionists raged with the desire to be avenged on Peel for the abandonment of protection ; and the two parties saw in a combination against this Bill an opportunity of attaining their different ends. There were some slight obstacles, it was true, in the way. Lord John Russell had voted for the first reading of the Bill, and Lord George Bentinck, in response to some overtures to use it against the Ministers, had responded with fierce indignation and a vehement defence of the measure. But Lord John Russell had a counsellor in his own am- bition, and Lord George Bentinck as sinister an adviser in Mr. Disraeli : with the result that each performed a volte-face, as prompt as it was shame- less. They both condescended, of course, to supply most excellent and strictly decorous reasons for their change of attitude. Lord John Russell announced the discovery — made with the suddenness, and, as will be seen by-and-by, lost again with the suddenness of a modern miracle — that coercion aggravated instead of curing the evils of Ireland ; and Lord George Bentinck, declaring that the Government had displayed insincerity in postponing the Bill so long, proceeded to prove his own sincerity by taking care that it should be postponed to the Greek Kalends. It was under conditions like this that an Irish Coercion Bill was defeated for the first, and up to the present, for the last, time in the whole history of the Im- perial Parliament. On June 26, 1846, the second reading of the Coercion Bill was rejected by 292 votes to 217. On June 29 Sir Robert Peel announced his resigna- tion. In the opinion of the majority of the Irishmen who survive from 1 Earl Grey : ' It was not just to exempt the landlords ; though they were not the cause of these outrages and evils, Ireland never would have got into its present state, the existing state of society there would never have been such as it was, if the land- lords, as a body, had done their duty to the population under them ; he believed that of late years an improvement had taken place in the conduct of the landlords of Ireland towards their tenantry ; but if they looked to the past history of that land, the awful state of things now existing would be seen to be a direct conse- quence of the dereliction of their duty by the upper classes of that country, which was an historical fact known not only to England but to all Europe.'— Hansiud, lxxxiv.. pp. 694, 695. 30 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. that period, the change of Administration was dearly bought by Ireland, even by the defeat of a Coercion Bill. The steps that had been taken by Peel were certainly grossly insufficient ; but the disaster with which he had to deal was small in comparison with that which confronted Lord John Russell ; and the opinion of posterity — at least of Irish posterity — is that, as a Minister, Lord John Russell was vastly inferior to Peel, and, there- fore, much less competent to deal with the terrible crisis which had now come upon Ireland. Amidst the throes of these great struggles, Ireland was entering upon a new and a still more terrible chapter in her tragic annals. The Famine of 1846 was coming 1 CHAPTER III THE FAMINE. Nothing brings the desperate position of the Irish tenant home with more terrible clearness to the mind than the fact that the awful warning of 1845 was, and had to be, unheeded. The potato was still cherished as the only friend, the one refuge, the single resource of the peasant. He stuck, then, to the plant — not with the tenacity of despair ; not with the obstinacy of incurable fatuity ; but because, in his circumstances, the potato, and the potato alone, offered him hope. Strangely enough, it was in no spirit of apprehension that the tenantry set to work in the preparation of the potato crop of 1846. Contemporary testimony is unanimous in describing them as working at that period with an energy that was frantic, with a hopefulness that was tragic — with a determination to risk all on the one cast that exhibited for ^nce a nation carried in the maelstrom of the gambler's desperation. ' Although,' writes Mr. A. M. Sullivan, 1 ' 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 signs of the seasons were watched throughout the year with fierce anxiety. The spring was unpromising enough. Snow, hail, and sleet fell in March ; and in Belfast there was snow as late as the first week in April. But when the summer came, it made amends for all this. The weather in June was of tropical heat ; vegetation sprang up with something of tropical rapidity ; and everybody anticipated a splendid harvest. Towards the end of June there was again a change for the worse. The weather broke ; in Limerick there was on the 19th a sudden downfall of copious rain ; then came thunder and lightning, and after that intense cold. So also in July, there was the alternation of tropical heat and thunderstorm, of parching dryness and excessive rain, St. Swithin's Day was looked forward to with great eagerness. There was a continuous downpour of rain ; and on the following day a fearful thunderstorm burst over Dublin. Still the crop went on splendidly ; and all over the country once again wide fields of waving green and flowery stalks promised exuberant abundance of the staple pro- duct of Ireland. * ' New Ireland,' p. 59 (eighth edition). THE FAMINE. It was in the early days of August that the first symptoms of the coming disaster were seen. The calamity was heralded by a strange portent that was seen simultaneously in several parts of Ireland, and that at once sug- gested the ghastly truth to those who had carefully watched the signs of the previous year. A fog — which some describe as extremely white, and others as yellow — was seen to rise from the ground ; the fog was dry, and emitted a disagreeable odour. A Mr. Cooper saw it on the Ox Mountains in Sligo ; Justin McCarthy remembers to have seen it in Bantry Bay in county Cork. Mr. Cooper at once suspected the real truth, and caused in- quiries to be made. The companion who was with Mr. McCarthy at the time at once exclaimed that the blight was coming. And they were right; the fog of that night bore the blight within its accursed bosom. The work of destruction was as swift as it was universal. In a single night and throughout the whole country the entire crop was destroyed, almost 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 3rd instant (August), I beheld with sorrow one wide waste of putrefying vegetation. ' 1 The meaning of the dread calamity burst upon the people at once ; but the suffering was yet to come. In the meantime, they gave way to the poignancy of their grief or to the apathy of their despair. ' In many places,' writes Father Mathew, ' the wretched people were seated the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitteny the destruction that had left them foodless.' 2 ' Blank stolid dismay, a sort of stupor, fell upon the people,' writes Mr. A. M. Sullivan, ' contrasting re- markably with the fierce energy put forth a year before. It was no uncommon sight to see the cottier and his little family seated on the garden fence, gazing all day long in moody silence at the blighted plot that had been their last hope. Nothing could arouse them. You spoke ; they answered not. You tried to cheer them ; they shook their heads. I never saw so sudden and so terrible a transformation.' 3 ' Famine advances on us with giant strides,' 4 wrote Captain Wynne, one of the officials of the time, from Ennis in the autumn of 1846 ; and his words were soon confirmed. Towards the end of August the calamity began to be universal, and its symptoms everywhere to be seen. Some of the people rushed into the towns ; others wandered listlessly along the high- roads, in the vague and vain hope that food would somehow 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 cabbage a day. 5 In some cases they feasted on the dead bodies of horses and asses' 5 and dogs ; 7 and there is at least one horrible story of a mother eating the limbs of her dead child. 8 In many places dead bodies were discovered with grass in their mouths and in their stomachs and bowels. 9 In Mayo, a man who had been observed searching for food on the seashore was found dead on the roadside, after vainiy attempting to prolong his wretched life by means of the half -masticated turf and grass which remained unswallowed in his mouth. Nettle-tops, 1 'The Census for Ireland for the Tear 1851.' Part V. 'Table of Deaths,' voL i. d. 270. 2 lb. 3 ' New Ireland,' p. 59. 4 O'Rourke, p. 366. 5 Census Commissioners, p. 273. ° O'Rourke, pp. 390, 391. 7 Census Commissioners, p. 243. 8 p. 310. 9 lb., pp. 243, 283. 32 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. wild mustard, and watercress were sought after with desperate eagerness. The assuaging of hungei with seaweed too often meant the acceleration oi death, but seaweed was greedily devoured, 1 so also were diseased cattle, 14 and there were inquests in many places on people who had died from eating diseased potatoes. 3 Another general effect of the famine was that the characteristic merriment of the peasantry totally disappeared. 4 People went about, not speaking even to beg, with ' a stupid despairing look ;' 5 children looked ' like old men and women ;' 6 and even the lower animals seemed to feel the surrounding despair ; ' the few dogs,' says a visitor to Mayo, ' were poor and piteous, and had ceased to bark.' 7 Even the ties of kindred were rent asunder. Parents neglected their children, and in a few localities children turned out their aged parents. 8 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. 9 The workhouse was then, as it is now, an object of dread and loathing. Within its walls were accustomed to take refuge the rustic victims of vice and the outcasts of the towns. Entrance into the workhouse then was regarded not merely as marking the advent of social ruin, but of moral degradation. Thus it came that fathers and mothers died, and allowed their children to die along with them within their own hovels, rather than seek a refuge within those hated walls. 10 But the time came when hunger and disease swept away these prejudices, and the people craved admission to the once-dreaded bastilles. Here again, however, 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 workhouse, though built to accommodate 1,000 persons, was already • crowded far beyond it? capacity.' 11 It was this town that Mr. Forster described as showing ' a strange and fearful sight like what we read of in beleaguered cities : its streets crowded with gaunt wanderers sauntering to and fro with hopeless air and hunger-struck look.' 12 At Carrick-on-Shannon there were 110 applications in one day ; there were thirty vacancies. 13 Driven from the workhouses, the people began to die on the roadside, or, alone in their despair, within their own cabins. Corpses lay strewn by the side of once-frequented roads, and at doors in the most crowded streets of the towns. 1 During that period,' writes Mr. Tuke, \ roads in many places became as charnel-houses, and several car and coach drivers have assured me that they rarely drove anywhere without seeing dead bodies strewn along the roadside, and that in the dark they had even gone over them. A gentleman told me that in the neighbourhood of Clifden one inspector of roads had caused no less than 140 bodies to be buried which he found along the highway.' 14 'In our district,' writes Mr. A. M. Sullivan, 15 'it was a common occurrence to find on opening the front door in early morning, leaning against it, the corpse of some victim who in the night- time had rested in its shelter. We raised a public subscription, and em- ployed two men with horse and cart to go around each day and gather up the dead.' 1 Census Commissioners, p. 272. 3 2/;.. pp. 271, 277. 6 lb'., p. 273. * lb., p. 242. 10 Census Commissioners, p. 92. 12 Census Commissioners, p. 263. n O'Rouike. p. 3S4. 2 lb., p. 243. * lb., p. 242. 5 26., p. 288. I lb., p. 284. 9 lb., p. 242 ; O'Rourke, pp. 401, 402. II O'Rourke, p. S93. *3 lb., p. 273. «S • New Ireland ' p. 66. THE FAMINE. 33 Ine scenes that wore revealed when some of the cabins were entered were even more horrible. When the inmates found that death was inevit- able, they made no further struggle, sought the assistance neither of the Government nor of their neighbours ; and occasionally, as Mr. Tuke tells us, the last survivor of a whole family 1 earthed up the door of his miserable cabin to prevent the ingress of pigs and dogs, and then laid himself down to die in this fearful family vault.' 1 Men entering the cabins found the dead and the dying side by side — lying on the same pallet of rotting straw, covered with the same rags. ' The only article,' says an eye-witness of a scene in Windmill Lane, Skibbereen, ' that covered the nakedness of the family, that screened them from the cold, was a piece of coarse packing stuff which lay extended alike over the bodies of the living and the corpses of the dead ; which served as the only defence of the dying and the winding-sheet of the dead.' 2 4 The first remarkable sign,' writes Mr. A. M. Sullivan, ' of the havoo which death was making was the decline and the disappearance of funerals.' 3 The annals of the time are full of the instances of this sinister change in the habits of Christian lands. The bodies of those who had fallen on the road lay for daysunburied. Husbands lay for a week in the same hovels with thebodiesof their unburied wives and children. Often when there was a funeral it bore even ghastlier testimony to the terror of the time. 1 In this town,' writes a special correspondent of the Cork Examiner from Skibbereen, ' have I witnessed 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 in- dividual in attendance upon them ; without mourner or ceremony — without wailing or lamentation. The people in the street, the labourers con- gregated in the town, regarded the spectacle without surprise ; they looked on with indifference, because it was of hourly occurrence.' 4 A Catholic priest, who was a curate in county Galway during the famine, tells a story of meeting a man with a cart drawn by an ass, on which there were three coffins, containing the bodies of his wife and two children. When he reached the churchyard he was too weak to dig a grave, and was only able to put a little covering of clay on the coffins. The next day the priest found ravenous dogs making a horrid meal from the corpses. 5 In another part of the country a woman with her own hands dug the grave of her dead son. 6 Meantime, what had the Government been doing ? They had, to put it briefly, been aggravating nearly ail the evils that were reaping so rich a harvest of suffering and death in Ireland. The measures which Sir Robert Peel had taken during the reces3 of 1845 and in the early portions of the session of 1846 have been already mentioned. As time went on he had taken other steps to meet the crisis. Donations to the amount of £100,000 had been given from the Treasury in aid of subscriptions raised by charitable organizations. A still more important step was the setting on foot of works for the employment of the destitute. The initial blunder of Lord John Russell was suddenly to close the works which had been set on foot by Peel. At the time when this decree went forth there were no less than 97,900 persons employed on the relief 1 O'Rourke, pp. 384, 385. 3 ' New Ireland,' p. 64. 5 lb., p. 379. 3 lb. p. 272. 4 O'Rourke pp. 272, 273. 6 ib., p. 405. 3 34 The parnell movement. works ; and the effect of adding this vast army of unemployed to the population whose condition has just been described, can easily be imagined. The speech in which Lord John Russell announced his own policy fol- lowed on August 17, 1846; and, well-intentioned as it doubtless was, there was scarcely a sentence in it which did not do harm, not a proposal that did not work mischief. The first important statement was that the Government did not propose 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 possible. 1 'They would take care not to interfere with the regular operations ol merchants for the supply to the country or with the retail trade.' 1 Then he described the new legislation which he proposed. Relief works were to be set on foot by the Board 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 £f>0,000. This Bill, when it became law, was known as the 1 Labour Rate Act.' The evil effects of this speech and this legislation were not long in ' showing themselves. The declarations with regard to non-intervention with trade were especially disastrous. The price of grain at once went up, and while the deficiency of food was thus enormously increased, specu- lators were driven to frenzy by the prospect of fabulous gains. Strange and almost incredible results followed. Wheat that had been exported by starving tenants was afterwards reimported from England to Ireland : sometimes before it was finally sold it had crossed the Irish Sea four times — delirious speculation offering new bids and rushing in insane eager- ness from the Irish to the English and from the English to the Irish market in search of the daily increasing prices. Stories are still told in Ireland with grim satisfaction of the abject ruin that was the Nemesis to the greedy speculators in a nation's starvation. More than one Shylock kept his corn obstinately in store while the people around him were dying by the thousand, and when he at last opened the doors found, not his longed-for treasure-house, but an accumulation of rotten corn, which had to be emptied into the river. ' A client of mine,' writes the late Master Fitz- gibbon, 2 1 in the winter of 1846-47, became the owner of corn cargoes of such number and magnitude that if he had accepted the prices pressed upon him in April and May, 1847, he 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.' ' The Government,' said Lord John Russell, 1 did not propose to inter- fere with the regular mode by which Indian corn might be brought into Ireland.' What was the result of this ? According to a report from Com- missary John Hewetson, dated December 30, 1846, Indian corn which had been bought for £9 or £10 a ton was selling for £17 5s. in Gprk ; was not to be had for any price in Limerick, but, in the shape of meal, was fetching from £18 10s. to £19 a ton. 1 These,' said he, ' are really famine prices ;' 3 and then he tells how in Cork alone one firm was reported to have cleared £40,000 and another £80,000, from corn speculations. ' Hansard, lxxxviii., p. 776. 2 ' Ireland in 1868," p. 205. 3 O'Rourke, p. 171. THE FAMINE. 35 The reason for the non-intervention with the supply of Indian corn wa3 that the retail trade might not be interfered with ; and that at this period retail shops were so tew and far between for the sale of corn that the labourer in the public works had sometimes to walk twenty or twenty-five miles in order to buy a single stone of meal. 1 It will be seen, presently, how the inflated price of corn, and the dim culty of obtaining it at any price nigh or low, co-operated with some pro- visions of the Labour Rate Act to enormously increase the sum of suffering and the total of deaths. These were the days when free trade was a doctrine professed with all the exaggeration and misconception ot a new faith. The reader need not fear that I am about to inflict upon him any of the senseless and utterly unmeaning abuse of free trade and political economy with which ignorant or half-educated writers are in the habit of vexing intelligent men. The tree trade under which Lord John Russell and his subordinates justified their fatal errors in 1346 and 1S47 was not free trade, but a ghastly travesty of the doctrine, and a hideous misunderstanding of the teachings of sound political economy. It will be seen by-and-by that Lord J ohn Russell and all his subordinates had themseh es to make this acknowledgment, and to announce a palinode as shameful as any in Parliamentary history. Eut in the end of 1S46 they were still unshaken in their crazy misunderstanding of the subject — and indeed lectured the starving Irish nation with the supremacy of superior beings and the remote calm of dwellers on Olympian heights. The ottensiveness of the attitude and the absurdity of the doc- trines were a good aeal intensified by the fact that, with characteristic tenderness for Irish feeling, the preachers selected to announce those doctrines were self-sufficient English or Scotch civil servants, with more than the usual amount ot the rancorous dogmatism characteristic of their race. 2 There was to be no interference with the ordinary operations of trade. Thus, it was decreed that the food which was in the food depots that had been established at various points in Ireland should not be sold at moderate prices — and, in fact, should not be sold at all until the autumn. The result was, that people died with money in their hands, knocking at the doors of the Government stores, and vainly begging for food. 3 The Labour Rate Act was made even worse in operation by the rules of these same officials. Eirst, the whole policy of the Act was to make the famine a Government business. It was Government that had the carrying out ot all the works ; the Government had to be consulted about every- thing, to give their approval to everything. The result was, that all independent initiative and effort were stifled ; local bodies in their paralysis were sent from one department of the circumlocution office to another ; then, in their despair and distraction, did nothing. The rule of Red Tape was established with plenary powers and disastrous results. In 1 O'Rourke, p. 172. 2 As an instance : a deputation waited on Sir R. Routh, head of the Commissary Department, from Achill, representing the total destruction of the potatoes there, the absence of green crops, and asking for a supply of food from the Government stores, for which the inhabitants were ready to pay. The reply of Sir R. Routh was a peremptory refusal, coupled with the statement that ' nothing was more essential to the welfare of a country than strict adherence to free trade.' Then he ' begged to assure the reverend gentleman ' — meaning one of the deputation — ' that if he had read carefully and studied Burke, his illustrious countryman, he would agree with him (Sir R. Routh).'— O'Rourke, pp. 222, 223 3 O'Rourke, p. 22S. g— 2 36 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. April, 1846, Messrs. Jones, Twistleton and Co. were able to report that they had sent to Ireland ' ten thousand books, besides fourteen tons of paper.' ' Over the whole island,' writes John Mitchel, ' for the next few months, was a scene of confused and wasteful attempts at relief — bewildered barony sessions striving to understand the voluminous directions, schedules, and specifications under which alone they could vote their own money to relieve the poor at their own doors : but generally making mistakes — for the un- assisted human faculties never could comprehend these ten thousand books and fourteen tons of paper ; insolent commissioners and inspectors and clerks snubbing them at every turn and ordering them to study the documents ; efforts on the part of the proprietors to expend some of the rates at least on useful works — reclaiming land, and the like — which efforts were always met with flat refusal, and a lecture on political economy. . . . plenty of jobbing md peculation all this while.' 1 With a view to prevent competition with private enterprise, the money was all to be devoted to exclusively 'unproductive works,' by which were excluded railways, reclamation, and the like. The positive and negative results of this restriction were equally prejudicial. There were railways demanding extension ; millions of acres of waste land demanding reclama- ation ; miles of marsh ready to be drained — all such work was forbidden. The look-out was then for unproductive work ; and unproductive work, in a sense a good deal more literal than the Government wanted, was dis- covered. The stories told of the kind of work done under these loans would be incredible if they were not so well attested — among other things, by solid monuments that exist to this day. Roads were made leading to nowhere ; hills were dug away and then were filled up again ; and so utterly useless was this kind of labour, that sometimes good roads were actually spoiled, and traffic was impeded for some time by these supposed im- provements. Hardly any of the roads were ever finished. 1 Miles of grass-grown earthworks,' writes Mr. A. M. Sullivan, 2 'throughout the ^untry now mark their course and commemorate for posterity one of the ^fgantic blunders of the famine time.' ' While on the subject of mistakes,' said the Knight of Glin, a well-known landlord of the period, ' he might mention on the Glin Road some people are filling up the original cutting of a hill with the stuff they had taken out of it. That,' he added naively, 1 is another slice of our £450 ' — the sum lent to Shanagolden Union for relief works. Even this useless work — as has been seen — was not allowed to be done without the maddening preliminaries of vexatious and imbecile official delays. But this was not from the want of a sufficiently large staff. There were no less than ] 0,000 officials ; and these appointments were given from the most corrupt motives. This example of corruption at the top had a good deal to do with the disastrous and universal spirit of cor- ruption below. And the most heart-rending feature of it all was that all this machinery, all this vast army of officials, all these vast sums of money, not only did no good, but were productive of an increase, instead of a diminution, of the miseries of the country. As to a large portion of the people, the relief — such as it was — came too late. ' The wretched people were by this time too wasted and emaciated to work. The endeavour to do so under an inclement winter sky only hastened death. They tottered at daybreak to the roll-call, vainly tried to wheel the barrow or ply the 4 * History of Ireland,' ii. 215. 2 ' New Ireland,' p. 64. 3 Mitchel, ii. 316. THE FAMINE. 37 pick, but fainted away on the cutting, or lay down by the wayside to rise no more.' 1 But officialism was not convinced, and insisted on making the Act still more cruel by the regulations under which it was to be worked. ' Those who choose to labour may earn good wages,' wrote Colonel Jones to Mr. Trevelyan 2 — the one the head of the Board of Works, the other the repre- sentative of the Treasury ; and in accordance with this superfine dictum of the official mind, it was decreed that the work done should be task- work. In other words, the feebler a man was, the less help he was entitled to receive ; the nearer to starvation, the more quickly he should be pushed by labour into the grave. Hapless wretches, often with wives and several children dying of hunger at home — sometimes with the wife or one of the children already a putrid corpse — crawled to their work in the morning, there drudged as best they could, and at the end of the day often had as their wage the sum of fivepence — sometimes it went as low as threepence. 3 To earn this sum too, it often happened that the starving man had to walk three, four, five, eight Irish miles to, and the same distance from, his work. Finally, owing to blunders, he was frequently unable even to get this pit- tance at the end of the week or fortnight : and then he returned to hig cabin to die — unless, as often happened, he died on the wayside, 4 Even when he was paid, the meal-shop was miles away — for the retail trade, with which the Government would not interfere, existed only in Government imagination ; and meal-shops were only to be found at long intervals. Or, if he reached the meal-shop, Government measures again had raised the price of meal beyond the reach of relief work wages ; ami if he knocked at the doors of the Government depots, a harsh and alien voice replied that in the name of political economy he should die. 5 Finally, the evil done by the Labour Rate Act was in attracting from the cultivation of their own fields nearly all the farmers of the country. The prospect of immediate wages proved more enticing than the uncer- tainty of a remote and fickle harvest ; and the universal peculation, com- bined with the absolute uselessness of the works done, spread a spirit of hideous demoralisation. The farmers flocked to them ' solely,' as Mr. Fitzgibbon puts it, ' because the public work was in fact no work, but a farcical excuse for getting a day's wages.' 6 The labourers, having the example of a great public fraud before their eyes, are described byMitchel as ' themselves defrauding their fraudulent employers — quitting agricultural pursuits and crowding the public works, where they pretended to be cutting down hills and filling up hollows, and with tongue in cheek received half wages for doing nothing.' 7 The Conservative organs of the period, which were no friends of the national newspapers, joined them in the descriptions of the hideous de- moralisation which these works were producing : and they foretold with a fatal accuracy the effects of it all on the following year. ' There is not a labourer employed in the county except on public works,' wrote the Dublin Evening Mail, ' and there is prospect of the lands remaining unfilled and unsown for the next year.' ' The good intentions of the Government,' wrote the Co rh Constitution, 'are frustrated by the worst regulations — regulations which, diverting labour from its legitimate channels, left the fields without hands to prepare them for the harvest.' 8 To sum up the * ' New Ireland,' p. 64. 2 O'Rourke, p. 209. 3 lb., p. 206. Sib., p. 22o. 7 'History,' ii., p. 215. * lb., p. 258. 6 ' Ireland in 1S63,' p. 206, 8 ' History,' ii., p. 21fc 38 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. case in reference to this effect of the Labour Rate Act — the means that were taken to meet the famine of 1846 proved the precursors and the pre- parers of the famine of 1847. The records of the sufferings from hunger in 1847 are almost more revolting and terrible than those of 1846'. Meantime, another and 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 immense 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 Ireland in 1846-47 was of a peculiarly virulent kind. It produced at once extreme prostra- tion, and everyone struck by it was subject to frequent relapses ; in Kin- sale Union, out of 250 persons attacked, 240 relapsed. 1 The name applied to it at the time sufficiently signified its origin. It was known as the 1 road fever.' 2 Attacking as it did people already weakened 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. Many of the people, worn out by famine, had not the physical or mental energy even to move from their cabins. The panic which the plague everywhere created, intensified the miseries of those whom it attacked. The annals of the time are full of the kindly but rude attempts of the poor to stand by each other. It was a common 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 de- serted. 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. Here is a brief but complete picture of this dread phase of the days of the plague : 1 A terrible apathy hangs over the poor of Skibbereen ; 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 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 unconscious 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 sympathising 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, dropping one by one into the arms of death.' 3 The fever-stricken wretches who had energy enough to crawl from their own homes and seek a refuge, became the heralds of disease wherever they 3 Cork Examiner. Quoted by Census Commissioners' 1 Tables of Death,' vol t, f. 272. * lb., p. 278. THE FAMINE. 39 went, and often suffered tortures more prolonged and darker than those who had lain down and died by their own hearthstones. Many of them directed their steps to the towns. ' From the commencement of 1847,' writes Dr. Callanan, ' Fate opened her book in good earnest here, and the full tide of death flowed everywhere around us. During the first six months of that dark period, one-third of the daily population of our streets consisted of shadows and spectres, the impersonations of disease and famine, crowding in from the rural districts and stalking along to the general doom — the grave — which appeared to await them but at the distance of a few steps or a few short hours. 1 ' In cases succeeding exhaustion from famine,' says another writer, ' the appearances were very peculiar — the fever assuming a low gastric type, in- dicated by a dry tongue, shrunk to half its size, and brown in the centre ; lips thin and bloodless, coated with sordes ; skin discoloured and sodden ; general appearance squalid in the extreme, and hunger-stricken. These symptoms, and a loathsome, putrid smell emanating from their persons, as if the decomposition of the vital organs had anticipated death, rendered these unhappy cases too often hopeless. They used to creep about the city while their strength allowed, and then would sink exhausted in some shed or doorway, and often be found dead.' 2 The workhouses and the hospitals were besieged more than ever ; and death now raged with a terrible promptness and universality. There waa the same difficulty as when starving thousands clamoured for admission and help in buildings in which only hundreds could be attended to ; and there are descriptions of scenes enacted outside the hospitals and work- houses so revolting as to be almost incredible. ' Before accommodation for patients,' writes the Census Commissioners, 4 approached anything like the necessity of the time, most mournful and piteous scenes were presented in the vicinity of fever hospitals and wrrkhouses in Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Galway, and other large towns. There, day after day, numbers of people, wasted by famine and consumed by fever, could be seen lying on the foot- paths 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 of suffering and disease !' 3 ' At the gate leading to the temporary fever 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 open, 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 apparent exhaustion — the fountain of their life being dried up; whilst in the centre of the road stood a cait containing a whole family who had been smitten down together by the terrible typhus, ann had been brought there by the charity of a neighbour.' 4 1 Fever,' writes the Freeman's Journal, ' has increased in Galway and Loughrea ; numbers may be seen lying in rags or straw in the streets in the height of disease.' 1 Alarming spread of fever in Dublin,' is the language of the same journal ; 1 crowds lying on the ground at Glasnevin and in Cork Street waiting for admission to the hospital.' 5 Outside the workhouses similar scenes took place. The case of "West- port workhouse has been mentioned already, where as many as three 1 Census Commissioners, p. 301. 3 lb., p. 248. * lb., p. 297 » lb., p. 302. 5 lb. 4 o THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. thousand, suffering from hunger and fever, sought admission on the same day. 4 Those who were not admitted — and they were, of course, the great majority — having no homes to return to, lay down and died in West- port and its suburbs.' 1 Mr. Egan was clerk of the union at the period, and in a conversation with Father O'Rourke, pointing to the wall opposite the workhouse gate, said : 1 There is where they sat down never to rise again. I have seen there of a morning as many as eight corpses of those miserable beings who had died during the night. Father G (then in Westport) used to be anointing them as they lay exhausted along the walls and streets, dying of hunger and fever.' 2 Admission to the fever hospital, and, still more, to the workhouse, was but the postponement, and often the acceleration of death. Owing to the unexpected demands made upon their space, the officials of these institu- tions were unable to adopt the primary and fundamental measures for diminishing the epidemic. The crowding rendered it impossible to separate the sick and the healthy, sometimes 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, instead of being alleviated and diminished. ' Inside the hospital enclosure ' (the fever hospital at Kil- mainham), says a writer already quoted, ' was a small open -.hed, in which were thirty-five human beings heaped indiscriminately on a little straw thrown on the ground. Several had been thus for three days, drenched by rain, etc. Some were unconscious, others dying ; two died during the night.' 3 ' We visited the poorhouse at Glenties ' (county of Donegal), says Mr. Tuke in the 1 Transactions of the Relief Committee of Friends,' ' 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, or 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 ! -he 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.' 4 The workhouses and the hospitals were not the only public institutions which were filled to overflowing. The same thing happened to the gaols. The prison came to be regarded as a refuge. Only smaller offences were at first committed ; and an epidemic of glass-breaking set in. But as times went on, and the pressure of distress became greater and the hope of ultimate salvation less, 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 dreaded and 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. And Botany Bay was transformed in peasant imagination from the Inferno of the hopeless to the Paradise of sufficient food and a great future. But here again the refugees were confronted by the same horrors which 1 O'Rourke, p. 393. 3 Census Commissioners, p. 272. » lb. 4 lb. THE FAMINE; 41 awaited those who obtained admission to the workhouses and the fever hospitals. The prisons, without a tithe of the accommodation necessary for the inmates, became nests of disease ; and often the offender who hoped for the luck of transportation beyond 'She seas, found that the sentence of even a week's imprisonment proved a sentence of death. In 1846, the Inspectors-General of Prisons reported that the increase of committals in that year over 1845 sometimes amounted to one hundred per cent., and then stated that 1 in a very great number of instances small crimes have been committed for the purpose of obtaining that support in prison which could not be procured elsewhere.' 1 In 1847 they write : ' The terrible catastrophe which has disorganised the whole framework of society in Ireland fell with its full force on establishments under our charge. Disease and death increased to a degree that could never be contemplated by those acquainted with the usual orderly and healthy state of our gaols. The crowding together of 12,883 prisoners in gaols only calculated to contain 5,655, increased the deaths in the Irish prisons, in a single year, from 131 to 1,315.'- ' In March,' writes Dr. Browne of the Castlebar Gaol, ( our county gaol was crowded to more than double its capability, those com- mitted being in a state of nudity, filth, and starvation.' Typhus broke out, and ' by the end of April we were in a state of actual pestilence. Every hospital servant was attacked, and from our wretched overcrowded state the mortality was fearful — fully forty per cent. ; . . . . not a few of those committed were inmates of the fever ware? a few hours after committal.' 3 The years 1848 and 1849 present the ?ame features. The increase of committals in 1848 over those of 1847 was no less than 34,105. 4 In 1849 there was again an increase of committals, to the extent of 3,466 on the previous year 5 and the Inspectors-General comment on this significant phenomenon, 'The evil thus produced is so enormous as to threaten the total demoralisation of the lower orders, showing itself in the abolition of all distinction between right and wrong, and germinating a habit of committing crimes either for the sake of obtaining board and lodging in a gaol, or else for the remoter advantages of superior diet in the convict prisons, and the ultimate benefit of gratuitous emigration.' 5 1 Census Commissioners, p. 304. 2 lb., pp. 304, 305. 3 ft., pp. 300, 301. * This is the comment of the Inspectors-General : ' The calamitous visitation of the last few years, operating with no exclusive pressure — affecting the most opulent and the humblest poor alike — suspending employment, and staying the hand of charity — has sorely tried the integrity cf our people. Larcenies have multiplied, because, ordinarily, men will steal food rather than die ; but to such as have made criminal compliance with necessity must be added vast numbers who, without means of earning subsistence, and unable to procure charitable aid, notoriously appropriated articles of trilling value that they might obtain the shelter of a prison under the guise of a commitment for a criminal offence.' — Report of Inspectors- General of Prisons : Census Commissioners' ' Tables of Deaths,' p. 311. Here is a grim description of a prison of the period ; it is written of Galway Gaol, under date February 8, 1848 : ' It presented the appearance not only of a prison, but that of a poorhouse and infirmary. The prisoners were, in general, the most wretched class of human beings I ever beheld — badly clothed, and emaciated from the destitution to which they had been exposed, and from which many sought refuge in the gaol by asking alms and by the commission of petty crimes. Fever and dysentery are prevalent amongst the prisoners, and some die before they can be brought to the hospital, which is filled with the sick and the dying. Clad in miserable rags, crowded together during the day and heaped together during the night, contagious disease has taken root within the prison walls ; and an extensive mortality was apprehended as the speedy and inevitable result.' It is added that of the 8SS inmates, more than 120 were suffering from fever a.nd dvsentery.— Jb, 5 lb., p. 322. 42 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, Thus the plague worked — within the cabins, on the roads, in workhouses, in hospitals, in gaols. Of the numberless proofs of its dread activity let the following specimens suffice : — Fever first demands attention. In one week 50 persons died in the workhouse at Castlerea. 1 In Carrick-on-Shannon there were, on April 16, 1847, 300 cases of fever. The weekly deaths were 50. 2 In one hospital in Dublin, Cork Street, 12,000 cases applied in ten months. 3 At Cork there were 174 deaths in seven days, or more than a death every hour. 4 In one day in the beginning of February, 1847, there were 44 corpses in the work- house in the same city, and on the 10th of the same month in that year, 100 bodies were conveyed for interment to a single graveyard outside the town. 5 In the week ending April 3, 1847, of the entire number of inmates In the Irish workhouses — viz. 104,485 — 26,000 were sick, and of these 9,000 were fever patients. 6 During that week the number of deaths was 2,706, and the average of deaths in each week during the month was 25 per thousand of the entire inmates. 7 Fifty-four, out of one hundred workhouse officials who were attacked with the fever, died between January 1 and April 2, 1847. 8 Of the entire medical staff employed in the different institutions of the country, one- fifteenth died in the same year. 9 ' Taking the recorded deaths from fever alone,' write the Census Commissioners, 10 'between the beginning of 1846 and the end of 1849, and assuming the mortality at one in ten, which is the very lowest calculation, and far below what we believe to have occurred, above a million and a half, or 1,595,040 persons — being one in 4*11 of the population in 1851 — must have suffered from fever during that period.' ' But,' continued the writers, 1 no pen has recorded the numbers of the for- lorn and starving who perished by the wayside or in the ditches, or of the mournful groups, sometimes of whole families, who lay down and died one after another upon the floor of their miserable cabin, and so remained un- coffined and unburied till chance unveiled the appalling scene.' 11 The deaths from fever in 1845 were 7,249. From that figure they rose to 17,145 in 1846 ; to 57,095 in 1847. In 1848 they were 45,948 ; in 1849 they numbered 39,316 ; in 1850 they fell to 23,545. Finally, 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.' 12 The famine and the fever were naturally accompanied and followed by all those other maladies which result from insufficiency and unsuitability of food. The potato blight continued with varying virulence until 1851, 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 in 1847, the annual totals swelling, until in 1849 the deaths from this disease alone amounted to 29,446 ; 13 of cholera, which destroyed 35,989 lives in 1848-49 ; 14 of small-pox, towhich 38,275persons fell victims in the decennial period between 1841 and 1851. 15 The deaths from small-pox, however, did not greatly swell the total of mortality between 1845 and 1851. It should be added that as a direct consequence of the famine many thousands suffered severely from * Report of Inspectors-General of Prisons : Census Commissioners' ' Tables ol Deaths,' p. 27S. 2 lb., p. 296. 6 lb., p. 304. *» lb., p. 243. */*>., p. 252. 3 lb., p. 298. « lb., p. 284. 8 lb., p. 293. » lb. 5 lb., p. 282. 9 lb., p. 30. « lb., p. 251. 7 Tb. 11 lb. *5 lb. THE FAMINE. 43 scurvy, and that the recorded eases of ophthalmia swelled from 13,812 in 1849, to 45,947 in 1851. 1 In addition to this appalling loss of life from actual disease, the number of deaths registered by the Census Commissioners under the heading of ' Starvation ' were 6,058 in the year 1847, and 21,770 during the decennial period. Only 117 deaths from starvation were registered in the previous decennial period. 2 Under heading 'Infirmity, Debility, and Old Age,' the Commissioners record 10,609 deaths in 1845, 23,285 in 1847, and from 1841 to 1851 inclusive, a total of 133,923 ; but they acknowledge that many of these cases would be more appropriately ranked among the deaths from ' starvation.' 3 It was the terrible mortality of these epidemics, and especially of the fever, that led to the most sinister invention of the time. This was the hinged coffin. The coffin was made with a movable bottom ; the body was placed in it, the bottom unhinged, the body was thrown into the grave, and then the coffin was sent back to the workhouse to receive another body. Sometimes scores of corpses passed in this way through the same coffin. The hinged coffin was used extensively in Cork. Justin McCarthy, a youth of seventeen, just then started on his professional career as a reporter on the Cork Examiner, many times saw the hinged coffin in actual use. In Skibbereen, which was one of the worst scourged places or districts, the hinged coffin was perhaps more largely used than in any other district. The traveller is to-day pointed out, as historic spots of the town, two large pits, in which hundreds of bodies found a coffinless grave. Appalled by the spread of death, the Ministry were compelled in 1847 to change their whole procedure. Xew legislation was introduced ; all the ideas were abandoned to which the Government had adhered with an ob- stinacy that the deaths of tens of thousands of people could not for months change. The Irish Relief Act was the official title of the new enactment : it was familiarly known as the Soup Eatchen Act. Relief committees were to be formed throughout the different unions : they were to prepare lists of persons who were fit subjects for relief : food was to be given — at reason- able prices to some, gratuitously to the absolutely destitute. Here was a departure with a vengeance from the solid principles of political economy that had been preached with such unction to the benighted Irish, with references to Burke, by the official prigs who had undertaken to manage Irish affairs for the Irish people, and had managed them with such disastrous results. But here again the good intentions of the Government and their legisla- tion were defeated by characteristic blunders. One of the objects of the Government was to induce the people to till their own fields so as to avoid the repetition in 1848 of the loss of the harvest that had followed the blun- dering legislation of 1846 ; and, accordingly, it was ordered that the relief works should be gradually dropped, and that relief through the soup kitchens should take their place. At the end of March the number of per- sons employed was to be reduced by twenty per cent., and by May 1 the works were to be entirely discontinued. It was intended, too, that by the ttdae the relief works came to an end the soup kitchens would be in exist- ence ; and thus the people would be supplied with a substitute. The number of people employed on the relief works was gigantic. In tfie week ending October 3, 1846 — the first week of the relief works — the 1 Census Commissioners, p. 253. As a result, Ireland had the largest proportion of blind, compared with its population, except Norway.— lb. 2 lb., p. 253. 3 n>., p. 245. 44 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. number of persons employed waa but 20,000 ; but in March, 1847, when the number on the works began to be reduced, the total had reached the enor- mous number of 734,000. The disarrangement of a scheme on which so many people depended for food was a project of strange rashness, and, as usual, it was carried out by the officials of the Government in a manner to aggravate all the evil tendencies of the original plan. The intention of the Government was that the reduction of twenty per cent, was to take place in the aggregate, and not in each place — the object, of course, being that regard should be had to the different conditions of each locality : the officials lowered the number of persons employed in every district with perfect uniformity. Then the intention of the Government was that the Soup Kitchen Act should be in full working order when the relief works came to an end. By May 1, when the whole mighty army of three-quar- ters of a million of people were turned away from work, there was not a single relief committee in full working order, not a single can of soup had, in all probability, been manufactured. The result was that there was in \847, as there had been in 1846, a hideous interregnum during which some cf the worst sufferings of the famine days were repeated. But when the scheme did get into working order, it proved on the whole effective and beneficial. Deaths from starvation came to an end ; fever grew less intense in the hospitals ; and the fields were fairly well tilled. Thus the severest verdict on the early incompetence of the Government was passed by the result of their own later legislation. And, indeed, with an appalling candour, the Ministers themselves confessed to their own tragic mistake. In the preamble to the Soup Kitchen Act the measure ia justified : it has become necessary because, ' by reason of the great increase of destitution in Ireland, sufficient relief could not be given ' under the Labour Rate Act. 1 M. Jules Sandeau tells in one of his storie3 how a royal prince gave the child of a faithful Breton family a smile ; the royal smile, he bitterly comments, had been purchased by three lives. The preamble to the Soup Kitchen Act had been purchased by many and many thousands of lives that might have been saved. But all these things came too late, and especially too late to retain the population. Emigration received a terrible impetus, and the people fled in a frenzy of grief and despair from their doomed land. But even in their flight they were pursued by the demons they had endeavoured to leave behind. The brotherhood of humanity, powerless to frame just laws and to give national rights, asserted itself in disease and death. To England, as the nearest refuge, the Irish exiles first fled. No less than 180,000 are said to have landed in Liverpool between January 15 and May 4, 1847. 2 In Glasgow, between June 15 and August 17, 26,335 arrived from Ire- land. Many were ' aged people unfit for labour out of 1,150 patients in the Glasgow fever hospital at the period, 750 were Irish. 3 At last the Government had to interfere to protect the English people from the horrors which the errors and folly of British administration had created in Ireland. 1 The testimony is overwhelming that if the policy of the Soup Kitchen Act had been originally adopted, a large amount of the horrors of the '-"mine would have been prevented. ' The cost of the Kenmare soup-kitchen,' reports the Relief Committee, ' from April 25 to September 1, amounted to £2,205 13s. 4d. ; the amount of money paid for public works in the same district from November 23, 184(5, to May 1, was £5,5S3, during which time the people were dying on the roads and dropping in the streets. Since the soup-kitchens were set on foot, tee can safely affirm that not one human being died from starvation.' — Census Commissioners, p. 290. 3 lb., p. 305. 3 /ft. THE FAMINE. 45 An Order in Council was issued by which deck passengers were subjected to quarantine. Shortly afterwards, at the request of the Government, the fares for deck passengers were increased by the owners of four steamships plying between England and Ireland. These passengers were all Irish tenants, fleeing from their farms, voluntarily or by compulsion, through hunger or through eviction. Vast masses tried to make their way to America. In the year 1845, 74,969 persons emigrated from Ireland ; in 1S46 the number had risen to 105,955 ; during 1847 it rose to 215,444. No means were taken to preserve these poor people from the rapacity of shipowners. The landlords, delighted at getting rid of them, made bargains for their conveyance wholesale, and at small prices ; and in those days emigrant-ships were under no sanitary restrictions of any effectiveness. Thus the emigrants, already half-starved and fever-stricken, were pushed into berths that 8 rivalled the cabins of Mayo, or the fever-sheds of Skibbereen.' 1 Crowded and filthy, carrying double the legal number of passengers, who were ill-fed and imperfectly clothed, and having no doctor on board, the holds,' says an eye-witness, 1 were like the Black Hole of Calcutta, and deaths in myriads.' 1 The statistics of mortality bear out these words. Of 493 passengers during the year in the Queen, 136 died on the voyage ; of 552 in the Avon, 236 died ; of 476 in the Virgmius, 267 died ; of ^440 on the Larch, 108 died and 150 were seriously diseased. 89,783 persons altogether embarked for Canada in 1847. The Chief Secretary for Ireland reported with regard to these that 6,100 perished on the voyage ; 4,100 on their arrival ; 5,200 in hospital ; 1,900 in towns to which they repaired. 1 From Grosse Island up to Port Sarnia, along the borders of our great river, on the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie, wherever the tide of emigration has extended, are to be found one unbroken chain of graves, where repose fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, in a commingled heap, no stone marking the spot. Twenty thousand and upwards have gone down to their graves.' 2 CHAPTER IV. THE GEEAT CLEARANCES, It was at the moment when Ireland was being scourged with all these plagues that her political leaders aggravated her sufferings by their dissen- sions. It has already been told that the rise of the Nation newspaper intro- duced into the counsels of O'Connell a new element, which he found it impossible to control. As disaster came upon the country these differences were bound to increase ; defeat outside being always the solvent of unity inside a political organization. The hideous magnitude oi the sufferings of Ireland at this moment, too, was another element which was bound to increase the tendency to discord. The young and strong and brave can never reconcile themselves to the gospel th>it there is such a thing in this world as inevitable evil. The sight of so ma;sy thousands of people perish- ing miserably naturally suggested a frenzied temper, and the extreme course 1 Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, ' Four Years ol Irish History,' p. 581. » Ib. t p. 532. 46 SHE PARNELL MOVEMENT. that such a temper begets. Among the young men, therefore, who gathered round the leaders of the Nation newspaper, there was a constant ieeling that enough was not being done to save the people. O'Connell, on the other hand, was now approaching the close of along and busy life. As has oeen already mentioned, he had been at the period when the famine broke out already suffering for some years from the depressing influence of brain disease. It would take me far beyond my purpose to go through the details of the many questions upon which the two sides came into collision. One of the great causes of the split between Young and Old Ireland was m reference to what are called the 'peace resolutions.' Some of the utter- ances of the Young Irelanders had suggested the employment of physical force under certain circumstances ; and O'Connell, whose alarms were fed and increased by disreputable retainers, and by his son John — an intellec- tual pigmy of gigantic ambition — insisted ipon the Repeal Association solemnly renewing its adhesion to the resolutions. These resolutions, passed at its formation, laid down the memorable doctrine that no political reform was worth purchasing by the shedding of even one drop of blood. It is hard to believe that O'Connell ever did accept in its entirety the doctrine that physical force was not a justifiable expedient under any imaginable circumstances. There is no record in his speeches — at least, none that I remember — of his reprobation of the American Colonies for having laid the foundation of their liberty and of their present greatness in armed insur- rection. There is a famous speech, which formed part of the case of the Crown against him, in which he spoke of himself as the Bolivar of Ireland — and the triumphs of Bolivar were not gained without the shedding of blood. All O'Connell probably meant to say, in the moments when he was free from a certain kind of devotional ecstasy, was that Ireland was so weak at that time when compared to England, that a resort to physical force could have no possible chance of success, and that it was as well to recon- cile the people to their impotence by raising it to the dignity of a great moral principle. The Young Irelanders left the Repeal Association ; and 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 organi- zation which he had held together for so long a period. Rarely has a great, and on the whole successful, career ended in gloom so appalling and so unbroken. The imprisonment of 1843 was so ignoble an ending to the glorious promise and the wild and tempestuous triumph of that period, that it probably gave his spirit a shock from which it never recovered. He worked on as energetically as ever, for he was a man whose industry 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, and bound to the fiery wheel of oppression more securely than ever. In breaking health and with broken spirits the old man fought doggedly on. On April 3, 1846, he delivered a lengthened speech to the House of Commons, of which an historic but an entirely inaccurate description is given in Lord Beacons- field's ' Life of Lord George Bentinck.' The speech, whether supplied to the newspapers, as suggested by Lord Beaconsfield, or not, appears in * Hansard,' and, however much the voice and other physical attributes of O'Connell may have appeared to have decayed, this speech, in its selection THE GREAT CLEARANCES. 47 of evidence, 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. In Dublin, too, the old man attended the relief committees day after day. He spoke in the House of Commons for the last time in February, 1847, and then it was that he displayed that utter debility which is transposed in the ' Life of Bentinck ' to the April of the previous year. He was next day seriously ill, and was ordered change of air. He went abroad, and was everywhere met by demonstrations of respect and affection. But his heart was broken. A g»loom had settled over him which nothing could shake off. He did not even reach the goal of his journey. He died at Genoa on May 15, 1847. His last will was that his heart should be sent to Kome, and his body to Ireland. He lies in Glasnevin Cemetery. Meantime, the removal of his imposing personality from Irish politics aggravated the dissensions between Old and Your». rr Ireland. O'Connell was largely dominated in his later years by his son, John O'Connell ; and the father bent much of his efforts towards handing on to his son the dignity of popular leader. But there is no divine right in popular command, except that which is given by supreme talents ; and John O'Connell was utterly devoid of qualifications for the new position. He was weak, vain, and shallow, and the disproportion between his pretensions and his abilities did much to aggravate the bitterness and accelerate the rupture between the two schools of political thought. The evils of the country grew daily worse ; hope from Parliamentary agitation died in face of a failure so colossal as that of O'Connell ; and some of the Young Irelanders, seized with a divine despair, resolved to try what physical fore 3 might bring. The first important apostle of this new gospel was J ohn Mitchel — one of the strangest, most picturesque, 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. He separated in time from Sir (Mr.) Charles Gavan Duffy, and started a paper on his own account. In this paper insurrection was openly preached ; and especiallyinsurrection 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 produced 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 ; afterwards he advised an attack upon some of the taxes. The Ministry, in order to cope with such writing and the other results of a period of universal hunger and disease, succeeded in having a whole code of coercion laws passed. The Cabinet had changed its political com- plexion. The fall of Peel had, as has been seen, been brought about by the defeat of his Coercion Bill through a combination of the Whigs, the Pro- tectionists, and the O'Connellites. Lord John Russell had been the leader of the Whigs in the triumphant attack on coercion ; and Lord John Russell, now transformed from the leader of Opposition to the head of the Government, brought in Coercion Bills himself. Mitchel was the first of the Young Irelanders who was attacked. He was brought to trial ; Lord John Russell, questioned in the House of Commons about the trial a few days before it took place, pledged himself that it should be a fair trial. He had written, he declared, to his noble 4 s THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. friend (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.' Most Englishmen who read this statement came to the conclusion — the very natural conclusion — that the word of an English Prime Minister thus solemnly pledged was carried out ; and if there were any complaints by Irish members afterwards, they were dismissed as the emanations of the hopeless mendacity or the incurable folly of a race of persistent grumblers. Yet was the pledge most flagrantly broken ; and the packing of the jury of John Mitchel under the premiership of Lord John "Russell was as open, as relentless, 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 jurors — of these thirty-nine, nineteen were Catholics, the rest were Protestants suspected of National leanings — with the final result that there was not a single Catholic on the jury, and that the Protestants were of the Orange class who would be quite willing to hang Mitchel, or any other man of his opinions, without the formality of trial, or without any evidence at all. With such a jury Mitchel was, of course, convicted. He was sentenced to fourteen years' transportation ; in a few hours after the sentence he was in a Government boat, on the way already to the land to which he was now exiled. One of the questions debated at the time most seriously was whether Mitchel should be allowed to be taken out of the country without some attempt at rescue. His own expectation was that the Government would never be allowed to conquer him without a struggle, and that his sentence would be 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 postponed until the people were organised and armed. By successive steps these men were in their turn driven to extremities, and to the conviction that an attempt at insurrection should be made. The leader of this movement was Mr. Smith O'Brien. Mr. O'Brien was the member of an aristocratic family. His brother afterwards became Lord Inchiquin, and was the nearest male relative to the Marquis of Thomond. For years he had been a member of the English Liberal Party, 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 un- willingly into the belief that the Legislative Union was the real source of all the evils of his country ; and he joined the Repeal Party under O'Connell. By successive steps he was driven into the ranks of Young Ireland, and by degrees into revolution. When he, Mr. John Blake Dillon (father of the John Dillon of our own day), Mr. D'Arcy M'Gee, and Mr. (now Sir) Charles Gavan Duffy were finally forced into the attempt to create an insurrection, they probably had a strong feeling that the attempt was hopeless, and that they were called upon to make it rather through the calls of honour 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 together was scattered. He and the greater number 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 of the Orange school, and O'Brien and the rest were convicted, were sentenced to death, and, this THE GREAT CLEARANCES. sentence being commuted, were transported. Dillon and M' Gee succeeded in escaping to America. This was the end of the Young Ireland Party. The party of O'Connell did not survive much longer. In 1847 there was a general election. The graphic account of that election in Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's book is one of the most depressing and most instructive chapters in Irish history, and makes several years of Irish history intelligible. The election was fought out between the Young Irelanders and Conciliation Hall — the place where : Council's Repeal Association used to meet — on the principle whether there should or should not be a pledge against taking office. The idea of Gavan Duffy and the other Young Irelanders was an in- dependent Irish Party — independent of Whig as of Tory Governments. 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, though it may be hard to forgive, his reasons for adopting such a policy. Wljen O'Connell started, as to a large extent when he ended, his political career, every post of power in Ireland -was held by the enemies of the popular cause. The Lord-Lieutenant, the Chief Secretary, all the judges, all the county court barristers, all the sheriffs, all the men in any public position, great or small, were Protestants, and most of them Orange Conservatives. Irish history teaches this lesson, if no other, that apparently popular and even Liberal institutions may exist in name and be the mask for the worst vices of un- checked despotism. 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 Ireland judges who had the same independence of the Crown as their brethren in England, if, from violent political partisanship, they could be relied upon to do the behests of the Government as safely as if they were the creatures of the Crown. Trial by jury was a ' mockery, a delusion, and a snare,' if it meant trial, not by one's peers, but 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 a hierarchy of unscrupulous political partisans. O'Connell found how true this was in the days that succeeded Catholic Emancipation ; and he 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 sympa- thizing with the political sentiments of the majority of their countrymen. There were some other reasons, too, of a less creditable character. O'Connell was the leader of a democratic movement with no revenue save such as the voluntary subscriptions of bis followers supplied. It was not an unwelcome relief to his cause if occasionally he was able to transform the pensioners on his funds into pensioners on the coffers of the State. It is to be remembered, too, that at this period the Irish leader had a much more circumscribed class from which to draw his Parliamentary supporters than at the present day. The property qualifications still existed ; a mem- ber of Parliament was obliged to have £300 a year to be a borough, and £600 a year to be a county member. There are many amusing and many sad stories of the strange characters which this necessity compelled O'Con- nell to introduce as advocates of the sacred cause of Irish nationality. There were large classes of the population who, while they had the property 4 5o THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. qualification, were in other respects entirely unsuited for the position of members of a popular part] . The landlords were almost to a man on the side of existing abuses, and the greater number of the members of this body whom O'Connell was able to recruit to his ranks were declasses. They 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. Next, the constituencies of Ireland had at this moment a very narrow electorate. It was all very well for half a million of people to meet O'Connell at Tara, or at any other of the monster meetings, and to show that he commanded, as never did popular leader before, the affections, the opinions, and th e right arms of a unanimous nation. But when it came to the time for obtaining a Parliamentary supporter — the only available weapon for his struggle with English Ministries — it was not upon the voice of the people that the decision rested. He could carry many of the coun- ties, even though support of him meant sentences of eviction, and, through eviction, of death or of exile, to thousands of his adherents. In the boroughs it was half a dozen shopkeepers, face to face with the always impending bankruptcy of small towns in an impoverished country, who had the decision of an election in their hands. This is a central fact in the consideration of O'Connell's career, and must always be taken as supplying at least some explanation of his many mistakes, and his many disastrous failures. The result of this theory of O'Connell's was the creation in Ireland of a school of politicians which has been at once her dishonour and her bane. This was the race of Catholic place-hunters. Throughout the following pages men of this type play a large part ; it will be found that in exact proportion to their success and number were the degradation and the deep- ening misery of their country : that for years the struggle for Irish pros- perity 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 for ever from Irish political life. The way in which the system worked was this. A profligate landlord, or an aspiring but briefless barrister, was elected for an Irish constituency as a follower of the popular leader of the day and as the mouthpiece of his principles. When he entered the House of Commons 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 con- sequence, and the bargain was then struck — the vote from him, and the office from them. Under O'Connell this hideous system had not reached the proportions to which it afterwards attained ; but it had gone so far as to create a vast scandal ; and, along with the wretched tail which in the course of his long struggle O'Connell had gathered about him, gave that uncleanness to his proceedings which excited the just indignation of the young and ardent and high-minded men who formed the Young Ireland Party. The final event that made separation between O'Connell and the Young Irelanders inevit- able was the struggle between the demand for an independent Irish Party, with no mercy to place-hunters, and the resolve of O'Connell to stand by the old and evil system of compromise. Richard Lalor Sheil, one of the most eloquent colleagues of O'Connell in the old struggle for Catholic Emancipation, had never joined in the agitation for Repeal, had kept ^ut of all popular movements — some said because the despotic will of the great THE GREAT CLEARANCES. 51 fcribun 3 made life intolerable to any but slaves — and had in time sunk to the level of a Whig office-holder. In 1846, having been appointed Master of the Mint in the Ministry of Lord J ohn Russell, Sheil stood for Dungar- van, and the Young Irelanders demanded that he should be opposed by a man who was in favour not of the government of Ireland by English Min- isters, whether Whig or Tory, but of the government of Ireland by the Irish people themselves. O'Connell stood by his old associate and his old creed, and Sheil was elected. The struggle on this point, which had raged in the days of O'Connell, burst out with even greater fury when he was dead ; and the Young Ire- landers had to contend with his puny and contemptible successor. The Young Irelanders proposed that no man should be elected who did not pledge himself to take no office under the Crown. And assuredly if such a pledge w ere ever necessary or justifiable it was at that moment. Between Parliament and Ministers, between the land laws and the landlords, the Irish nation was being murdered; and the demand for relief should come, not from beggars seeking the pence of the Treasury, but from independent men caring only for the redress of the hideous wrong and the cure of the awful suffering of their country. But Mr. John O'Connell and the Repeal Association refused to accede to any such pledge ; and at this supreme crisis raised those false side-issues which are the favourite resort of unscrupulous traffickers in political straggles. A favourite expedient was to whisper doubts of the religious orthodoxy of the Young Irelanders ; and their proposals being first described as revolutionary, dread warnings were by an easy transition drawn from the sanguinary teachings and acts of the revolutionaries of France. But the great side-issue was the attitude the Young Irelanders had adopted towards O'Connell. They were described as having 'murdered the Liberator.' The disappearance of O'Connell, especially in circumstances of such tragic and pitiful gloom, had produced on the whole Irish people the impression which Mrs. Carlyle so well describes as her feeling when the news came to England that Byron was dead. It seemed as if the sun or moon had suddenly dropped out of the heavens. In such a condition of the popular mind it was easy to raise a howl of execration against the men who had opposed his policy ; the Young Irelanders were everywhere denounced ; in many places they were set upon by mobs, and were in danger of their lives. The revulsion of public feeling against them threw great difficulties in the way of the policy which they recommended ; and that policy did not receive anything like a fair hearing. Their candidates were everywhere defeated, and in their stead were chosen men who were openly for sale. The one title for election in many cases was a hasty adhesion to the Repeal Association just before the general election. The subscription to this body was £5 ; hence these men came to be known as the ' Eive Pound Repealers.' Thus, instead of seventy independent and honest Irish repre- sentatives, there was returned a motley gang of as disreputable and needy adventurers as ever trafficked in the blood and tears of a nation. The expected result soon followed. Of the entire number no less than twenty afterwards accepted places for themselves, and twenty more were continu- ally pestering the Government Whips for places for their dependents. Mr. John O'Connell himself had refused to take the pledge against office-taking, on the ground that if the name he bore was not a sufficient guarantee, he would condescend to no more. The guarantee was scarcely trustworthy ; 52 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. for he had at the time a brother and two brothers-in-law, and a train of cousins in office. He himself, within a short time afterwards, was being trained as a captain of militia to fight against the men whom the sight of their country's ruin was driving to the desperate resort of rebellion ; and, finally, ended as Clerk of the Hanaper. Thus the Repeal Party broke up, and Ireland was left without an ad- vocate in Parliament. The ruin and helplessness of the country were now complete. Insurrection had been tried and had failed ; constitutional agitation had produced a gang of scoundrels who were ready to sell them- selves to the highest bidder. Ireland, starving, plague-stricken, disarmed, unrepresented, lay at the mercy of the British Government and of the Irish landlords. It will not be uninstructive to see what use the two classes made of their omnipotence over the country which death, hunger, and p2ague, abortive rebellion and political treachery, had given over to their hands. First as to the landlords. The potato crop in 1848 and 1849 had again failed, and there were throughout the country the same scenes — especially in 1849— of starvation and plague as in 1846 and 1847. In 1848, 2,043,505 persons received poor-law relief— 610,463 being in the workhouses, and 1,433,042 receiving outdoor relief. 1 Fever and dysentery raged in the workhouses, 2 the gaols, 3 the schools, 4 and in some places along the western coast with such destructiveness as to almost entirely depopulate them. ' Along the coast of Connemara,' says a medical writer, ' for near thirty miles, where the villages are very small and hundreds of cabins detached, sickness and death walked hand-in-hand until they nearly depopulated the whole coast.' 5 In Mayo hundreds of people died of starvation ; 6 in the townland of Moyard, County Galway, five persons — four sons and a daughter — died in one family ; 7 in Ballinahinch, in the same county, six persons in the same family died — the husband, two daughters, and three sons ; 8 in Ballinasloe, in the same county, eight persons died in the same family. ' The survivors have endeavoured to live on nettles and water- cresses.' 9 Though there were 41,083 fewer deaths than in 1847, the total reached the enormous figure of 208,352, and of these 97,076 died of epidemic — that is, of famine-produced diseases. 10 And eventually, although there was a decrease of 37,285 on the emigration of 1847, no less than 178,159 persons left Ireland in 1848. The failure was not so complete in 1848 as in 1847, but still it was very extensive, and there was terrible and widespread suffering. In 1849 the blight worked more disastrously. The potatoes were ' almost universally blighted.' 11 The year 1849 was thus a return to the greater ghastlinesa and more multitudinous horrors of 1847. As in previous years, the har- vest began with promises of abundance. In May the crops looked ' luxuriant and nourishing ' ; 12 but as early as June the blight appeared in County Cork and County Tipperary ;• in July and August it appeared in several other counties. By the 18th of the latter month, in passing along the roads in the Mourne district of County Down, 1 the peaty smell — a symptom of the fatal disaster — was perceived distinctly.' By Septem- ber 14 the report was : ' The potato blight has now become unmistakable, changing in one night's time the green and healthy-looking appearances 1 Census Commissioners, p. 310. 2 lb., p. 310. 3 lb., p. 311. * lb. 7 lb., p. 311. *> lb., p. 31 5 lb., p. 312. 8 lb. » Jb., p. 319. 6 lb. 9 lb., p. 312. 12 lb., p. 315. THE GREAT CLEARANCES. 53 of the potato-stalk to blackness and decay.' October 1 : ' The potatoes are bad everywhere.' 1 As in the autumn of 1845, the people had staked their all on the success of the potato crop. 'Should the crop fail,' wrote the Irish Farmers' Gazette, ' the country will be in a wretched condition, for the poor people have risked their all in the planting of potatoes this year.' 2 One of the agricultural instructors sent out by the Lord-Lieutenant to lecture on im- proved methods of farming, reports from Roscommon instances of people having i sold their only cow to procure seed potatoes, and of persons having sold their beds for the same purpose.' 3 Another instructor makes a statement which it will be well to remember in reading an account of the working of landlordism some pages further on : ' They ' — the tenants — 'have nothing now left but the shelter of a miserable cabin, and them- selves and the land in a corresponding state of misery ; though they are still clinging to their huts with the greatest tenacity, and seem better pleased to perish in the ruins than surrender what they call their last hope of existence.' 4 The same suffering as in 1847 followed the failure of the staple crop. ' The earlier months of 1849,' report the Poor Law Commissioners, ' were marked by a greater degree of suffering in the western and south-western districts than any period since the fatal season of 1846-47. Exhaustion of resources by the long continuance of adverse circumstances caused a large accession to the ranks of the destitute. Clothing had been worn out and parted with to provide food or seed in seed-time. ' 5 Reports of all kinds present pictures as terrible as those of 1847, with deeper elements of tragedy in many cases, as the evils of 1849 came upon a people already exhausted by their dread experiences of the previous years. Then there had been added another burden to the famine-stricken people in the additional taxation imposed by the legislation of the Im- perial Parliament, for the people had to pay for the legislation that had so terribly aggravated their sufferings, and that had murdered instead of saving hundreds of thousands of the nation. 'The people,' reports one of the agricultural instructors, 'complain bitterly [of the immense poor rate] ; they say it wiil be impossible for them to stand the payment of the taxes for another season. They likewise say,' adds this instructor, ' that if they improve their farms, they know in their hearts they are doing so for other persons.' 6 And now for a few pictures of the state of things which existed among the people. ' The state of the country here,' writes one of the instructors from Gifden, Conne mara, ' as in many other places, is utterly hopeless, and exhibits the most horrifying picture of poverty and destitution. The neglected state of the land — the death-like appearance of the people era wling from their rootless cabins .... the pitiful petitions of the desponding poor craving that charity which the ' ' rate " of 23s. Id. to the pound puts out of the power of humanity to bestow — some may conceive, but few can describe. It is not very likely, indeed, that any good can accrue to such people from my visits. "We will not sow, for we cannot work without food," is the general answer made to me by those patient sufferers.'7 ' Anything,' writes another instructor from the Ballinrobe Union, County Mayo, 'to equal the misery and starved appearance of the people here I have not yet seen— no more sign of tillage, or any preparation for it, than on the top of a barren mountain, though very fine land .... I begged of them to prepare the land ; their reply was, *' How can a hungry man work, sir ? we are all nearly starved ;" and really they had starvation in their worn faces ... I met half -starved creatures in the fields every- where, picking weeds and herbs to eat them. I have no hesitation in saying that five out of six of the really destitute will be dead on July 1.'8 1 Census Commissioners, p. 315. 2 lb., p. 319. 3 lb., p. 317. « lb. 5 £b., p. 320. « lb., p. 317. 7 lb., p. 321. 8 54 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. ' Deaths from starvation occur almost daily,' writes another instructor from Balli- nahinch Estate, Connemara, ' and the remains of huuger's victims are quietly laid in the ground unrecorded.' 1 In the neighbouring islands, ' which had quite run out of cultivation,' the inhabitants were ' either dead or supported by public relief and by that system of petty theft which unfortunately pervades the country, as the food supplied is barely sufficient to enable the living skeletons to go .in search of a further supply.' Finally, here are a few extracts from the newspapers of the time. "Ths distress in the west of Ireland was very great ; many died of want.' ' Great destitution at Athlone ; never were the poor in so deplorable a condition.' ' A family of six lived for one week upon the carcase of an ass in the parish of Ballymackey, County Tipperary.' ' Great distress in Ulster — people eating ass-flesh.' Deaths from starvation were reported from Cong, County Mayo, from Letter more, County Tipperary, and also from the County Clare. 'January 17: Twenty- two deaths from famine and destitution reported throughout the country.' 2 As has already been stated, the epidemic of cholera was added to the other scourges which, in the latter part of 1848 and all through 1849, followed on the other epidemics. The total number of deaths in 1849 was 240,797, being the greatest number for any one year in the decennial period between 1841 and 1851 except 1847. The deaths from zymotic diseases were larger than in 1847, being 123,386, which is 7,021 more than in 1847. 3 Such, then, was the state of Ireland in these two years. I now proceed to describe the conduct of the landlords. It would be easy to quote the general denunciations of their conduct all over the country, which appeared in the speeches and newspapers even of England, but I have thought it a better plan to take up one particular district and show the landlords at work there. To anybody, then, who desires to obtain a detailed and realistic picture of what Irish landlordism in the days of the famine really meant, the perusal of the paper No. 1089, entitled 'Reports and Returns relating to Evictions in the Kilrush Union,' will be of absorbing interest. The Ministers, in order to give Parliament some idea as to the merits of the controversy between them and the landlords, presented in this volume a series of extracts from the Report of Captain Kennedy, who had been sent down to this union as representative of the Poor Law Commissioners. These extracts begin on November 25, 1847, and conclude on June 19, 1849. They tell over and over again the same tale, until the heart growo sick with the repetition of ghastly and almost incredible horrors. Kilrush was one of the unions in which neither famine nor fever worked with such deadly effect as in some other parts of the country. The following extracts from Captain Kennedy's report are given without comment, and may be trusted to speak for themselves : ' November 25, 1847. — An immense number of small landholders are under ejectment, or notice to quit, even where the rents have been paid up. 4 1 Census Commissioners, p. 321. a Freeman's Journal and Saunders's Newsletter, quoted by Census Commissioners, pp. 320, 321. 3 Census Commissioners, pp. 323, 324. 4 Blue-book No. 1089 : Reports and Returns relating to Evictions In the Kilrush Union, 1849, p. 3. THE GREAT CLEARANCES. 55 1 February 11, 1848. — . . . Upwards of 120 houses ha.i been " tumbled" pn one 'property within a few weeks, containing families to a greater number, many of whom are burrowing behind the ditches, without the means of procuring shelter. 1 s March 16, 1848. — We admitted a considerable number of paupers, among whom were some of the most appalling cases of destitution and suffering it has ever been my lot to witness. The state of most of these wretched creatures is traceable to the numerous evictions which have lately taken place in the union. When driven from their cabins, they betake themselves to the ditches or the shelter of some bank, and there exist like animals, till starvation or the inclemency of the weather drives them to the workhouse. There xoere three cartloads of these creatures, who could not walk, brought for admission yesterday, some in fever, some suffering from dysentery, and all from want of food. 2 ■ March 23, 1848. — Whole districts are being cleared and re-let in larger holdings. 3 1 March 28, 1848. — Cabins are'Jbeing thrown down in all directions, and it is really extraordinary and, to me, unaccountable where or how the evicted find shelter. 4, ' March 30, 1848. — . . . The pressure is coming, and will continue ; and this will not surprise the Commissioners when I state my conviction that 1,000 cabins have been levelled in this union within a very feiu months. The occupants of many of these were induced to give them up on receipt of a small sum of money ; and that once spent, they must seek the workhouse or starve. 5 1 April 6, 1848. — The destitution in degree and character is, 1 trust, unknown elsewhere; improvident, ignorant, thriftless parents, scarcely human in habits and intelligence, only present themselves, with nine or ten skeleton children, when they themselves can no longer support the pangs of hunger and their wretched offspring are beyond recovery. The state of this union must be seen to be believed or comprehended. 6 ' April 6, 1848. — While hundreds are being turned out houseless and helpless daily on one small property in Killard division, no less than twenty - three houses, containing probably one hundred souls, were tumbled in one day, March 27. I believe the extent of land occupied with these twenty- three houses did not exceed fifty acres. The suffering and misery attendant upon these wholesale evictions is indescribable. 7 The number of houseless paupers in this union is beyond my calculation ; those evicted crowd neigh- bouring cabins and villages, and disease is necessarily generated. On its first appearance, the wretched sufferer, and probably the whole family to which he or she belongs, is ruthlessly turned out by the roadside. The popular dread of fever or dysentery seems to excuse any degree of in- humanity. The workhouse and temporary hospital are crowded to the utmost extent they can possibly contain ; the crowding of the fever hospital causes me serious anxiety. The relieving officer has directions to send no more in : yet, notwithstanding this caution, panic-stricken and unnatural parents frequently send in a donkey-load of children in fever a distance of fourteen or fifteen miles for admission. How to dispose of them I know not. 8 1 Blue-book No. 1089 : Reports and. Returns relating to Evictions in the Kilrusb Union, 1849, p. 3. 2 lb. 31b. *Ib., p. 4. 5/5, «#.,p. 4 lib., p. 5, 8/6. 56 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. 'April 8, 1848. — / calculate that 6,000 houses hive been levelled since November, and expect 500 more before July. 1 ' April 13, 1848. — These wholesale evictions are most embarrassing to the guardians. The wretched and half-witted occupiers are too often deluded by the specious promises of under-agents and bailiffs, and induced to throw down their own cabin for a paltry consideration of a few shillings, and an assurance of " outdoor relief." 'June 27th, 1848. — Several of these wretched dens were without light or air, and I was obliged to light a piece of bog-fir to see where the sick lay, while many good and substantial houses lay in ruins about them. What- ever the necessity, or whatever future good these clearances may effect, they are productive of an amount of present suffering and mortality which would scare the proprietors were they to see it. And the evil still goes on. During the last week about sixty more souls have been left houseless on one small property, to crowd into the already overcrowded cabins and create disease. 2 'July 5, 1848. — Twenty thousand, or one-fourth of the population, are now in receipt of daily food, either in or out of the workhouse. Disease has unfortunately kept pace with destitution, and the high mortality at one period since last November, in and out of the workhouse, was most dis- tressing. I have frequently been astonished by the sudden and unexpected pressure from certain localities ; this naturally induced an inquiry into the causes, and eventually into a general review of the whole union. The result of this inquiry has convinced me that destitution has been increased and its character fearfully aggravated by the system of wholesale evictions which has been adopted ; that a fearful amount of disease and mortality has also resulted from the same causes, I cannot doubt. I have painful experi- ence of it daily. To make this understood, I may state, in general terms, that about 900 houses, containing probably 4,000 occupants, have been levelled in this union since last November. The wretchedness, ignorance, and helplessness of the poor on the western coast of this union prevent them seeking a shelter elsewhere ; and, to use their own phrase, " they don't know where to face ;" they linger about the localities for weeks or months, burrowing behind the ditches, under a few broken rafters of their former dwelling, refusing to enter the workhouse till the parents are broken down and the children half starved, when they come into the workhouse to swell the mortality one by one. Those who obtain a temporary shelter in ltd joining cabins are not more fortunate. Fever and dysentery shortly make their appearance, when those affected are put out by the roadside as carelessly and ruthlessly as if they were animals ; when frequently, after days and nights of exposure, they are sent in by the relieving officers when in a hopeless state. These inhuman acts are induced by the popular terror of fever. I have frequently reported cases of this sort. The misery attendant upon these wholesale and simultaneous evictions is frequently aggravated by hunting these ignorant, helpless creatures off the property, from which they perhaps have never wandered five miles. It is not an unusual occurrence to see forty or fifty houses levelled in one day, and orders given that no remaining tenant or occupier should give them even a night's shelter. I have known some ruthless acts committed by drivers and sub -agents, but no doubt according to law, however repulsive to humanity ; wretched hovels pulled down, where the inmates were in a helpless state of 1 Blue-book No. 1QS9 : Reports and Returns relating to Evictions in the Kilrusb Union, 1849, p. 5. 2 lb., p. 7. THE GREAT CLEARANCES. 57 fever and nakedness, and left by the roadside for days. As many as 300 souls, creatures of the most helpless class, have been left houseless in one day, and the suffering and misery resulting therefrom attributed to insuffi- cient relief or maladministration of the law : it would not be a matter of surprise that it failed altogether in such localities as those I allude to. When relieved, charges of profuse expenditure are readily preferred. Th.2 evicted crowd into the back lanes and wretched hovels of the towns and villages, scattering disease and dismay in all directions. The charactei of some of these hovels defies description. I not long since found a widow, whose three children were in fever, occupying the, piggery of their former cabin, which lay beside them in ruins ; however incredible it may appear, this place, where they had lived for vjeeks, measured five feet by four feet y and of corresponding height. I offered her a free conveyance to the work- house, which she steadily refused ; her piggery was knocked down as soon as her children were able to crawl out on recovery, and she has now gone forth a wanderer. I could not induce any neighbour to take her in, even for payment ; she had medical aid, and all necessary relief from the union. 1 ' August 13, 1848. — I regret to say that these monster evictions still continue. During the last week forty-four families were evicted, and the houses levelled, on one property. ... A band of paupers, taken from some distant stone-breaking depots, and armed with spades, crowbars, and pick- axes, completed this work of destruction. . . . These helpless creatures, not only unhoused but driven off the lands, no one remaining on the lands being allowed to lodge or harbour them. . . . "When winter sets in these evicted destitute will be in awful plight, as their temporary sheds, behind ditches or old fences, are quite unfit for human habitation, and if they attempted to build anything permanent they would be immediately abolished. If the records of the sheriff's office connected with the union for the last nine months were produced, they would account for much of the death and destitution of the union. 2 ' August 25, 1848. — In reply to your communication of the 24th instant, I have the honour to inform you that the band of paupers therein adverted to were hired by the sub-agent, and taken away from the stone- breaking depot for the purposes I have stated. They, of course, received no relief for the day they were absent, nor for some days after, as the relieving officer ascertained that they received a high rate of wages for this service. I did not intend to convey that the implements used by these paupers were union or public property. 3 *• August 27, 1848. — Numerous evictions have taken place during the last week : the numbers and particulars will be forwarded on an early day. The ultimate fate of this class is a matter of curious speculation when their utter destitution and helplessness are fully understood.' 4 EXTKACT FKOM THE VlCE-GUAEDIANS' REPORT. * October 21, 1848. — The number of houses now thrown dovm, and of families thereby rendered totally destitute, is daily increasing to a fearful extent.' 5 1 Blue-book No. 10S9 : Reports and Returns relating to Evictions in the Kilruah Union, 1849, pp. 7, 8. 2 lb... p. 19. 3 jb. } p. 20. « lb., p. 23. § lb„ p, 30. 58 THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. EXTKACTS FEOM RePOKT OF CAPTAIN KENNEDY. ' December 4, 1848. — My acquaintance with the state of this union does not allow me to believe that the numbers becoming chargeable to the rates will stop short of 20,000. This can hardly be a matter of surprise when I state (what the Commissioners are in possession of) that I have forwarded returns of the eviction of 6,090 souls since last July. 1 'January 22, 1849. — I cannot estimate the evictions in the union much under 150 souls per week. 2 . . . The destitution in this union is a mighty and fearful reality : it is in vain to strive to falsify or forget its existence ; yet no combined effort, and hardly an individual one, is made to alleviate or arrest it. A few philanthropic individuals continue to afford their unit of relief and employment, but their example is not taking. There is a general lack of energy ; the better part of the community seem, for the most part, as apathetic as if the country were comparatively prosperous ; while demoralization, disease, and death are spreading like a cancer. / see the masses of the -people starving, and the land, which could be made to feed treble the number, lying all but waste.'* EXTBACT OF REPORT FROM THE VlCE-GUARDIANS. ' January 22, 1849. — Evictions and throwing down houses continue to be carried on to large extent, and the Quarter Sessions, now going on, shoics that a large number of ejectments are in process; and we knoio that within a fortnight upwards of 800 beings have been evicted from their houses. We cannot, therefore, make any calculation that may come near the amount, but are of opinion that at least 2,000 persons will be added in some parts of the intermediate season, and that about the same number will be off the list in the months of April to June ; they increase from that to October.' 4 Extract from Report of Captain Kennedy. # ' April 3, 1849. — On one farm alone, in Kilmurry {the most miserable district in the union), where there were seventy-three houses within the last ten months, there are now but thirteen. I also enclose a petition marked " E," being one of hundreds which I have received to the same purport. This houseless class becomes more embarrassing daily, and I fear a money allowance for lodging, in addition to food, will ere long be forced upon the Vice-Guardians.' 5 The following is the petition : ' The humble petition of Patt Lumane, 1 Showeth, 1 That he has neither house nor home, nor place to shelter him ; no person would admit him, or give him a night's lodging. He has five in family, exposed to all sorts of persecutions ; therefore he applies to the Board of Guardians to admit him and family into the workhouse to shelter them. ' He was upon outdoor relief, and had no asylum to eat it.' 6 1 Blue-book No. 1089 : Reports and Returns relating to Evictions in the Kilrush Union, 1849, p. 36. 3 |6., p. 43 3 lb., p. 45. * lb. 5 lb., p, 43. 6 Ib„ p. 4& THE GREAT CLEARANCES. 55 EXTRACT FROM KePORT OF CAPTAIN KENNEDY. 1 May 7, 1849. — I find that my constant and untiring exertions make but little impression upon the mass of fearful suffering. As soon as one horde of houseless and all but naked paupers are dead, or provided for in the workhouse, another wholesale eviction doubles the number, who, in their turn, pass through the same ordeal of wandering from house to house or burrow- ing in bogs or behind ditches, till, broken down by privation and, exposure to the elements, they seek the workhouse, or die by the roadside. The state of some districts of the union during the last fourteen days baffles description ; sixteen houses, containing twenty-one families, have been levelled in one small village in Killard division, and a vast number in the rural parts of it.. As cabins become fewer, lodgings, however miserable, become more difficult to obtain ; and the helpless and, houseless creatures, thus turned out of the only home they ever knew, betake themselves to the nearest bog or ditch, with their little all, and, thus huddled together, disease soon decimates them. ' Notwithstanding that fearful and, I believe, unparalleled numbers have been unhoused in this union within the year (probably 15,000), it seems hardly credible that 1,200 more have had their dwellings levelled within a fortnight. ' I have a list of 760 completed, and of above 400 in preparation. It appears to me almost impossible to successfully meet such a state of things ; and the prevailing epidemic, or the dread of it, aggravates the evil. None of this houseless class can now find admittance, save into some over- crowded cabin, whose inmates seldom survive a month. I have shown Dr. Phelan some of these miserable nests of pestilence, which I am at a loss to describe. 'Five families, numbering twenty souls, are not unfrequently found in a cabin consisting of one small apartment. At Doonbeg, a few days since, I found three families, numbering sixteen persons, one of whom had cholera, and three in a hopeless stage of dysentery. The cabin they occupied con- sisted of one wretched apartment, about twelve feet square. It was one of the few refuges for the evicted, and they were unable to reckon how many had been carried out of it from time to time to the grave.' 1 There are one or two further extracts which illustrate very forcibly the working of the land system. Thus, the following extracts from Captain Kennedy's report show the manner in which the excessive competition for land brought up prices far beyond their value and far beyond the capacity of the tenant to pay : ' Hundreds of instances occur where an acre of land worth 15s. is let for £3, and the occupier, in default of full payment, bound to give 140 days' labour to his lessor during spring and harvest, when the occupier himself requires them most ; this would (valuing his labour at 8d. per dny) amount to £4 13s.' 2 The farmer, oppressed himself, naturally acted in like manner with regard to the labourer : 1 The same system obtains as to the letting of cabins ; 100 or 120 days' labour, during the only period the wretched labourer would earn, is exacted for a cabin worth perhaps 7s. 6d. a year.' 3 * Blue-book No. 1C89 : Reports and Returns relating to Evictions in the Kilrush Union, 1849, p. 46. 2 lb., p. 4. 3 fl, t p. 5. 60 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. And here is a definition of an able-bodied labourer that suggests curious reflections : 1 . . . . There are but few who realize any idea of an able-bodied labourer : the great mass of them are called so, more in relation to their years than their physical power, or in contradistinction to those who are in the last stage of disease or existence. Men are called able-bodied here who would not be so designated elsewhere.' 1 Then, as to the action of the landlord, here are two extracts which give a curious idea of his feelings and conduct : • The, lands have been already literally swept for rent. I frequently travel fifteen miles without seeing five stacks of grain of any kind ; all threshed and sold. Rent has seldom or ever been looked for more sharply, and levied more unsparingly, than this year. 2 1 Of the proprietors there are but few resident. I cannot speak of their means ; I only know that there has not been any amount of poor-rate levied in this union seriously to injure them ; no more than any man of common humanity ought voluntarily to bestow in disastrous times. That they are, generally speaking, embarrassed, I fear is a melancholy truth, and goes far to account for the existing want of employment and consequent destitution.' 3 The result of these wholesale clearances was to extort from Parliament an Act which compelled the landlord to give forty-eight hours' notice to the Poor Law Guardians of his district, so that they might be able to make provision for giving food and shelter to those whom his eviction had left starving and homeless. The Act was called ' An Act for the Protection and Relief of the Destitute Poor evicted from their Dwellings in Ireland.' There is no Act of the Legislature which throws so ghastly a light on the social condition of Ireland. The first section enacts that notice of an eviction must be given forty-eight hours before to the relieving-officers, and prohibits evictions two hours before sunset or sunrise, and on Christmas Day and Good Friday ! The seventh section makes the pulling down, de- molition, or unroofing of the house of a tenant about to be evicted a misde- meanour. The fact that such an Act coixld be passed through two Houses of Parliament in either of which the landlord interest was predominant is the strongest evidence of the dread condition of things then existing in Ireland. But even the merciful provisions of this extraordinary Act, small as they were, the landlords and their agents managed to evade. The corre- spondence between Captain Kennedy and the Poor Law Commissioners abounds with instances of inquiries with regard to the violation of the law in this respect. But the landlords ultimately found out the way in which the Act might be evaded, as will be seen from the following extract from the Vice-Guardians' Report, dated October 21, 1848 : 1 In most instances the plan adopted by the landlords has been to pro- ceed by civil bill against the person of the tenant, and, on his being arrested, to discharge him from gaol on his having the house thrown down, and possession given to landlord by the remainder of his family, or by his 1 Blue-book No. 1089 : Reports and Returns relating to Evictions in the Kilrush Union, 184**, p. 44. a lb. 3 lb. pp. 44, 45. THE GREAT CLEARANCES. 61 friends ; in other cases, a small sum is given to the tenant, anc? discharge from all claim of rent, on the house being thrown down and possession given up. In both these cases the landlord is not obliged to give notice ; nor does he incur any penalty, as no ejectment or legal process has been instituted for the recovery of the lands and premises, and the object in- tended by the Act, " to allow preparation to be made for the reception or subsistence of the families," is totally defeated.' 1 As Captain Kennedy observed : 2 ' It may be asked why the occupier submits to what is illegal ? The answer is simply that the great mass are tenants-at-will, and dare not resist ; and on many properties notice to quit is served every six months, to enable the lessor to turn out the occupiers when he pleases. This is a ruinous system, and one much complained of.' An extract from the report of Mr. Phelan, one of the Poor Law officials, dated May 16, 1849, shows even more plainly than do the many extracts from Captain Kennedy that it was eviction rather than famine and fever which was accountable for the horrible condition of the people. He says : ' I have, in many of the western and southern unions, seen sights of the most harrowing description, but I do not think that I have ever seen so much wretchedness arising from destitution as in these places in 1847-48. Epidemic fever and dysentery, produced, it is true, in considerable measure by want, caused great misery ; but here, in the absence of fever and of dysentery, except that arising from want of food, destitution, although endeavoured to be met by indoor and outdoor relief, has assumed a shape which even in Clifden was not, I think, presented. Families are here literally naked, and at the same time progressing surely and quickly to the grave by diarrhoea and dropsy.' 3 EXTEACT FROM REPOET OF CAPTAIN KENNEDY. 'May 7, 1849. — In a cow-shed adjoining this wretched cabin, I found " Ellen Lynch " lying in an almost hopeless stage of dysentery. She had been carried thither by her son when " thrown out " of her miserable lodging, and was threatened with momentary expulsion from even this refuge by the philanthropic owner of it ; her only safety rested in the fears of all but her son to approach her. I was ankle-deep in manure while standing beside her. This poor woman is nearly related to an elective member of the Ennis Board of Guardians, and also to one of the late Kilrush Board. Her husband had been lately evicted, and died. I had ill conveyed to the workhouse. They were all in receipt of out-relief, and had even got medical assistance. 4 While inspecting a stone-breaking dep6t a few days since, I observed one of the men take off his remnant of a pair of shoes and started across the fields ; I followed him with my eye, and at a distance saw the blaze of a fire in the bog. I sent a boy to inquire the cause of it, and the man running from his work, and was told that his house had been levelled the day before, that he had erected a temporary hut on the lands, and while his wife and children were gathering shell-fish on the strand, and he stone- breaking, the bailiff or "driver 1 ' fired it. These ruthless acts of barbarity are submitted to with an unresisting patience hardly credible.' 4 1 Blue-book No. 1089 : Reports and Returns relating to Evictions in the Kilrush Union, 1849, p. 30. 2 lb., p. 5. lib., p. 47. « A. 62 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Extract from Mr. Phelan's Report. ' May 16, 1849. — .... Many of these wretched creatures have not the benefit of a one-roomed house, nor even of a hut. I felt it my duty to go into several temporary shelters got up on the roadside, in fields and in bogs, which shelters were merely a few hurdles thrown across from the ground to the ditch or wall, with some loose straw or rushes or scravjs laid on. These places can only be entered on hands and knees ; the utmost height is not above three feet, even a boy or girl cannot stand up in them ; yet I found a family of four or five in these places, usually all or most sick. But in some I have found the children naked in bed, the mother gone for the " relief," and the father " stone -breaking.' 1 In order to make the picture complete, I will give some few names from the nominal lists of the evicted which Captain Kennedy was in the habit of appending to his reports, with the observations made upon them. 1 Blue-book No. 10S9 : Reports and Returns relating to Evictions in the Kilrush Union, 1849, p. 48. 6 4 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. THE GREAT CLEARANCES. ■§8 t3 O £3 73 o Ills- £ a £ 3 J* ^ .2.2 fl-d «> Jg.2§ 3 3 2 sill IU5J4 1-3 I I 15 5- o | o I I a ^ £ > is S n I ■ * i i i O «5< 3 ^ ' 9*1 SO 1 . d v.S 8 © 5 66 THE PARNELL movement. 3 -g a 3.Q cS ti ft. 3 I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I i f.3 o © o o o o o o o «o » o o o o o o CO rH . 3g2, 3 See ante. 'Ib. « Quoted in Mitchel, ii., p. 228. THE GREAT CLEARANCES. 73 able 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.' 1 Then he made allusion to a Bill which had been brought in by Sir "William Somerville, the Chief Secretary, for dealing with the Land question. Its proposals were indeed modest. It gave compensation to tenants for per- manent 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, they did not gain the full approval of the Prime Minister, and did not secure the safety of the Bill. ' I have yielded my own conviction,' said Lord John Russell, 'to what appears to be the universal opinion. I think we have gone as far as we can with respect to that subject.' But whether the Premier had gone far enough or not did not much matter ; for ' there will not,' said he, 'be time to pass it during the present session, and therefore it will be postponed.' 2 To any such proposal as fixity of tenure the Liberal Prime Minister would offer his strongest hostility. ' The Tenant Bight advocated by the honourable member ' — Mr. Shar man Crawford, who had introduced a motion calling for the redress of the grievances of the Irish tenantry — ' would amount to this, that the tenant in possession has a right to the occupation of the land provided he pay his rent punctually. Can anything be more completely subversive of the rights of property . . . ? It is impossible for the Legislature, with any regard, for justice, to pass such a law ; and if such a law were -passed for Ireland, it would strike at the root of property in the whole United Kingdom.' And, finally, he concluded with this proposal for the solution of the great Irish Land problem : 1 But, after all ' (said Lord John Russell), ' that which we should look to for improving the relations between landlord and tenant is a better mutual understanding between those who occupy those relative positions. Volun- tary 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.' 3 The 'better mutual understanding' on which the Prime Minister relied for an improvement in the relations of landlord and tenant at this moment was hounding the landlords to carry on those wholesale clearances which have been described in the words of Sir Robert Peel and Captain Kennedy ; which, in the opinion of Earl Grey, were ' a disgrace to a civilized country ;' 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 blackest records in all history of man's inhumanity to man. In the year after the exhortation of the Prime Minister to voluntary agreements ' for the benefit of both,' the landlords evicted, according to some authorities, no less than half a million of tenants from their estates. As the Ministers were opposed to any land legislation, no success naturally attended the efforts of private members to deal with the questiou. Two other facts must also be recollected in connection with this period. * Hansard, C, p. 943, S p. 915, 3iJ M p. 945, THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. The final split between Young Ireland and O'Connell was p-recipitated, it will be remembered, by the attitude which O'Connell insisted on taking up towards the Whig Ministry. The Young Irelanders maintained that the Irish Party should hold towards Russell the same independent attitude as had been taken up towards the Tory Ministry of Peel ; that the repeal agitation should be continued, and that the nominees of the Whig Ministry, like Sheil, should meet the same opposition as all other op- ponents of Repeal and all other British office-holders. O'Connell's main argument against these demands of the Young Irelanders was the good intentions and the promises of Lord John Russell ; and he over and over again asserted that the Whig Ministry would pass measures of reform for Ireland, — among others, of course, a Bill of Tenant Right. The Young Irelanders would not place the same faith in Whig promises as O'Connell, the organization was broken up, O'Connell's power was destroyed, the Irish people were divided and impotent in face of the most awful crisis in their history, and O'Connell died of a broken heart. And here was Lord John Russell, on whom O'Connell had placed his reliance, to whose good faith O'Connell sacrificed his party and himself and his country, justifying the very worst predictions of the Young Irelanders, wrecking the hopes and blasting the lives of the Irish nation. It is the second great occasion, described in these pages, of an Irish leader placing confidence in a Whig Minister. In each case the result was exactly the same ; the trust was betrayed, openly, shamelessly, heartlessly. Furthermore, it will be remembered that the great point of dispute between the Young Irelanders and John O'Connell in the General Election of 1847 was whether or no the Irish Party should consist of men pledged to accept no office from a British Minister, and bound to a policy of inde- pendence alike of Whig and Tory. John O'Connell maintained that such a pledge was unnecessary, and succeeded in defeating the Young Irelanders hip and thigh. The fruit was now showing itself. The Whig Minister was able to answer every demand for justice with flouts and jibes and sneers, for he had nothing to fear from a party of beggars and adventurers who daily besieged his doors with petitions for themselves or their friends. This is the fact that explains the brutal and shameful tergiversation of the British Premier, and that really accounts for the rejection of all the Irish demands for a redress of the grievances. The nation was shorn of two millions and a half of her people, and in the next decade her population was reduced by still another million. Faith in Whig promises — a de- pendent Irish Party — these were the chief parents of these disasters. Let us continue the dreary chapter of Land proposals in the House of Commons On February 25, 1847, Mr. Sharman Crawford brought in a Bill pro- posing to extend to the rest of Ireland the tenant-right custom which existed in Ulster. So little did the Ministers think of the importance of this proposal, that not a single member of the Cabinet was present when the Bill was proposed ; and after the debate had been adjourned, it was rejected by the decisive majority of 112 to 25. In February, 1848, Sir William Somerville, Chief Secretary for Ireland, introduced a Bill dealing with the question. The fate of that measure has just been indicated. It was read a second time, it was referred to a Select Committee, and the Select Committee had not time to report before the close of the session. In the same year (1848) Mr. Sharman Crawford again brought in his Bill. It was denounced by Mr. Trelawney s an English member, as a measure of THE GREAT CLEARANCES. confiscation. Sir William Somerville demolished the suggestion of ex- tending the tenure of Ulster to the rest of Ireland by the epigram that the Ulster custom was good custom, but bad law ; and the Bill was defeated. On July 23, 1S49, Mr. Horsman moved an address on the state of Ireland, pointing out that that country was now entering on its fourth year of famine, and that sixty per cent, of its population were in receipt of relief. ' What are the causes which have produced such results V asked Mr. Horsman. 'Bad legislation, careless legislation, criminal legislation, has been the cause of all the disasters we are now deploring.' But bad legislation, careless legislation, criminal legislation remained untouched, for the debate was followed by no measure. In 1850 Sir William Somer- ville brought in another Bill. It was read a second time, it was sent into committee, and then it was no longer heard of. On June 10 in the same year Mr. Sharman Crawford again brought in his Bill, and again was defeated. On April 8, 1851, Sir Henry Barron moved for a committee ' to inquire into the state of Ireland, and more especially the best means for amending the relationships of landlord and tenant.' But Lord John Russell would hear nothing of such a resolution. If the law of landlord and tenant needed amendment, said the Liberal Prime Minister, the proper course to be taken was for some private member or for the Govern- ment to bring in a Bill on the subject, and not to raise the question by way of a resolution of a character so vague. And Lord John Russell from that day until he left office never brought in a Bill himself on the subject, nor supported a Bill brought in by a private member. The neglect of all reform in the land tenure of Ireland at this epoch, as in previous epochs, is made the more remarkable by its contrast with the action of the Legislature in reference to demands upon its attention by the landlords. The frightful state of things in 1S47 naturally produced a con- siderable amount of disturbance. Many of the tenants were indecent enoiigh to object to being robbed of their own improvements, even with the sanction of an alien Parliament, and went the length of revolting against their wives and children being massacred wholesale, after the fashion described in Captain Kennedy's reports. In short, the Rent was in danger, and in favour 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 thousands of the Irish tenantry should perish of hunger or of the plague. Parliament came together at the usual time in 1846, and at the usual time in the beginning of 1847. When the Rent was threatened, Parliament could not be summoned too soon, and a Coercion Bill could not be carried with too much promptitude. The Coercion Bill of Lord John Russell and of 1847 was in all essentials the Coercion Bill of Sir Robert Peel and 1846. There were powers to pro- claim districts by the Lord-Lieutenant, and when a district was proclaimed, everybody was obliged to stop within his house from dusk till morning under pain of transportation. There were orders for the delivery of arms, for the drafting of additional police into districts, and for the addition of the burdens thus imposed to the rates already payable by the starving tenants. The reader will not fail to notice the abject inconsistency between the action of Lord John Russell and the other Whig leaders in opposition and in power. It will not be necessary to recall the quotations which have just been made from the speech of Lord John Russell in opposing the 76 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Coercion Bill of 1846. Suffice it to say that while in 1846 he had objected to the Coercion Bill, 1 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 accompany any measure which tended to 'increased rigour of the law,' Lord John Russell was now himself proposing a measure for greatly ' in- creased rigour of the law,' not only without accompanying it with any measure of ' relief, of remedy, of conciliation ' on his own part, but vehe- mently opposing any such measure when brought in by any other person. Lord Grey has been quoted for his opinion on the clearance system ; here was the clearance system going on worse than ever, and Lord Grey remained a member of the Ministry which through coercion gave that clearance system an enormous impetus. The police at the same time were urged to unusual activity, and large bodies of the military even were pressed into the service of the landlords, seized the produce 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 with the landlord the honour of starving the tenants. A second contrast between the acceptance of remedial and coercive legislation by the Imperial Parliament occurred 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 Parlia- ment, had sought the desperate 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. The action of the very same statesmen towards Ireland was to pass a brand-new Treason Felony Act, and to sus- pend the Habeas Corpus Act. The circumstances under which the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended are very instructive. 4 The next day, although, being Saturday, it was out of course for the House of Commons to sit,' says the ' Annual Register n of the Coercion Bill of 1848, Parliament came together. Lord John Russell brought for- ward his Bill. Sir Robert Peel at once ' gave his cordial support to the proposed measure.' 2 Mr. Disraeli ' declared his intention of giving the measure of Government his unvarying and unequivocal support.' 3 Mr. Hume was ' obliged, though reluctantly, to give his consent to the measure of the Government.' 4 And when the division came, there were for the amendment against the Bill proposed by Mr. Sharman Crawford eight votes, and for the first reading of the Bill 271. 5 But this was only the beginning of the good day's work. Lord John Russell said that, ' as the House had expressed so unequivocally its feeling in favour of the Bill, it would doubtless permit its further stages to be proceeded with instanter. He moved the second reading.' 6 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 4 Annual Register,' ' the Bill was proposed by the Marquis of Lansdowne, who concluded his speech in its favour by moving, "That the public safety requires that the Bill should be passed with all possible despatch." ' Of 1 1 Annual Register ' for 1848, p. 100. 4 lb., p. 106 2 lb., p. 102. 5 p. 107 3 lb., p. 105. 6/6., p. 108. THE GREAT CLEARANCES. 11 course the motion was accepted by their Lordships ' that the Bill should be passed with all possible despatch.' Lord Brougham 'cordially seconded the motion of Lord Lansdowne,' and, as the 'Register ' winds up, 'the Bill passed nem. dis. through all its stages.' Such was the action of the Imperial Parliament upon the Irish question. The agitation for Repeal, which had reached such mighty and apparently resistless proportions in 1843, had vanished amid dissensions, hunger, fever, emigration, and a vast multitude of corpses. The upholders of the Legisla- tive Union were able to look abroad on the face of Ireland, and to rejoice that sedition, in the shape of the demand for Repeal, and treason, in the form of open insurrection, was gone. The Imperial Parliament was un- checked mistress of the destinies of Ireland ; and this was how it was fulfilling its mission. And now, having described the Famine, but two questions remain to be discussed. Was the Famine inevitable ? or was it preventable evil — evil that was created by bad, and that could have been prevented by good, government ? I have sufficiently debated already the measures which were taken by the English Ministers to meet the calamity. I think most impartial men will see in the results which followed these measures a dread condemnation of these Ministers. Most persons will hold that a civilized, highly organized, and extremely wealthy government ought to be able to meet such a crisis as the Irish Famine so effectually as to prevent the loss of one single life by hunger. I have already alluded to the language in which some Irish writers are accustomed to speak of the actions and intentions of the Government. Their theory is that the terrors and horrors of the Famine were the result of a deliberate conspiracy to murder wholesale an inconvenient, troublesome, and hostile nation. Such a theory may be promptly rejected, and yet leave a heavy load of guilt on the Ministers. In political affairs we have to look not so much to the intentions as to the results of policies ; and it is undeniable that in 1846 and in 1847 there were as many deaths as if the deliberate and wholesale murder of the Irish people had been the motive of English statesmanship. Statesmen, I say, must be judged by the results of their policy. The policy which created the Famine was the land legislation of the British Parliament. The refusal of the British Legislature to interfere with rack-rents ; the refusal to protect the improvements of the tenants; the facilities and inducements to wholesale evictions — these were the things that produced the Famine of 1846 ; and such legislation, again, was the result of the government of Ireland by a Legislature independent of Irish votes, Irish constituencies, Irish opinion. This must also be said, that the Act of Union, which produced the Famine, and then aggravated it to the unsurpassable maximum, had also the effect of increasing the existing hatred between the English and the Irish nations ; and the strangest and saddest thing about it, is that the increase of hatred was undeserved by the one nation and by the other. The hatred of England for Ireland was caused by Ireland's political opinions ; and Ireland's political opinions were right. The hatred of Ireland for England was caused by England's political action, and England's political action was conscientiously taken, and, above all, was the outcome of a good, and not of an evil, heart. The chief cause of the hatred of England for Ireland was the agitation for the Repeal of the Union, followed by the abortive rebellion. Peel says so in his ' Memoirs. 1 73 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. ' There will be no hope,' wrote Peel in the Memorandum he submitted to bis Cabinet on November 1, 1845, 'of contributions from England for the mitigation of this calamity. Monster meetings, the ungrateful return for past kindness, the subscriptions in Ireland to repeal rent and O'Connell tribute, will have disinclined the charitable here to make any great exertions fcr Irish relief.' 1 But what testimony could be so overwhelming, so tragic, in favour of Repeal of the Union as the Irish Famine, with all its attendant horrors of plague, emigration, eviction ? And so the hatred of England for Ireland was hideously unjust. On the other hand, it is easy to understand how the Irish should have been embittered to frenzy when they saw the dominant nation, that claimed and had carried its superior right to govern, so performing its functions of government that roads throughout Ireland were impassable with the gaunt forms of the starving, or the corpses of the starved, and that every ship was freighted with thousands fleeing from their homes. Tc this day the traveller in America will meet Irishmen who were evicted from Ireland in the great clearances of the Famine time; there is a strange glittei in their eyes, and a savage coldness in their voice as they speak of these things, and their bitterness is as fresh as if the wrong were but of yesterday. It was these clearances, and the sight of wholesale starvation and plague, far more than racial feelings, that produced the hatred of English government which strikes the impartial Americans as some- thing like frenzy. It was the events of '46 and '47, of '48 and '49, that sewed in Irish breasts the feelings that in due time produced eager sub- scribers to the dynamite funds. And yet, I say again, while the hatred of the English institutions which produced these horrors was just, the hatred of the English people themselves was net deserved. The English people, indeed, did much to earn very different sentiments. 'No one,' writes Justin McCarthy, whose feelings in these days, as will be seen by-and-by, were keen enough to make him a rebel, 'could doubt the goodwill of the English people.' 2 Relief societies were formed almost everywhere. ' The British Association for the Relief of Extreme Distress in Ireland, and the Highlands and Islands of Scot- land,' collected no less a sum than £263, 251. 3 A Queen's letter was raised with the same object, and no less than £171,533 were collected. I have myself beard an Englishman say that he remembered the Famine because, being a child at the time, he was not permitted to take butter with his bread, in order that some money might be saved for the starving poor of Ireland. It was, then, not the English people that were to blame for the horrors of the Irish Famine, excepting so far as they were responsible for their choice of representatives, and for the maintenance of English institu- tions in Ireland. It was the British Parliament and the British Ministers *;hat worked the wholesale slaughter of Irishmen, and that produced the murderous hatred of so many cf the Irish race for England. In other words, the Act of Union is the great criminal. It is the government of Ireland by Englishmen and by English opinion that has the double result of ruining Ireland and endangering England — of producing much unde- served and preventable suffering to Irishmen, and much undeserved and preventable trouble and hatred to England. 1 ' Memoirs,' by Sir R. Feel. Part III., p. 143. 2 ' History of Our Own Times.' » Census Commissioner quoted from Trevelyan's 1 Irish Crisis,' p. 288. THE GREAT CLEARANCES. 79 The second point that requires discussion is, whether the Famine was •voidable or unavoidable. John Mitchel speaks of the Famine as an * artificial ' famine, and other Irish writers maintain that, in spite of the loss of the potato, there was enough of food produced in Ireland during these very famine years to have prevented a single person in the country from dying of starvation. I have already made mention of the fact that ships were bearing away from the ports of Ireland wheat and cattle in abundance ; and I have quoted the observation of Lord John Russell, pointing to the fact that in the year 1847 the wheat crop, instead of being under, was above the average. "We have no trustworthy statistics in reference to the live stock and agricultural produce of Ireland in the years 1845 and 1816 — for it was not till 1847 that statistics on this head were collected in a regular manner. But we have fairly trustworthy statistics with regard to the export of produce in the first of those two years, and also to the export of produce and live stock in the second. First dealing with the year 1845, the following are the statistics of the export of produce for 1845 and the four preceding years i 1 Tear. "Wheat and wheaten flour. Barley iiicludiiig here or bigg- Oats and oatmeal. Eye. Peas. Beans. Malt TotaL 1841 1S42 1S43 1844 1845 qrs. 218.708 201,998 413,466 440,152 779,113 qrs. 75,568 50,297 110,449 90,656 93,095 qrs. 2,539,380 2,261,435 2,648,032 2,242,308 2,353,985 qrs. 172 76 371 264 165 qrs. 855 1,551 1,192 1,091 1,644 qrs. 15,907 19,831 24,329 1S,5S0 12,745 qrs. 4.935 3,046 8,643 8,155 11,144 qrs. 2.855.525 2.538.234 3.200.482 2,801,204 3,251,901 It will be seen from this that the export of wheat and wheaten flour, instead of being diminished in 1845 by the blight of the potato and the con- sequent famine, was enormously increased. The number of quarters ex- ported in 1845, 779,113, is nearly double that exported in the two preceding years, and considerably more than treble that exported in the years 1841 and 1842. The export of barley, 93,095 quarters, is larger than any of the preceding years except 1843. In oats, the export is about the average. The grand total of exported produce is nearly 1,000,000 quarters beyond the exports of 1841, 1842, and 1844, and is higher than the export of 1843, which had the largest export of the preceding four years. 2 The exports of articles of food in 1846 were : Quarters. Wheat and wheat flour 393.462 Barley, etc 92,854 Oats and oatmeal 1,311,592 Peas 2,227 Beans ... 14,668 Malt .„ 11,329 Total 1,826,132 3 1 McCulloch, ' Dictionary of Commerce,' latest edition, by A. J. Wilson, p. 450. * Thorn's ' Almanack ' for 1848 states that the total imports of Irish produce into Iiverpool alone increased in value from £4,149,428 in 1S42 to £6,383,498 in 1846. 3 McCulloch, ' Dictionary of Commerce,' p. 450. So THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Here there is a considerable reduction as compared with the figures of the preceding years, but still there remains a total of 1,826,132 quarters of food exported from a starving nation. Coming now to the export of live cattle, here are the figures for 1846 : Oxen, bulls, and cows „ ... 186.483 Calves 6,363 Sheep and lambs 259,257 Swine 480,827 1 These figures of exported cattle from Ireland in the midst of the horrors of 1846 make a very formidable total indeed. Passing on to 1847, we find the exportation of food to be as follows \ Quarters Wheat and wheat flour „ 184,024 Barley, etc 47,527 Oats and oatmeal 703,465 Rye 1,498 Peas 4,659 Beans 22,361 Malt ... ~ 5,956 Total M 969,490 This is the total quantity of produce, excluding potatoes : a Description of Crops. Extent under Crops. Quantity of Produce. Statute acres. Quarters. Wheat ... « 743,871 2,926,733 Oats ... ^ 2,200,870 11,521,606 Barley .,. ^ 283,587 1,379,029 Bere 49,068 274,016 Rye 12,415 63,094 Beans 23,768 84,456 Total ),313,579 16,248,934 The live stock of the year is estimated in the agricultural returns as being of the value of £24,820,547, and Thorn calculates that the value of the stock and agricultural produce together amounted to £38,528,224.* 1 McCulloch, ' Dictionary of Commerce,' p. 450. 8 Census Commissioners' Report. 1851, p. 281. I Thorn's ' Almanack,' 1848* THE GREAT CLEARANCES. %\ In 1848 the agricultural returns of cereal crops were : l Description of Crops. Extent of land under Crops. Quantity of Produce. Quarters Wheat Stat 5 U 65 J 7T6 3 ' 1,555,500 Oats 1,922,406 9,050,490 Barley 243,235 1,135,120 Bere 53.058 263.415 Rye ... 21,502 105,375 Beans and peas ... 50,749 172,508 Exports of produce in 1848 are : Quarters. Wheat and wheat flour 304,873 Barley 79,885 Oats and oatmeal 1,546,568 Rye 15 Peas 2,572 Beans 12,314 Malt 6,365 Total .„ .„ ... 1,952,592 2 In the same year the value of the live stock is given in the official returns as £23,112,518.3 Official returns give the subjoined figures as to the cereal crops in 1849 : 4 Description of Crops. Extent under Crops. Quantity of Produce. Wheat ... .„ Oats Barley Bere Rye Beans and peas Total cereal crops Statute acres. 687,646 2,061,185 290.690 60.819 20,168 59,916 Barrels. 3,641,198 15,738,073 2,441,176 496.037 164,877 1,436,262 bushels 3,174,424 2,182,514 tons In the same year the value of the live stock was £25,692,617. 5 Food produce sent to Great Britain in 1849 amounted to : 1 Census Commissioners' Eeport, 1S51, p. 308. 2 McCulloch, ' Dictionary of Commerce,' p. 450. 3 The valuation of the live stock is founded on the same estimate of prices a3 in 1841. The returns for 184S do not include Waterford, Tipperary, and the metropolitan district of Dublin, the inquiry in these parts of the country being abandoned on account of the disturbed state of the country. * Census Commissioners' Report, 1851, p. 315. 5 lb. 82 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Quarters Wheat and wheat flour 234,680 Barley ... 46,400 1 123 469 Rye 414 Peas 3,369 Beans ... 22,450 Malt 5,181 Total 1,435,963! These figures may well be left to tell their own tale. One thing necessary to bear in mind in considering the number of quarters of foods exported from Ireland is that one quarter of wheat is equal to 392 pounds of flour, or to 470 pounds of bread, 2 and this has been calculated as about the average annual consumption of an individual. It is a simple sum in multiplication to find how many daily rations of bread for starving peasants were exported in each of these years. A second basis of calculation is a comparison between the value of the live stock and the agricultural produce in any of these years, and the amount of money which was required for meeting the distress. The Soup Kitchen Act (Relief Act, 10 Vict., c. 7) came into operation in March, 1847, and ceased on September 12, in the same year. Under this Act there were in July, 1847, three million twenty thousand seven hundred and twelve per- sons who received separate rations in one day. We have thus an easy means of calculating what the feeding of the people in distress in Ireland would cost for these months. The period of distress during which this Act operated was the very worst period of the whole cycle of years. The number requiring relief then reached the highest point, and therefore we have in this sum, spent under this Act, a maximum beyond which the numbers de- pending on Governmental or public aid, ought not to go. The sum, then, authorised under this Act was £2,200,000 ; the sum actually spent was £1,676,268 : 3 in other words, about a million and a half. Put this sum of a million and a half beside some of the figures which have just been quoted. It is, for instance, one-sixteenth of the value of the live cattle in Ireland in this same year of 1847. Taking the value of the cattle, sheep, and swine on the figures of 1841, the value of the total exported was £1,988,492. Thus there was exported in cattle, sheep, and swine alone in this year — to say nothing whatever of the 969,490 quarters of cereals — nearly half a million more in money value than was required to feed three millions of starving people in the same year. Finally, a million and a half was the amount spent under the Soup Kitchen Act, and the absentee rents alone were five millions sterling. The position, then, is this. The landlords took from the tenants all the produce, ' minus the potatoes necessary to keep them from famine ' — to fall back upon the phrase of John Stuart Mill. When the potatoes failed, the remainder of the produce, instead of being divided between the landlords and the tenants, was sent to either home or foreign markets for the purpose of paying the rent of the landlords. In other words, it was the consump- tion of food by rent instead of by the people that produced the Famine. It was, as Mitchel calls it, an artificial Famine — starvation in the midst oi food. 1 McCulloch, ' Dictionary of Commerce,' p. 450. 3 Thorn's ^Almanack,' "V848. 3 Census Commissioners' Report, pp. 287, 288. THE GREAT CLEARANCES. Meantime a change had come over Ireland which has been noted by every writer, either during or since that time. Testimony is unanimous as to the sadness and the completeness of this change. 4 Here are twenty miles of country, sir,' said a dispensary doctor to me, ' and before the Famine there was not a padlock from end to end of it. Under the pressure of hunger, ravenous creatures prowled around barn and store-house, stealing corn, potatoes, cabbage, turnips — anything, in a word, that might be eaten. Later on, the fields had to be watched, gun in hand, or the seed was rooted up and devoured raw. This state of things struck a fatal blow at some of the most beautiful traits of Irish life. It destroyed the simple confidence that b lted no door ; it banished for ever a custom which throughout the island was of a'most universal obligation — the housing for the night, with cheerful welcome, of any poor wayfarer who claimed hospitality. Fear of "the fever," even where no apprehension of robbery was entertained, closed every door, and the custom once killed off has not revived. A thousand kindly usages and neighbourly courtesies were swept away. When sauve qui peut has resounded throughout a country for three years of alarm and disaster, human nature becomes contracted in its sympathies, and "every one for himself " becomes a maxim of life and conduct long after. The open-handed, open-hearted ways of the rural population have been visibly affected by the " Forty-seven ordeal." Their ancient sports and pastimes everywhere disappeared, and in many parts of Ireland have never returned. The outdoor games, the hurling-match, and the village dance are seen no more.' 1 The Famine,' says Gavan Duffy, 4 swallowed things more precious than money and money's worth, or even than human lives. The temperance reformation, the political training of a generation, the self-respect, the purity and generosity which distinguished Irish peasants, were sorely wasted. Out of the place of the damned, a sight of such piercing woe was never seen as a Munster workhouse, with hundreds of a once frank and gal- lant yeomanry turned into sullen beasts, wallowing on the floor as thick as human limbs could pack. Unless, indeed, it were that other spectacle of the women of a district waiting in pauper congregation around the same edifice for outdoor relief. New and terrible diseases sprang out of this violation of the laws of nature. There was soon a workhouse fever, a work- house dysentery, a workhouse ophthalmia ; and children, it was said, were growing up idiots from imperfect nourishment. In eight of the worst poor-law unions, the contract coffin left the workhouse seventy times a week with the corpse of a human being. The ophthalmia often carried with it consequences more painful than death, when it left the sufferer unfit to earn his bread any more in the world. There were upwards of 2,000 cases of this disease within ten months in the Tipperary Union, and as many in the Limerick Union. In Tipperary, Sir William Wilde, one of the Census Commissioners, saw eighty-seven patients whose sight was permanently damaged, eighteen incurably blind figures, thirty-two who had lost one eye. In Connaught, where poverty was long the chronic condition of the country, the famine had actually created a new race of beggars, bearing only a dis- tant and hideous resemblance to humanity. Wherever the traveller went in Galway or Mayo, he met troops of wild, idle, lunatic-looking paupers wandering over the country. Gi ay-headed old men, with faces settled into a leer of hardened mendicancy, and women filthier and more frightful than harpies, who at the jingle of a coin on the pavement swarmed in myriad* 1 A. M. Sullivan's ' New Irela d,' pp. 67, 68. 6—2 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. from unseen places, struggling, screaming, shrieking for their prey like monstrous and unclean animals. Beggar-children, beggar-girls, with faces gray and shrivelled, met you everywhere ; and women with the more touch- ing and tragic aspect of lingering shame and self-respect not yet effaced. I saw these accursed sights, and they are burned into my memory for ever. Poor, mutilated, and debased scions of a tender, brave, and pious stock, they were martyrs in the battle of centuries for the right to Hve in their own land, and no Herculaneum or Pompeii covers ruins so memorable to me as those which lio buried under the fallen roof -trees of an " Irish extermi- nation." ' 1 These two pictures from brilliant writers agree with hundreds of others drawn by Irish pens. It is certain that to-day Ireland is the saddest country in this world of many countries and many tears. With the Famine joy died in Ireland ; the day of its resurrection has not yet come. One word finally. The population of Ireland by March 30, 1851, at the same ratio of increase as held in England and Wales, would have been 9,018,799 — it was 6, 552, 385. 2 It was the calculation of the Census Com- missioners that the deficit, independently of the emigration, represented by the mortality in the five Pamine years, was 985,366, 3 nearly a million of people. The greater proportion of this million of deaths must be set down to hunger, and the epidemics which hunger generated. To those who died at home must be added the large number of people who, embarking on vessels or landing in America or elsewhere with frames weakened by the Pamine or diseases resulting from the Famine, perished in the manner already described. Father O'Rourke, 4 calculating these at 17 per cent, of the emi- gration of 1,180,409, arrives at the total of 200,668 persons who died either on the voyage from their country or on their arrival at their destination. This would raise the total of deaths caused through the Irish Famine to upwards of a million of people. CHAPTER V. THE GREAT BETKAYAL. At last it seemed as if the very excess of the evil was about to produce its own remedy. The wholesale evictions filled the peasants of the south with a desperate resolve to make another attempt for the relief of their position ; and the rack-renter in Ulster was gradually working up that province to a state of feeling as bitter as that of the southern counties. For the Ulster farmer was finding that the Ulster custom gave him no security against the increase of his rent, and that thus the large amount of capital he invested in the purchase of the tenant right of the farm was turning out a disastrous investment. In this way the north and south were ripe for a new move- ment in favour of tenant right. The movement, when started, was not long in gaining strength ; the leaders in the different parts of the country saw and understood each other; and a combination was made between the tenant- right leaders of the north and of the south. 1 Extract from Lecture on ' Why is Ireland poor and discontented ?' delivered in the Polytechnic Hall, Melbourne, on February 23, 1870, by the Hon. Gavan Duffy, M.P. London : Burns, Oates & Co., and Dublin : James Duffy. Printed with ' Is Ireland Irreconcilable t an article, reprinted from the Dublin Review, by John Cashel Hoey. 3 Census Commissioners' Report, 1851, p. g4§ ; 3 lb., p. 246. 4 Jb„ p. 499. THE GREAT BETRAYAL. §5 This union had elements of hope for the future of Ireland beyond the mere chance of settling the Land Question. Everybody knows that religious dissensions have been the most fruitful cause of that division among the Irish people by which their oppressors have been able to conquer and to hold them. Here were the Presbyterians of the north standing on the same platform as the Catholics of the south — fighting against the same relentless enemy, and for the same sacred rights. The hopefulness of the spectacle is best proved by the fears and condemnation which it received. Religious bigots were in a terrible state of alarm, and prophesied woeful things. The leader of this odious feeling in the north was a clergyman named Dr. Cook, a man of great eloquence and of great force of cha- racter, who was for nearly half a century the most commanding force in the Presbyterian Church. He was a Conservative of the Conservatives, and hated his religious opponents with the fervour of the Middle Ages. But the demand for tenant right made itself heard even in the conventions where he was the most prominent and powerful figure. For such demands he had nothing but condemnation. They were Socialism, Communism, and the like, and it all came from the original abomination of Presbyterian clergymen associating with the servants of Baal in the shape of the Catholic clergymen. Nevertheless, this unholy alliance went on, gathered strength as it pro- ceeded, and might have led to a permanent alliance on the basis of common triumphs which would have been full of blessings for all the Irish race. The movement at last took shape, and a circular was sent around calling for a Tenant Eight Convention. The circular itself was a proof of the change that was coming over the times. It was signed by three men, among others — all members of different creeds — by Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Gray, an Episcopalian Protestant; by Dr. MacKnight, a Presby- terian ; and by Mr. Frederic Lucas, a Catholic. In obedience to this call an influential meeting was assembled on August 6, 1850, in the City Assembly House, "William Street, Dublin. ' The sharp Scottish accent of Ulster,' writes A. M. Sullivan, describing the gathering, ' mingled with the broad Doric of Munster. Presbyterian ministers greeted Popish priests with fraternal fervour. Mr. James Godkin, editor of the staunch covenanting Derry Standard .... sat side by side with J ohn Francis Maguire, of the ultramontane Cork Examiner. Magistrates and landlords were there ; while of tenant delegates, every province sent up a great army.' 1 It is curious to look back in this year on the proposals put forward at this convention. The resolutions practically demanded what have since come to be known as the three ' F's ' — Fixity of Tenure, Free Sale, and Fair Bents. Another question which has since been made familiar also came before the convention. This was the question of the arrears of rent. It was represented that during the period of Famine it was perfectly impos- sible for the tenants to pay any rent, large or small ; and that if the land- lords chose to insist on their rights they could evict the greater part of the whole Irish population. Accordingly, a resolution was passed to the effect that the arrears should be subjected to inspection by a valuator ; that he should estimate the amount due on consideration of the prices and other circumstances of the Famine period ; that he should compare the actual amount paid in rent by the tenant to the landlord : and that if there were 1 'New Ireland,' p. 149. 86 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. any balance still due on such a comparison, it sliQuld be paid to the land, lords in instalments spread over a certain period. To any impartial reader who has read the pages in which the story of the Famine has been told, this proposal will not appear to be very unreasonable ; but the times were not ripe for reason on the Irish Land Question. The arrears of the Famine period were allowed to continue ; they came to form a dread feature of the Irish peasant's life under the name of the 1 hanging gale ;' and for thirty-four years the ' hanging gale ' was allowed to realise its ill-omened name, leaving the fortunes and the lives of nearly a hundred thousand families at the absolute mercy of their landlords. The movement which was thus initiated took the country by storm, and was the first break in the disastrous gloom that had overhung everything since the advent of the Famine and the downfall of O'Connell. Fa nine had now apparently done with the country — at least, for an interval ,' the cataclysm under which the wretched party returned in 1847 had been able everywhere to debauch or deceive constituencies and drive all public honesty out of the representation of the country was now in the past, and there seemed a chance once more for the country, for constitutional agitation, and for honest and unselfish public men. Gavan Duffy thought the season so promising that he consented to stand for a constituency ; and his newspaper wrote of the movement and of the coming time in a strain of sanguine expectation, which, representing as it did the hopes of the country generally, makes darker the tragedy in which these hopes were eclipsed. ' On as solemn a summons,' writes the Nation, Duffy's paper, 1 as ever drew men together in any nation of this earth, since the sun first reached her solstice over it, do the delegates of the Irish people assemble on next Tuesday. ... In a people beggared, broken, brutalized in some sense, they have undertaken to inspire the vigour and the comeliness of independence. They gird their strength to redeem a fallen land to its true place in the zodiac of nations. And, before God and man, they are amenable for griev- ous ignorance of the opportunity, and a heavy dereliction of duty, if the next week pass unused or misused by them.' The most promising feature of the new movement was that it put a de- finite, a single, a great and absorbing issue before the country. The farmers formed still the majority of the electorate : they were known to be ready to stand by the representatives of their interests, in spite of the omnipotence still exercised over them by the landlord ; and of course they were united to a man in the demand for security for their industry and their homes. They had the will and they had the power to return a majority of the Irish representatives ; and an Irish Party has since shown that a body of men, earnest and honest, resolute and united, can wring from a Ministry a great measure of land reform, without even being the majority of the Irish repre- sentatives. It is no exaggeration, then, to say that the Tenant Right movement of 1850 might have succeeded in all its purposes : might have won fixity of tenure and free sale and fair rent, might then have gone on successfully to the demand for Home Rule, and might thus have saved Ireland a quarter of a century of the darkest and most bitter events in her history. But it was not to be. The movement that began in such hope and with go many promises of complete success ended in fiercer, completer, more THE GREAT BETRAYAL. 8? enduring disaster than any of those which had preceded it. Two men were mainly responsible for this : the one was a weak and foolish Englishman, the other a strocg and an evil Irishman. The two men were Lord John Russell and William Keogh. The conference of the Tenant League took place, as has been seen, on August 6, 1850 ; in November 4. in the same year Lord John Russell pub- lished the 'Durham Letter.' This was the letter addressed to the Bishop of Durham in which he denounced the movement, howled at in that period and laughed at in this, as ' Papal aggression.' The Pope had changed the titles of the Catholic archbishops and bishops in England and Scotland from titles in partibus into titles borrowed from English places. Thus Cardinal "Wiseman was created Archbishop of Westminster. This inno- cent step called forth a tempest of indignation among the ignorant and fanatical in the English population. There rose one of those periodical ' No Popery ' storms, and there was a panic-stricken cry for legislation against the revival of the rule of the Pope. Lord John Russell was weak enough or mean enough to allow himself to be carried away by the ruling frenzy, wrote a letter in denunciation of the action of the Pope, and promised legislation. In Ireland this new move on the part of the British Minister provoked a counter-storm of popular passion as wild and as widespread. As the English people were startled by the bugbear of the ever-hateful Pope, the Irish were roused to fury by the dread that then- religion was once more, and in the nineteenth century, to be subjected to some renewal of the Penal Code, which is one of the worst and bitterest recollections in the history of English rule and Irish suffering. It was probable that in this feeling all other interests and passions would be swallowed up. This was the danger which the really honest members of the Tenant League foresaw. The ' No Popery ' agitation roused up again those passions between Irishmen of different creeds which had been submerged in the great movement for tenant right ; and the different creeds, forgetting their common wrongs and sufferings, might be drawn off by sectarian pas- sion from the Land question. While, then, the southern tenant-rightera sympathized with their countrymen in their hatred and contempt of the bigotry and the imbecility of Lord John Russell, they saw with consider- able misgiving the prominence which the new and the sectarian agitation was taking in the popular mind. There was another body of men, however, to which this new movement was a godsend. Of this party William Keogh and John Sadleir were the chief spokesmen — two of the most remarkable and most sinister figures in Irish history. Physically and mentally, Keogh was intended for a leader of democracy. Though small of stature, he had a chest of enormous depth, had a muscular and powerful frame, and a courage that was arrogant, audacious, inflexible. The face bespoke the immense moral and mental force of the man. In his earlier years it bore a singular resemblance to that of the first Napoleon, and even when it had grown flaccid and flabby, it still wore an appearance of dignity and strength. His look was calculated to inspire respect and even awe. Though ignorant of law and generally illiterate, he had a mar- vellous command of fluent, striking, vigorous language. He was coarse and vulgar in taste, and there was a dash of commonplace in everything he said. The Nation, which was his chief assailant throughout his political career, described his ' invective ' as a ' deluge of dirt,' and his 1 most pre- S3 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, tentious oratory ' as • a jumble of bog Latin and flatulent English.' But his words, set off by a sonorous voice, vivid gesture, and his expressive and commanding face, made him the idol of mobs and the most competent orator at popular meetings. At the time when he entered politics he embarked upon his new career as on a desperate chance that would lead on to great fortune or hopeless ruin. In one of the most exciting and critical moments of his career the bailiffs were said to be in his house, and even when he was fighting one of his hard electoral contests the House of Commons was wading through sheaves of his unpaid bills, in order to find whether he had the then necessary qualification of £300 a year over all his debts. But of this afterwards. A judicial office in Ireland was then, as indeed it is now, the haven in which the hard-pressed lawyer discovered wealth, ease, and dignity. On the principle that runs uniform through all the veins and arteries of English administration in Ireland, the salaries of judicial office are fixed at a figure far beyond what even the most successful lawyer is in the habit of making at the Bar. In fact, a puisne judgeship in Ireland occupies towards the working lawyer an exactly reverse position to that which it holds in England. In England, the lawyer who accepts a puisne judgeship, or even a much higher office, usually does so at an immense sacrifice of income ; in Ireland, the judicial office usually gives to the lawyer the first opportunity in his life of making something like an equilibrium between income and expenditure. Then the number of judges being far in excess of the require- ments of public business, the fortunate holders of the judicial office spend all the year in comparative, and nearly half the year in absolute, idleness. The judges in Ireland, too, are members of the Privy Council. They meet and discuss with the other great officers of the State questions of policy and of government, with a mixture of judicial and executive functions which in England would shock every accepted principle of sound administration. The Irish judge is, therefore, after his elevation to the Bench, at once an active and a combative politician — one of the rulers of the State. It was one of the worst features in a thoroughly unsound state of things that the puisne judge was often promoted to a higher office — the Chief Justiceship of his own Court, the Mastership of the Rolls, or the Lord Chancellor- ship. Sometimes he received a solace for being passed over in a great and highly-paid commission ; such as the Commissionership of the Irish Church Act, with a salary of £2,000 a year, that was conferred on Mr. Justice Lawson. To such a man as Keogh such an office offered the highest prize of fortune. It conferred high pay, and he was dreadfully needy ; dignity, and he was notoriously disreputable ; security, and his life was a series of hairbreadth escapes in the tempestuous sea of Irish politics. It is now clear that, from the first moment he embarked on a political career, a judgeship was Keogh's single purpose. For this end he was ready to don the livery of every political party in turn ; to pass through mud-baths of deception, lying and broken oaths ; to assume all the worst arts of the demagogue ; to be foul-mouthed, audacious, sometimes even murderous in advice ; and then to betray the mob as quickly and shamelessly as he had pandered to its worst passions. His first entrance into public life was in 1847. At that time he was known as a barrister without clients and without law ; indeed, at no period of his professional career, until he became a law officer of the Crown, did he obtain as much professional business as would keep the bloodhound of insur- THE GREAT BETRAYAL. §9 mountable debt from the door ; and never, to his dying day, did he master even the elementary principles of his profession. It was for my native town of Athlone that Keogh gtood. Tradition still retails many of his strange exploits. His courage, for instance, was over and over again proved by the absolute fearlessness with which he encoun- tered mobs inflamed with drink and the violent passions that election con- tests excite. He was known to march through the streets when a perfect hailstorm of stones were flying against him and his supporters. On one occasion, when he was delivering a speech from a window to a noisy and violent crowd, somebody threw a soda-water bottle at his head. ' That's a mighty bad shot, ,' said Keogh, mentioning the name of the person who had thrown the bottle — a well-known local politician. Equally are there stories of the desperate remedies to which men resort who are hard pressed for money and neither troubled by scruples nor abashed by shame. For instance, he is said to have raised money in several cases by the trick, not unknown to the London police courts, of borrowing five pounds on each half of a five-pound note. Then there is the dim recollection of a strange scene, which forecast the tragic end to his strange and evil career. One night he was expecting, as the tradition goes, some money from one of the political clubs of London in aid of his candidature. A near relative was to be the bearer of the much-needed treasure ; and when he arrived he had to announce that his mission was a failure. Keogh fell prone on the floor, grovelled there with the contortions and groans of one demented, and finally, when the agony had passed, rose up, went out into the town, and harangued the mobs with a self-confidence as great, a wit as ready, a hope- fulness as inflexible, as if his highest expectations had been realized. Another reason of his success was his conviviality. He was all through his life a heavy drinker, and loved all the pleasures of the table. However late the night or heavy the drinking, Keogh was always the first to rise in the morning ; and with the 1 terrible familiarity ' with men's names and characteristics, which was one of his talents, he was at the bedside of the companions of his debauch the next morning with a brandy-and-soda in his hand and the Christian name of the scarcely recovered inebriate in his mouth. In order to understand the history of the time, it is also necessary to know something of the constituency in which Keogh played these parts. In defence of my native town, I must premise that it was neither better nor worse than the majority of the Irish and the English constituencies of that period. Its eminence consisted in the fact that the number of the voters was small, and that, therefore, the amount of the bribe was high. It was generally computed that this bribe averaged £30 or £40 the vote ; and there were tales of a vote having run up to even £100 in one of Keogh's most hotly contested elections. The town, finely situated on the Shannon, with a large barracks and a castle old in story, plays an important part in the history of Ireland, and was for many centuries the most prosperous centre in the midland counties ; but the famine swept the country round, and for years before the period at which Keogh began to figure in its history, Athlone had been steadily deteriorating. A large number of its people were, therefore, engaged in a desperate struggle with hard fortune, and, though centuries old, the position of the town had some resemblance to one of the mushroom towns of the United States — say Virginia City — which| owing their rise to some accidental and transitory cause, like the discovery of a mine, have a season of extreme prosperity, and then for years continue 90 THE PARNELL MO VEMENT. the struggle with departing fortune. In such a town it is not surprising that the election played a prominent part. With many of the people the periodic bribe entered into the whole economy of their poor, shrivelled, squalid, weary lives. Men continued to live in houses that had better have lived in lodgings, because the house gave a vote. The very whisper of a dissolution sent a visible thrill through the town ; the prospect of common gain swallowed up amid the people all other passions, religious and political, and united ordinarily discordant forces in amity and brotherhood. There was, as there is, a tolerably strong minority of Protestants in the town ; between the Protestant and the Catholic there was in those days irrecon- cilable difference of political as well as of religious feeling ; and, indeed, there was rarely any social intercourse between people of the two creeds. But at election time the Catholic and the Protestant forgot their rivalries, remembered the interests only of their town, and fought strenuously and side by side in loving union for the man who gave the highest bribe. There was a highly respected Protestant tradesman in the town when I was a boy who had a large repute for political wisdom, and was generally esteemed ; and I remember hearing a well-known saying of his quoted M'hich put the philosophy of Irish electioneering in these times in a compendious form. ' I am a Protestant,' Ned used to say, ' and my father was a Pro- testant, and his father before him ; but the man I want to see returned for Athlone is the man that leaves the money in the town.' Such was the constituency, the representation of which Keogh sought in 1847. The circumstances of his candidature sufficiently foreshadowed his subsequent career. In that year, as has been seen, the supreme struggle in Ireland was between Young Ireland and the Repeal Party. But Keogh had no part in this struggle between different sections of Irish Nationalists. He knew his own purpose and he knew his constituency. Attachment to either of these two sections might have been inconvenient in subsequent years to a seeker after English office, and the constituency cared for the money and not for the politics of its candidates. He stood, then, as a member of an English party ; he called himself a Peelite. This political character had the additional advantage of being entirely indefinite ; foi this was the period of the schism between the Free Trade Conservatives under Sir Robert Peel and the Protectionist Conservatives under Mr. Disraeli ; and it was still an undecided question whether the healing of the schism would turn the Peelites back into the Conservative fold or its con- tinuance would transform them into Liberals. Another curious fact about the candidature of Keogh was that the expenses, or a portion of them, were paid by an Englishman. This was Mr. Attwood, the well-known banker. Mr. Attweod had some doctrines on the currency question which he was anxious to have advocated in Parliament, and he thought that the expenses of a contest in Athlone would be compensated for by the assistance of the glib and brilliant tongue of Keogh. Keogh was opposed by a local gentle- man named O'Beirne. Keogh was elected. The numbers at the poll tell their own tale of the state of the country and the character of the con- stituency. They were : Keogh, William 101 O'Beirne, William 95 But this success did not for some years bring Keogh any change in his desperate fortunes. It rather aggravated his difficulties. Professional business did not come ; the ©lection for Athlone was an expensive luxury THE GREAT BETRAYAL. 91 and cost more than Mr. Attwood had supplied, and Keogh was sunk in a profounder morass of debt than before. At the same election of 1847 John Sadleir had been returned for Carlow. In every respect Sadleir was the antithesis of Keogh. Keogh was garru- lous ; Sadleir was taciturn : Keogh was the boisterous and familiar bon vivant, with exuberant health and spirits ; Sadleir was reserved, unsocial, and had the sallow complexion of the man who neither cares for nor enjoys the pleasures of the table ; finally, Keogh was hopelessly poor, and Sadleir had the reputation of boundless wealth. John Sadleir was trained as a solicitor, and was intended by his people probably for the quiet life of an Irish lawyer. But he was ambitious and self-confident, and made for London. Here he became a ' Parliamentary agent, ' and gained an ac- quaintance with the financial state of Ireland which he afterwards turned to great use. He gradually drifted into a financier, seized with the idea of making a great fortune rapidly. He adopted an excellent plan to start with. The Irish farmer had not yet become to any large extent a depositor in banks ; Sadleir established the Tipperary Joint-Stock Bank. He came of a family that had the reputation of being wealthy, his own claim to financial ability was everywhere admitted, and the people deposited their money with the confidence of unquestioning faith. ' From the Shannon to the Suir,' writes A. M. Sullivan, 1 ' "Sadleir's bank" was regarded with as much confidence as " the old lady of Threadneedle Street " commands from her votaries.' The money which Sadleir thus obtained from the grimy pockets of the Irish farmers he invested in English speculations, became in this way intimate with the money market of London, and was made chair- man of the London and County Joint-Stock Bank. Every day he was credited with greater schemes and with more fabulous success. To such a man Parliament offered chances of still further increasing his wealth and satisfying his ambition. His large command of money gave him a great advantage in the political fortunes of Ireland, in that dread period of desolation and demoralization, and he conceived, and to a large extent carried out, the project of building up in the House of Commons a party bound to him by ties of blood or of financial aid. One cousin — Kobert Keatinge — was returned at the same time as himself for County Waterford ; Erank Scully, another cousin, was returned for Tipperary. This was at the 1847 election ; subsequently, in 1852, Mr. Vincent Scully, his nephew, was returned for County Cork. The Sadleirite party consisted, besides, of two brothers named O'Elaherty (Anthony and Edmund), of a Doctor Maurice Power, of Mr. Monsell (now disguised under the name of Lorxl Enily), and of Mr. William Keogh. How far and how many of these men were indebted to Sadleir for pecuniary assistance it is impossible, of course, to say ; but two of them were certainly in his pay — Edmund O'Elaherty and William Keogh. The desperate fortunes of Keogh craved for help wherever it might come from ; Sadleir on one occasion, as will be seen, sxibscribed £100 for his election expenses ; and subsequently the name of Keogh was to many of the bills which were put in circulation by Edmund O'Flaherty. Keogh said his name was forged ; possibly the state- ment was true ; but it would not be surprising if it were false. This is not an uncharitable or unwarrantable conclusion, as will be subsequently seen. The object of Sadleir and his associates was, of course, personal advance- ment, and personal advancement alone. But personal advancement could only be obtained from an English Minister ; and the rise of the new Tenant 1 1 New Ireland,' p. 157. 92 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Right movement, hostile to the principles of every English Ministry of that period, was, therefore, to the Sadleirites the omen of defeat, and not the augury of hope. It seemed probable that the movement would become- as every national movement before or since, that has ever got a chance in Ireland, has become — a great national force, impossible to resist ; and that no constituency would accept any man who did not fight in its ranks. Then an idea was being put forward which would be still more fatal to such purposes as those of Sadleir and Keogh. It will be remembered that the great point of controversy between Old and Young Ireland was as to the pledge against office-seeking. The break-up of the hideous party of 1847 gave terrible confirmation to the objections which the Young Irelanders had brought against the tribe of office-seekers, and all Ireland now agreed in the opinion that nothing was to be gained from any Ministry by any party but a party of independent men. Gavan Duffy, and the other survi- vors of Young Ireland who had joined in the new movement, insisted that the old pledge should be revived, pointing out that the Land Question could never be settled in any other way. Thus, then, the Tenant Right move- ment had two distinct principles — a principle as to the end to be attained, and a principle as to the policy for attaining it. The party not only be- lieved that Tenant Right was essential for the prosperity of Ireland, but believed as firmly that Tenant Right could only be won by an Irish Party which would oppose every Ministry that did not make Tenant Right a policy by which to stand or fall. In other words, the policy of the Tenant Righters was the very opposite of that of the Sadleirites ; the one wanted Tenant Right, and did not care for Ministries ; the other wanted office, and did not care for Tenant Right. The struggle was visible in the very earliest days of the Tenant Right movement ; its break-out was inevitable ; and if a struggle bad taken place while the country was united and enthu- siastic about Tenant Right, it is probable that Sadleir and Keogh would have been driven from public life and the Tenant Right battle have been won. But the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill produced the disastrous diversion that postponed this struggle. Sadleir and Keogh were not slow to see the use to which Lord John Russell's proposals could be turned. Of course, the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was a question upon which certain sections of the English people felt strongly at that moment. But Keogh and Sadleir probably knew that such outbursts of passion are as transitory as they are violent. Then the Bill was not a favourite with any English party ; Mr. Disraeli gave it at first but a half-hearted support on the part of the Con- servatives ; it had strong opponents in Mr. Gladstone, Sir James Graham, and the other Peelites ; and there was every reason to think that even Lord John Russell himself had no great joy in his legislative child. It was un- like Tenant Right, which menaced great interests, at that moment as supreme in the Lower as in the Upper House of Parliament, and which was equally unacceptable to all sections of Parliamentary opinion except the insignificant group of Radicals. On the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, then, a politician could be as violent as he pleased, without making himself ever- lastingly objectionable to anybody except to Mr. Newdegate ; while a strong position on the Land Question might mean permanent exclusion from office. Finally, Sadleir and Keogh knew the passionate attachment of tlie Irish people to their religion, and shrewdly calculated that any politician who was able to pose as a defender of that religion would establish a claim bo their confidence and affections which it would take much to shake. THE GREA T BE TRA YAL. 53 Accordingly, in the House of Commons, Keogh and Sadleir opposed the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill with extraordinary vehemence of language and of tactics. They exhausted the forms of the House, they fought the Bill obstinately and clause by clause. A portion of the Irish people, looking on at this struggle, were easily led to believe that it was heroic ; and the Sadleirites, playing upon another weakness, endeared themselves still further to Irish hearts by styling themselves 'the Irish Brigade' — the name of those exiled Irish warriors who fought heroically on every battle- field of Europe, after unjust laws had exiled them from their own country. By the English the party were known by the less flattering title of the ' Pope's Brass Band.' In Ireland, meantime, the two agitations went on side by side. Great Catholic demonstrations were everywhere held, and Sadleir was the organizer and Keogh the orator of these demonstrations. At these meetings the Bishops of the Catholic Church attended, and Keogh excelled everybody else in the extravagant fulsomeness of the eulogies which he poured upon their heads. It was a singular fatality that at this very period an Irish prelate was first getting into prominence who was destined to be a main though unconscious, and perhaps innocent, instrument in the game Keogh and Sadleir were playing. This was Paul Cullen, afterwards Cardinal Cullen and Archbishop of Dublin. At this period he had just been ap- pointed Archbishop of Armagh. He had been for many years the head of the Irish College in Rome, and it was a favourite reproach against him that he was more of a Roman monk than an Irish patriot. So far as I can gather his policy, he regarded it as his main if not sole duty to look after the interest of his Church, rather than the purely secular interests of politics. Eor this reason his whole political influence was thrown in on the side of any politician who had anything to give the Church. In after- struggles, Cardinal Cullen was always on the side of the ' Government ' as against all struggles of Nationalists, on the principle that England could do more for the interests of the Church than any National Party. England could serve the Church in Ireland through concessions on the education question ; she could serve the Church generally and in a wider area by her influence as a great power in the Councils of Europe; and she could tolerate or persecute millions of Catholics scattered through her world-wide empire. This policy — intelligible from the standpoint of the Churchman — Cardinal Cullen pursued for upwards of a quarter of a century with a purpose that never swerved, and with a devotion that belonged to a man whose life was swallowed up in his principles. At a period later than this, Cardinal Cullen had means for giving effect to his will so large as to make him the greatest standing force in Irish politics. The power of the Catholic clergy- man was almost unshaken ; throughout every town and village in Ireland the Catholic priest, strong in the affection of his flock, and, in the majority of cases, the best educated man in his district, was almost a politioiJ auto- crat ; and over the action of nearly every priest in Ireland Cardinal Cullen had control. He was the prelate whose voice was practically law at the Holy See in regard to all Irish ecclesiastical affairs ; a few clergymen who resisted his will were summarily crushed, and every vacancy in the episco- pate was filled with his nominees. Archbishop MacHale, and a few of the elder generation of prelates who had shared in O'Connell's struggle for re- peal of the Union, resisted his influence to the end ; but practically, for many years, Cardinal Cullen was the Catholic Church in Ireland, and had all that mighty organization under his word of command. 94 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, On August 19, 1851, a great meeting was held in the Rotunda, in Dublin, for the purpose of forming a 1 Catholic Defence Association.' Over this meeting Archbishop Cullen presided. Mr. John Sadleir was one of the secretaries, and William Keogh was the chief speaker. To the chairman of the meeting Keogh was laboriously complimentary. ' I now,' he said, ' as one of her Majesty's Counsel, whether learned or unlearned in the law, holding the Act of Parliament in my hand, unhesitatingly give his proper title to the Lord Bishop of Armagh.' These words received further em- phasis as he held the Act of Parliament thus defined in his outstretched hand. At a meeting of his constituents in Athlone he paid even higher court to Archbishop MacHale — who then, and for many years afterwards, exercised enormous influence. 'I see here,' said Keogh, 'the venerated prelates of my Church, first among them, " the observed of all observers," the illustrious Archbishop of Tuam, who, like that lofty tower which rises upon the banks of the yellow Tiber, the pride and protection of the city, is at once the glory and the guardian, the deem et tutamen of the Catholic religion.' John Sadleir was also one of the speakers at this meeting. Meantime the Tenant Right movement had been growing, and Keogh and Sadleir found it necessary to affect devotion to its purposes and policy. Over and over again they pledged themselves not to accept office from any Ministry that did not make Tenant Right a Cabinet question. Nor was this all. Under the example of the Tenant League, the Catholic Associa- tion also formulated the policy of pledging the Irish members to accept no office from any Ministry which did not make the Repeal of the Ecclesi- astical Titles Act a Cabinet question ; and to that pledge Keogh over and over again gave his adhesion. But Gavan Duffy, the other winters in the Nation and Freeman's Journal, and all the earnest Tenant Righters, still disbelieved in the ' Irish Brigade,' and Keogh and Sadleir were more than once accused of being office-seekers. These charges, repeated over and over again, made wider a distinct line of cleavage in the Tenant League, as the Tenant Right organization was called. The two parties were watchful and distrustful of each other, and Detween the two there arose a fight for life. The position of Sadleir and Keogh at this period was desperate. The fight in which they were engaged meant dazzling success or shameful and abysmal ruin. Sadleir, as will be Been, was reaching the point where he had to make the awful choice between the life of the convict and the death of the suicide. The position of Keogh was equally desperate. He was deeper than ever in debt ; as has been seen, the waiters at some of the entertainments in his house in Dublin were bailiffs in disguise ; arrest dogged his fleeing footsteps wherever he went, and arrest meant social, professional, political death. The hungry army of his creditors watched the rise and fall of his chequered fortunes with the wolfish glare of peasant depositors in a shaky bank ; the least slip or mishap, and they were down upon him, and then chaos was come again. It was possible that fate had a darker future for him than even enforced exile. How far he was acquainted with the financial enterprises of John Sadleir is not known, nor how deeply he was involved in the embezzlements of Mr. Edmund O'Flaherty. But he was an intimate and a debtor of the two men, and might well be implicated in some of their misdeeds. In his darker hours he may have shuddered at the thought that he had brought himself within the reach of the criminal law. The judicial bench or the convict's dock — these were the dread stakes that awaited the result of the game. THE ORE A T BETRA YAL, 95 And the game was one of the wildest chance. The whole national press of the country was against him. Sadleir had established a paper called the Catholic Telegraph. It was a journal of ultra-religious fervour, went into fits of lunacy over the Titles Bill, and while upholding Sadleir and Keogh as the spotless champions of the Church, shook its head sadly over the orthodoxy of Gavan Duffy and the other advocates of Tenant Right. But the Catholic Telegraph had not the power of the national journals, and day after day the Freeman's Journal, week after week the Xation, dogged the utterances, watched the shifts, exposed the devices of Sadleir and Keogh. The overwhelming majority of the country, too, believed in the Tenant Righters, and disbelieved in the Catholic champions. Against this mighty combination in front, Keogh had in his flank the few desperate shopkeepers of Athlone, whom his money had bought, and the money of another man could buy again. Thus attacked in front and behind, and from all sides, he had no weapons of defence but his tongue, his brazen audacity, his desperate courage, and the adhesion or neutrality of a certain number of Catholic bishops. These facts will explain to the reader the strange manoeuvres Keogh had to employ. The thing above all things he wanted was office ; the thing he was called above all things to forswear wa3 office. At all the meetings, then, whether of the Catholic Defence Association or the Tenant League, he was bound to be loud above all others in the pledge against taking office. ' As I said, Whigs or Tories, Peelites or Protectionists,' he said to his constituents at Athlone in the speech already alluded to, in which he paid Archbishop ISIacHale such fulsome compliments, ' are all the same to me. ... I know that in the career in which we are engaged we will have to meet open hostility. That we can do. We had, and I know we will have again, treacherous friends. These also we can dispose of. I will fight for my religion and my country, scorning and defying calumny, meeting boldly honourable foes, seeking out treacherous friends ; and, as long as I have the confidence of the people, I declare in the most solemn manner, before this august assembly, I shall not regard any party. / know that the road I take, does not lead to preferment. I do not belong to the Whigs ; I never will belong to the Whigs. I do not belong to the Tories ; / never will have anything to do with them.' Thus he had separated himself from the two great parties in the English Parliament. There was, however, a third party in the House of Commons, which was one of its most noticeable and important elements. This was the party of the Peelites — the party under whose banner Keogh had fought when first he stood for Athlone. From that party also the incorruptible patriot cut himself off. *I have read in the newspapers this morning,' he said, 'that Mr. Frederick Peel has joined the Whig Government, and that it is likely men of whose acquaintance I am proud, will become component parts of the Administration. Here, in the presence of my constituents and my country — and I hope I am not so base a man as to make an avowal which could be contradicted to-morrow, if I was capable of doing that which is insinuated against me — I solemnly declare, if there was a Peelite Administration in office to-morrow it would be nothing to me. ... If all the Peelite3 in the 96 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. House joined the Whig Administration, / would be their unmitigated, their untiring, their indefatigable opponent, until we obtain full justice.' 1 And then, to be completely explicit, he went on to define what he meant by the 1 full justice,' the attainment of which should precede any accept- ance of office. ' And what is that justice ? I can state the terms of it well. I will not support any party which will not make it the first ingredient of their political existence to repeal the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. I will not join any party which does not go much farther than that. I will have nothing to do with any party which, without interfering with the religious belief of the Protestant population, will not consent to remove from off the Catholics of this county the intolerable burden of sustaining the Church Establish- ment with which they are not in communion. ... And . . . I will not support any political party which does not make it part of its political creed to do all justice to the tenant in Ireland. I will not support any party which will not place on a satisfactory footing the relations of landlord and tenant.' 2 Nothing could be more explicit than this language, nothing more binding than those pledges ; the whole gospel of the Tenant League, and even something more, was subscribed to by Mr. Keogh. And yet — and yet the Tenant Leaguers were suspicious. The Freeman's Journal and the Nation still openly expressed their want of faith in even these solemn pledges of the champions of religion. An incident confirmed these doubts. In February, 1852, Lord John Russell was defeated by the combination of Lord Palmerston with the Conservatives on the Militia Bill, and the first Derby-Disraeli Administration came into office. Dr. Maurice Power, M.P. for Cork, was offered and accepted office as Governor of St. Lucia. Dr. Power was a foremost and active member of the ' Irish Brigade ;' and at once the Tenant Leaguers foretold that as Power had gone, so ako would go Sadleir and Keogh. These doubts were finally expressed to Keogh's face. Immediately after the promotion of Power, Keogh and Sadleir started Mr. Vincent Scully, a nephew of Sadleir, as their candidate. On Monday, March 8, 1852, Keogh was present at a meeting in the city of Cork in support of Mr. Scully. He had been assailed with even more than its usual vigour in that week's issue of the Nation. Mr. McCarthy Downing, who long years afterwards was member for County Cork, belonged to the Tenant Righters, and at this meeting openly expressed his doubts of the honesty of Keogh and Sadleir and the ' Irish Brigade.' 'I will tell the meeting fairly and honestly,' said Mr. Downing, ' that I believe the Irish Brigade are not sincere advocates of the Tenant Right question. I state that, and I believe it is in the presence of two of them. I attended two great meetings in the Music Hall in Dublin, at the inaugu- ration of the Tenant League, at my own expense, when a deputation waited upon the Brigade to attend the meeting, and I protest I never saw a beast drawn to the slaughter-house by the butcher to receive the knife with more difficulty than there was in bringing to that meeting the members of the Irish Brigade.' 3 1 ' A Record of Traitorism ; or, The Political Life and Adventures of Mr. Justice Keogh,' by T. D. Sullivan, p. 5. 8 lb., pp. 5, 6. 3 26., Jh T THE GREAT BETRAYAL. 9? Then up rose Mr. Keogh,' writes A. M. Sullivan, 1 'and never, perhaps, were his marvellous gifts more requisite than at this critical moment. The future fate and fortunes of his leaders and party hung on the turn affairs might take at this meeting, an open challenge and public charge having been thus flung down against them. There were a few hostile cries when he stood up, but silence was after a while obtained. With flashed countenance and heaving breast he burst forth in these words : ' "Great God !" he exclaimed, "in this assemblage of Irishmen, have you found that those who are most ready to take every pledge have been the most sincere in perseverance to the end ? or have you not rather seen that they who, like myself, went into Parliament perfectly unpledged, not supported by the popular voice, but in the face of popular acclaim, when the time for trial comes are not found wanting % I declare myself in the presence of the bishops of Ireland, and of my colleagues in Parliament, that let the Minister of the day be whom he may — let him be the Earl of Derby, let him be Sir James Graham, or Lord John Russell — it was all the same to us ; and, so help me God, no matter who the Minister may be, no matter who the party in power may be, I will neither support that Minister nor that party, unless he comes into power prepared to carry the measures which universal popular Ireland demands. I have abandoned my own profession to join in cementing and forming an Irish Parliamentary Party. That has been my ambition. It may be a base one. I think it an honour- able one. I have seconded the proposition of Mr. Sharman Crawford in the House of Commons. I have met the Minister upon it to the utmost extent of my limited abilities, at a moment when disunion was not ex- pected. So help me God ! upon that and every other question to which I have given my adhesion I will be — and I know I may say that every one of my friends is as determined as myself — an unflinching, undeviating, un- alterable supporter of it." ' No wonder,' writes A. M. Sullivan, continuing his description of the scene, 1 the assemblage, who had listened as if spellbound while he spoke, sprang to their feet, and with vociferous cheering atoned for their previous doubts of the man whose oath had now sealed his public principles.' 2 In the midst of this struggle between the different sections of the Irish members, the Derby-Disraeli Ministry went to the country. At the general Election in Ireland there were four parties. Roughly, the candi- Jates may be divided into Tories and Whigs, pledged to either of the two great English parties, the Tenant Leaguers, and what were known as the Catholic Defenders. The latter were the men who were pushing the sectarian questions to the front in order to drive the Land Question to the rear, and they were under the direction, secretly or openly, of the Keogh- Sadleir brigade. In some constituencies the two sections came into collision ; but the final result was a drawn battle, in which both sides gained and lost something. Some of the most important leaders of the Tenant Leaguers had been returned. Gavan Duffy was elected for New Ross, John Francis Maguire for Dungarvan, George Henry Moore for the county of Mayo, and Frederic Lucas for the county of Meath. Moore was a great addition to the Btrength of the Tenant Leaguers. A landlord, he yet sympathized vehemently with the demand of the tenants for security in their holdings. 1 ' New Ireland,' p. 181. a lb., p. 162. 98 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. He had also oratorical gifts of a high order, and his political honesty w&3 inflexible. Frederic Lucas, an Englishman and a Protestant by birth, had changed Doth his religious and political faith ; he had become a Catholic and an Irish Nationalist. Connected by marriage with Mr. John Bright, a man of independent fortune, and of a pure and lofty character, he held high rank in his party, and his name still has its place in the affections of che Irish people. He was proprietor of the Tablet, a journal which still exists. The Tablet at this period was a strongly national journal, and was one of the constant assailants of Keogh and Sadleir. There was one important defeat. Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Gray, proprietor of the Freeman's Journal, was defeated at Monaghan. The Irish Brigade was entirely successful. Sadleir and his three relatives, Francis and Vincent Scully and Robert Keatinge, were re-elected ; James, his brother — of whom more anon — was elected for Tipperary ; Anthony OTlaherty was re-elected for Galway ; Mr. Monsell for Limerick ; and Keogh for Athlon e. In the General Election Keogh took a prominent and active part. His tongue was at the service of everybody who fought under the flag of the Catholic Defence Association — that is, of John Sadleir and himself. His speeches were remarkable, even in that vituperative period, for the violence of their language, the brutality and criminality of his appeals to the mob. One of his speeches in particular became the object of notice. In West- meath the struggle was between Captain Magan, a friend and associate of Keogh, and Sir R. Levinge, a local landlord. In the town of Moate, Keogh made a speech in favour of Captain Magan, and in the course of that speech he used these words : { Boys, we are in the midst of a delightful summer, when the days are long and the nights are short ; next comes autumn, when the days and nights are of equal length ; but next comes dreary winter, when the days are short and the nights long ; and woe be to those, during those long nights, who vote for Sir Richaru Levinge at the present election.' 1 These terrible words derived additional significance from the surround- ings under which they were delivered. Westmeath is one of the counties where eviction has raged most fiercely, with most widespread desolation, with circumstances of tragic suffering. To-day, one driving through West- meath passes for miles through a land bare of houses or human beings, and ttudded all around with the skeleton walls of ruined homes — silent memorials of the dread times through which the country has passed. The people of the county are a fierce and stalwart breed, and resisted doggedly, though impotently, their tyrants. In Westmeath, accordingly, the Ribbon and other societies, bound by oath to meet eviction with assassination, used to be particularly strong ; and the county has been the scene of some of the most terrible murders, and occasionally of the most violent epidemics of crime. It was more than probable that, among the audience to which these words were addressed, there were many men goaded to blind fury by evic- tion, suffered or impending, and organized with the object of avenging their wrongs in blood. The election of 1852 was at last over, and the Tenant Leaguers were the chief victors. They had not been able to exclude the Catholic Defenders, but they had compelled them to swallow the Tenant League pledge. The country instinctively felt the soundness of the doctrine, that to beg for 1 ' New Ireland,' p. 167. THE GREAT BETRAYAL. 99 office from the Minister and to demand justice for the tenant were irrecon- cilable positions ; and accordingly the pledge against taking office, except from a Government that made the settlement of the relations between landlord and tenant a Cabinet question, was enforced from every candidate for a popular constituency. When, accordingly, the Leaguers held a Tenant Right Conference on September 8, 1852, all the Irish members returned on popular principles — whether as Tenant Righters or as Catholic Defenders — were compelled to attend. There were forty Irish members present in all. A resolution was proposed which put into definite form the pledge already taken at the hustings. It was in these words : Resolved : That in the opinion of this conference it is essential to the proper management of this cause that the Members of Parliament who have been returned on Tenant Right principles should hold themselves per- fectly independent of, and in opposition to, all Governments which do not make it part of their policy, and a Cabinet question, to give to the tenantry of Ireland a measure embodying the principles of Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill.' This resolution was proposed by Keogh himself ; it was carried with but one dissentient — Mr. Burke Roche, M.P., afterwards Lord Fermoy — 4 amid great cheering.' 1 The position of parties in the House of Commons at the moment rendered it perfectly possible to carry out this policy to a successful issue. There were then three parties : the "Whigs, under Lord John Russell ; the Protectionist Conservatives, under Mr. Disraeli ; and the Peelites. No one of these three parties had come back from the election sufficiently powerful to govern by itself, and a Coalition Ministry was plainly the only one possible. The Irish Party, numbering between forty and fifty members, had it in their power, if they preserved their unity, to make or mar any Ministry that could be formed by either of these contending sections ; they were absolute masters of the situation. The Peelites had, as has been seen, , opposed the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and that gave them a place in the con- fidence of the Dish people. It was the universal expectation in Ireland that the Tenant Leaguers would form a coalition with the Peelites, based on the repeal of the Titles Act, and the grant of security of tenure to the tenants. Parliament met on November 4, 1852 ; on Friday, December 17 follow- ing, the Budget of Mr. Disraeli was rejected by a combination of different parties, and the Ministry resigned. The words of A. M. Sullivan, who was an active politician at the period, best describe what followed : ' A shout went up from Ireland. A thrill of the wildest excitement shook the island from the centre to the sea. Now joy and triumph — now torturing doubt — now the very agony of suspense, prevailed. What would the Irish Party do ? Here was the crisis which was to shame their oaths or prove them true. No Liberal or composite Administration was possible without them, and their demand was one no Minister had ever deemed to be just. What would the Irish members do? The fate of the new Ministry, the fate of Ireland, was in their hands. ' As terrible deeds are said to be sometimes preceded by a mysterious ap- prehension, so in the last week of that old year a vague gloom chilled every heart. The news from London was panted for, hour by hour. At length the blow fell. Tidings of treason and disaster came. The Brigade was sold to Lord Aberdeen ! John Sadleir was Lord of the Treasury ! William 1 T. D. Sullivan's 1 Record,' p. 7. 7-S roo THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Keogh was Irish Solicitor-General ! Edmund O'Flaherty was Commissioner of Income-Tax ! And so on. The English people, fortunately accustomed for centuries to exercise the functions of political life, may well be unable to comprehend the paralysis which followed this blow in Ireland. The merchant of many ships may bear with composure the wreck of one. But here was an argosy, freighted with the last and most precious hopes of a people already on the verge of ruin and despair, scuttled before their eyes by the men who had called on the Most High God to witness their fidelity 1 The Irish tenantry had played their last stake and lost. A despairing stupor like to that of the Famine time shrouded the land. Notices to quit fell "like snowflakes " all over the counties where the hapless farmen had " refused the landlord " and voted for a Brigadier. But the banker- politician had won. His accustomed success had attended him. He was not as yet a peer, but he was a Treasury Lord. From their seats on the Treasury bench he and his comrade, "the Solicitor-General," could smile calmly at the accusing countenances of Duffy and Moore and Lucas. The New Year's chimes rang in the triumph of John Sadleir's daring ambition. Did no dismal minor tone, like mournful funeral knell, presage the sequel that was now so near at hand V 1 But all was not yet lost. The new officials had to go before their con- stituencies for re-election ; and, poor as was the opinion of Irish patriots of the political morality of the constituencies of that period, it was hoped that the people would not be ready to condone treason so flagrant and so disas- trous. It was resolved by the Tenant League to oppose the return both of Keogh for Athlone and Sadleir for Carlow, and deputations were appointed to go to both places. But when the deputations arrived at the constituen- cies they were astounded and shocked to find that, while all the rest of the country was loud in its curses or desperate in its wail over the destruction of national hopes, the constituencies thought either that nothing particular had happened, or that the traitors were to be congratulated on having got at the money and the patronage of the Government, and their constituents to be equally congratulated on their prospect of obtaining a share of the spoil. The state of feeling in Athlone and Carlow at this crisis of Irish history is one of the saddest proofs of the degradation which poverty and alien rule can bring about, even in a country so undying as Ireland in the ardour of its itruggle against oppression. In Athlone in particular had bribery, pa tty, and despair done their work effectively. The desperately needy vof S » saw, in a Government official, a man the better able to bribe them- Eelrxi, and to obtain situations for their sons. These were the days before open competition, and nomination to a Civil Service situation was the appanage of the Parliamentary representative, and one of his chief means of advancing his interests with his constituents. This was especially the case in Ireland. Who but an Irishman can know the full hopelessness of the youth of one born in the lower middle-class of an Irish country town? At home he sees squalor, the saddened foreheads of his parents, consumed by mean cares, by the bitter struggle to keep up appearances, by climbing up the ever-climbing wave of pecuniary embarrassment, in towns where the years bring dwindling population, decreasing trade, more hopeless effort. To the youth himself the future is utter darkness and dread emptiness. The shops, advancing in many cases to bankruptcy, offer but small wages ; of manufactories, the young Irishman's only knowledge is through the 1 'New Ireland,' pp. 167, 168. THE GREAT BETRAYAL. roi "Crumbling ruins of the wool-mill or the distillery ; he can become a doctor only if he have the luck to live in a town with a Queen's College ; the legal profession, with its dinners in London and fees, used to be as inaccessible as % throne ; and so it is that in Ireland, perhaps alone of all countries, the limbs even of youth are shackled, . and its ardent spirit caged. The one pursuit the Act of Union has left to the youth of Ireland is the Civil Ser- vice. Thus it has come to pass that in Somerset House, at St. Martin's-le- Grand, and at all the other great Civil Service establishments of London, so great a proport on of the clerks are Irishmen. Entrance to a clerkship in the Civil Service hai thus come to be regarded by the Athlone boy as the first s:ep on the golden ladder of fortune. Keogh used his power of nomi- nation in the most lavish manner ; it was a saying in Athlone in his day that every young fellow who could or could not write his name had obtained a place in the Customs, or some other of the public departments. It will be seen that the use which Keogh made of this ' appointing power ' was one of the charges which were brought against him afterwards. This was the state of feeling by which the ardent spirits of the Tenant League found themselves confronted when they reached Athlone, and a similar state of things awaited these who went to Carlow. But the corrup- tion of the people proved less shocking than the attitude of the clergy ; they also not only condoned but applauded the action of the traitors. An appeal was made by the Tenant Leaguers to the bishops. From Dr. MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, from the Bishop of Meath, and from the Bishop of Killala, there came prompt and emphatic condemnation of the acts of Keogh and Sadleir. This was good ; but there were other prelates whose disapproval was more urgently required, and would have been decisive. Dr. Cullen had been elevated from the See of Armagh to the Arch- bishopric of Dublin, and had at the same time been appointed Papal Legate. The whole country waited for a word from the new prelate, but Dr. Cullen obstinately held his peace, and silence, at the period, meant approval. In Athlone the bishop took even stronger action in favour of Keogh. His name was Dr. Browne, and he had a reputation b^ond that of any othei bishop of the period for gentleness and piety. CConnell had called hin\ the ' Dove of Elphin,' and by this name he was familiar and dear to the people of his diocese. I can remember him as he used to sit in the parish chapel in Athlone ; a man of venerable appearance, with a singular resem- blance to the pictures of some of the saints whose looks the great painters have made immortal. The people of his diocese had for him a respect that amounted almost to worship, and in Athlone he was especially beloved. The people of the town had got it into their heads that Athlone really held the first place in his heart ; and there was an understanding that, when he died, Athlone would be privileged to receive his sainted remains. The man who gained the support of the bishop was certain of election, and the bishop gave his support to Keogh. The result of this difference of attitude produced even among the priests and bishops themselves a bitterness of feeling that prevailed for many years, and between two of the bishops, Dr MacHale and Cardinal Cullen, it led to an estrangement that closed only with the grave. In every class, in fact, the fight was fought out with the frenzy which leads an armed population from words to civil war. Meantime, while the whole country was looking with such desperate tension to the result of the contest in Athlone, Keogh was faced by a diffi- culty that threatened to wreck all. The reader knows of the property qualification of this period ; it was charged against Keogh that he had not 102 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. this qualification, and a committee of the House of Commons had been appointed to investigate the charge. In Ireland, the investigation was watched with a feeling of suspense, not unmixed with amusement. The financial difficulties of Keogh were notorious ; it was known that, instead of having £300 a year over and above all incumbrances, he was in a shore- less sea of debt, and was not the possessor of three hundred pence that he could call his own. But he swore bravely before the committee. The com- mittee went through complicated rolls of bank bills, by which the briefless barrister had been able to keephimself afloat and live the life of the Member of Parliament ; and in the end, after the easy fashion of those good old days, held that he had proved his qualification, and so he was free to stand for Athlone. The influence of the bishop, 1 the sums of money Keogh had at his disposal, with the prosperous turn in his fortunes, and a system of organized mob violence, were greatly in his favour. Mr. Thomas Norton, his opponent, was an able man — he was known many years afterwards as a man of some social and political prominence in London society, as Master of the Queen's Bench, and Chairman of the Political Committee of the Reform Club ; but, owing to the desertion of his own committee, some of whom were the very first to vote for Keogh, Norton resigned during the polling day, and Keogh was returned, the figures standing thus: Keogh, 79; Norton, 40. 2 1 In his speech on the hustings, Keogh made the following allusion to the attitude cf the bishop : ' Since I came into town, no matter where I went, no matter by whom I was accompanied, whether in the town or around the town, upon the hill-side or the ditch-side, on the public road or the narrow by-way, or in any other imaginable place, I have been received as the man of the people. How many hundred women have said this morning, " May God bless you !" How many hundred pretty girls have wished me success !' (A female voice — ' You have the bishop's blessing, which is better than all.') Mr. Keogh : ' Yes ; and I am authorized to announce to you, and he does not shrink from the announcement— you all know it ; you all saw it — that I have the support, the confidence, the kind wishes, and the anxious throbbing expect- ations for my success of my revered friend the Roman Catholic bishop of this diocese.'— Quoted in T. D. Sullivan's ' Record,' p. 20. 2 It is hard to bring hour ^to the mind of any but an Irish reader the gigantic con- sequences on the future »f Ireland which the action of Keogh produced, and it is necessarily as hard to understand the fierce hatred which was then and ever after- wards felt for him by the Irish people. The following quotation from the Nation of the period will perhaps do something to bring home to the reader of to-day the ideas, and still more the temper, of the time. It appeared on April 23, 1853, and was in reply to Keogh's speech on the hustings at Athlone : ' Mr. William Keogh has given tongue at last. For five months he has kept the silence of conscious infamy, while the whole island has been ringing with his shame. For five months the highest and the holiest voices in the land have been raised to accuse and to curse him, and he has held his peace. Words that would have made an honest man's blood choke him have met his eyes in every paper he read, and he has swallowed them without retort. He knew at the time thai he dare not appear in an assembly of honest Irishmen, or he would be hooted from their sight. And he felt still nearer the touch of his own ignominy. In the Hall of the Four Courts, at his swearing in, a little gang of political blacklegs replaced the crowded array of the bar which used to attend the inaugu- ration of a law official of the Crown. As he has driven through the streets of Dublin his furtive eye seemed to dread the fall of a dead cat or a shower of rotten eggs. For five months of place and power and emolument he has seen hatred and contempt of him wherever he turned. To remain silent in such a storm of execrations must have been hard for one of his passionate and voluble temper. But at last he has uttered himself. At last all the bitterness and anger which had been fermenting for five months in his heart have broken loose. And it has been like lifting a sluice-gate from a sewer. For hours he spoke, and the words rolled in one long gush of impure filth from his lips. For hours he spoke, and spared neither truth nor decency in his course. Bullying abuse that would demean a fishwoman, false scandal, and braggadocio, and dastardly innuendo he used, and used without stay or scruple. . . . There isadiseas* which is the last to feed upon a debauchee's bad-tempered frame— when the cousti* THE GREAT BETRAYAL. 103 In the meantime the same good fortune had not attended the other members of the 1 Brass Band.' J ohn Sadleir had stood again for Carlow. Like Keogh, he was supported by large sums of money and by violent mobs. He got a letter from the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin ' express- ing the most earnest anxiety ' for his success j 1 he was backed by the priests. One of his mobsmen was requested by the Rev. Father Maher to keep quiet and not disgrace ' a good cause.' -2 In spite of all these influences he was beaten by Mr. Alexander; the Conservative candidate, by a majority of six. Keogh, though he had won the election at Athlone, was not yet safe. The violence of his temper, the unscrupulous audacity of some of his acts, his terrible speeches, his desperate expedients, had all been made notorious by the utterances of che press, and his conduct was brought in various ways before Parliament. Gavan Duffy obtained the appointment of a committee, known as the ■ Corruption Committee,' to investigate the charges against Keogh and others of having used their position to make corrupt promises to obtain situations through their influence as members of Parliament. Keogh, appointed originally a member of this committee, was obliged to resign ; the evidence against him became so strong that he had to pass from the position of judge to that of accused. The facts were notorious in Athlone. As has been seen, his wholesale promises of situa- tions were one of many reasons why he had been able to overcome all opposition against him in the town. Again he escaped by the sheer force of audacious lying. One of the charges against him was that he had induced a Colonel Smith, of Athlone, to lend him £500 on the promise that he would obtain for that gentleman a stipendiary magistracy, and that this promise he had failed to keep. He denied every one of these charges, declared that the money raised by Smith had been raised in the tution, rotten to its very springs, is only strong enough to secrete vermin, and the unhappy victim lives crawling, sick, and ashamed of his own foul existence. By this disease Mr. Keogh has chosen to illustrate the way in which lie has been recently afflicted. He has felt the morbus pedicularig of Ids own ignominy itching him to the bone, and he says that we infected him with it. In an episodical attack upon the Nation, meant, we suppose, to be the coarsest and the foulest passage of his harangue, he says that, "unable to slay, and afraid to stab," we have "tried to inflict upon him the morbus pedicularis." We thank him for the word. The metaphor is a nasty one. It is one we have been loth to apply. But he has invented it, and let it stick to him. It completely illustrates a sense of degradation, patent and foul, and set in a natural quarantine from all honest men. "Unable to slay "I What does the gentleman mean? His character is dead, decomposed — it stinks. "We do not estimate how for we have helped to scotch it. Let it rest. But " afraid"! Afraid of what ? Afraid of whom ? We have never hesitated to express the greatest contempt for Mr. William Keogh's character when there was occasion. We have never put a tooth in anything we had to say about him. We have stigmatized his conduct in the very broadest and plainest terms we could find. To be " afraid " of him is something too absurd for us to conceive. Afraid of a charlatan, afraid of a cheat, afraid of a public profligate and liar upon his oath, afraid of the greatest political scamp of his country, and the type par excellence of Irish demagogue rascality ! Why, there are some men whom it requires courage to differ from and daring to assail. And we believe we have not wanted either upon occasion. But this paltry adventurer, who would be nothing were it not for his readiness, his flippancy, his contempt of scruples, and his flow of animal spirits — whose invective is only a deluge of dirt — whose most pretentious oratory is a jumble of bog Latin and flatulent English — whose character has been the by-word of everybody in this city for years as a sort of political Barnum— and whose legal standing is on a level with his ancestral patrimony — the Lord deliver us froia fear of such a creature as that !'— Quoted by T. D. Sullivan, 1 Record,' pp. 21, 2%. 1 Dublin Evening Post. Quoted by T. I>. Sullivan, ' Record,' p. 14. • T. D. Sullivan, ' Record,' p. 15. io4 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT* Conservative interest, and not in that of himself personally, kwd repre sented himself as having remained on terms of intimacy with Smith to the day of his death. As a matter of fact, Smith was driven to bankruptcy by the failure of Mr. Keogh to keep his engagements, bitterly complained of the foul treatment he had received, and in the end he had to fly from his liabilities to America. 1 But this was not the most serious attack made upon him. The reader will remember the terrible speech in recommendation of assassination which he had delivered to the Ribbonmen of Westmeath. The Conservative press of Ireland had denounced the appointment to a law office of a man capable of such a speech, just as vehemently as the Freeman's Journal and the Nation. ' No Prime Minister,' wrote the Evening Mail, ' ever offered a more audacious insult to his sovereign than Lord Aberdeen has done in naming him to be one of her Majesty's law officers.' 2 Conserva- tives took up the same position in the House of Lords. On June 10, Lord Westmeath first drew attention to the assassination speech. He quoted the terrible words already mentioned, in which a contrast was drawn between the short nights of summer, the longer nights of autumn, and the still longer nights of winter, with the significant wind-up, ' and then leb everyone remember who voted for Sir R. Levinge.' (There are several versions of the speech, but they singularly agree in essential points.) The Ministerial speakers had nothing to reply to this charge ; Lord Aberdeen had heard nothing of them ; and the Marquis of Clanricarde did not think this was language which the House of Lords should be called upon to pay any attention to ! 3 But the Conservative Opposition was not willing to allow the Ministry to escape so easily. Lord Derby thought the matter did not deserve to be treated so 4 lightly.' It was a serious matter if such language had been used by a man who had been appointed to ' an office of all others in the world which was connected with the maintenance of the law and the sup- pression of turbulence and violence in Ireland ;' 4 and Lord Eglinton, who had just ceased to be Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, described Keogh, if he used this language, as having ' openly recommended assassination.' The language 1 could bear no other construction than that he was distinctly recommending the people whom he was addressing, when the long nights would admit of it, to commit, if not murder, the most violent outrages.' 5 The matter again came up on June 17. The use of the words by Keogh was so notorious that even an attempt at denial filled everybody with sur- prise. Two magistrates, the rector of Moate, where the speech was made, and three others, wrote to emphatically declare that they had heard the words recommending assassination. A policeman had been sent to report the speeches at the meeting. 4 I have no more doubt,' added the Marquis of Westmeath, ' that the report of that constable may be found on the table of the Lord-Lieutenant, if he likes to look for it, than that I have now the use of my right hand.' 6 But the Duke of Newcastle did not produce the report of the constable ; his only defence was a letter from Mr. Keogh, in which he did not deny the use of the words. He confined himself to the bold statement that he had no recollection of having used them ; his recol- lection was confused by a speech that ' did not occupy five minutes,' and he truated to the evidence of friends. Then a letter was enclosed from a i T, P. Sullivan's «Eee©rd,' pp. 39, 40. * lb,, p. 24. 3 lb., pp. 24, 25. 4Ji„p, 36, Sib. • lb,, pp. 27, 28. THE GREA T BE TRA YAL. 105 •friend,' declaring that Keogh had used no such language. 1 The 1 friend' was a solicitor named R. C. Macnevin, whose timely testimony was after- wards rewarded by the Registrarship in the court of Judge Keogh. This was assuredly a very weak reply to so grave a charge. As the Conservative Evening Mail put it, ' Mr. Keogh and his friends virtually entered a plea of guilty.' 2 Lord Eglinton pressed home the charge to absolute conviction by further declarations. A letter from a magistrate declared that 'twenty gentlemen of independence and station,' who were present on the occasion, were ready to testify to the use of the words ' on oath ;' and then Lord Eglinton summarized the case in these vigorous terms : ' Mr. Keogh's speech was only one amongst many others which were brought under my notice. I certainly little expected these words had fallen from a man who was to become Solicitor-General for Ireland ; but, as I have said, they came before me along with hundreds of other such reports and speeches, urging incitements, not only to riot, but even to dis- loyalty. But I CONFESS THAT during the whole TIME I WAS IN Ieeland, NO WOEDS WEEE BROUGHT TO ME WHICH, IN MY OPINION, SO DISTINCTLY RECOMMENDED ASSASSINATION.' 3 Several other charges were brought against the new law officer. In the assassination speech he was accused of also asking the Westmeath ' boys ' to come to Athlone with their shillelaghs and to use them, and with having headed himself a charge upon the hotel of his opponent. The ' boys ' obeyed the command, and the intimidation which the shillelaghs created was one of the forces which won the election. This charge also was boldly denied by Keogh ; but it was proved beyond any possibility of doubt. 4 Finally, a controversy arose between him and Lord Naas (after- wards Earl of Mayo) ; Keogh affirming, and Lord Xaas positively denying, that office had been offered to him by the Conservative leaders. When challenged for proof, he appealed again to the testimony of a friend of his, whom he described as 1 a gentleman of honour, veracity, and high cha- racter.' 5 The gentleman so described was Mr. Edmund O'Elaherty, of whom we shall hear a little more presently. Thus Keogh had surmounted all the difficulties that at every turn seemed certain of overwhelming him. Success for the moment seemed to attend the other members of the gaug also. Sadleir, defeated for Carlow, cast about for some other constituency. The Sligo of those days was not unlike the Athlone ; it had the reputation of being among the most corrupt boroughs of the country, and it has since been disfranchised. It had been won by an Englishman named Townley, but the means of corruption he had employed were so open that he had been unseated for bribery, and thus the vacancy had been created. Sadleir employed exactly the same means as previous aspirants for the representation of the place. It was proved afterwards that several of the voters received sums running up to £25 for their votes. Sadleir, besides, though he was bitterly opposed by some of the clergy, had the support of several of the priests, and was actually proposed by a parish priest ; and he had also the advantage of the intimidation of those hired mobs which he and Keogh had introduced into the factors of Irish electioneering. He was returned by a majority of four votes. There was a petition ; the bribery was clearly proved ; but 1 T. D. Sullivan's ' Record,' pp. 28, 29. 3 lb., p. 30. 4 lb., pp. 32, 33, ■ lb., pp. 29, 30. 5 lb., p. 45. IOC THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. according to the loose and shameless customs of the times, the tools were convicted while Sadleir was declared innocent. He actually retained his seat, and was perhaps in the House at the very moment when the Attorney- General moved for leave to prosecute some of the men whose bought votes had obtained him admission into the House. In 1855, Lord Aberdeen was replaced by Lord Palmerston, and Keogh was raised to the Attorney- Generalship in place of Mr. Brewster, who, being a Peelite, did not think it consistent to accept the change to a completely Whig Administration. Keogh also had begun life as a Peelite ; but, of course, he was not troubled by the subtle distinction between one Ministry and another, and gladly accepted promotion. He had to seek election once more ; but so broken was the spirit of the country that no attempt was made to defeat him ; and to add to the tragic completeness of the situation, Dr. Browne, the 4 Dove of Elphin,' came to the hustings and proposed Keogh as a ' fit and proper person ' to represent the constituency. And thus the triumph of the Irish Brigade was complete. All the men who had opposed them were crushed ; some of the priests who had taken the true view of the situation were harried by their ecclesiastical superiors, or compelled to abstain from all action or speech on political matters. Frederic Lucas, who brought to the Irish cause a rare spirit of self-abnega- tion, resolved to go to Rome to lay the case at the feet of the Pope, and to call for redress and freedom for the priests that had endeavoured to avert from Ireland one of the greatest disasters and blackest shames of her history. But the Pope had received other information, and the mission was a failure. Lucas returned to England in breaking health and with a broken heart. He never saw again the land of his adoption, which he loved so dearly ; he was taken sick on his return journey, and died at Staines on October 22, 1855. His death was taken by the Irish people as a calamity in addition to all those already suffered. Shortly afterwards another of the band of Tenant Leaguers, who had fought so bravely against the traitors, gave up the fight. Gavan Duffy despaired of the time. In such a season 'there was,' he said, 1 no more hope for Ireland than for a corpse on the dissecting-table.' On November 6, 1855, he sailed for Australia. It was at the moment of their complete triumph that Nemesis began to fall on the men who had destroyed and sold the hopes and fortunes of their country. Sadleir was the first to meec disaster. At Carlo w, one of the agencies he had employed most extensively and relentlessly to secure his return, were the accounts of the bankrupt shopkeepers with the Tipperary Bank. It was a favourite plan of his, as of other Parliamentary aspirants afterwards, to lend money to the voters in the intervals between the elections on renewable bills, and with this unpaid bill he always held his power over the hapless elector, and could count on his vote when election time came. A man named Dowling, an elector of Carlow, was suspected of intending to vote against Sadleir, and he was arrested for debt on the morning of the election. Dowling took an action for false imprisonment ; there were many damaging revelations against Sadleir in the trial, and he had to go into the witness-box. He swore boldly and unflinchingly, and the jury had either to brand him or Dowling a perjurer ; the jury gave the verdict for Dowling. The result was that Sadleir had, in January, 1854, to resign his office as a Lord of the Treasury. This was the first turn of the tide. In March of the same year there began to be rumours that, instead of being a millionnaire, he was in financial difficulties, but the rumours were laughed out of existence. Public contl- THE GREAT BETRAYAL. 10; dence had but been restored in the financier of the ' Brass Band ' when another scandal shook its credit. People began to ask where was Mr. Edmund OTlaherty, the Commissioner of Income Tax. This was the ' gentleman of honour, veracity, and high character ' whom Keogh had called in proof of his statement that Lord Naas, and not he, had lied in reference to the offer of office from the Conservatives ; this also was the gentleman who had sent round the hat for Keogh at the time when, desperate and driven, he was about to stand for Athlone after he had accepted the office of Solicitor-General. Before many days the whole world knew that the Commissioner of Income Tax had fled no one knew whither, and that he had left behind bills amounting to £15,000 in circula- tion, some of them bearing names — Keogh's among the rest — which were stated to be forged. This flight spread a painful degree of uncertainty in the public mind, and people began to ask who would be the next to go. The situation was rendered more complicated and painful by the fact, which the Opposition papers took care to largely advertise, that the absconding OTlaherty had been on terms of the closest intimacy with the Peelite leaders, and had been, beyond doubt, the go-between in the infamous bargain by which the Peelites gave office and the ' Irish Brigade ' sold a country. It was proved that OTlaherty was on visiting terms with the Duke of Newcastle ; a letter of his was published addressed to Mr. Richard Swift, M.P., in which the subscription was suggested that paid the expenses of Keogh for his contest in Athlone ; and in the list of persons who had already subscribed, the honoured name of Sidney Herbert with a subscription of £100 appears side by side with that of John Sadleir for the same amount. And finally, the fact was notorious that, when the Income Tax was extended to Ireland, Mr. OTlaherty received a reward for his services from the Peelites by his appointment as Commissioner. The thing blew over for a while, and Sadleir once more was sailing before the wind. The death of Lucas and the departure of Gavan Duffy seemed to complete his triumph, and he was everywhere — especially, of course, in England — congratulated on the dispersal of his enemies. Meantime he was approaching the abyss. The rumours that he was in financial difficulties were true. The vast schemes in which he had embarked proved in many cases disastrous ; and then he took to all kinds of ex- p*dients for raising money ; and finally he resorted to the forgery of title- deeds, conveyances, and bills. In February, 1856, the crash came. Glyns dishonoured some of the bills of the Tipperary Bank. The news spread ; a run took place on some of the branches ; but next day it was announced that a mistake had been committed and the drafts were honoured. The crisis might be averted if only a little ready money could be obtained. *A11 right,' telegraphed James Sadleir to ' John Sadleir, Esq., M.P., Reform Club, London,' 'at all the branches : only a few small things refused there. If from twenty to thirty thousand over here on Monday rnorning all is safe.' This was received on a Saturday. Sadleir went into the City to see a Mr. Wilkinson, with whom he had large transactions : proposed various plans for raising money ; all were rejected. ' He then became very excited,' says Mr. Wilkinson, describing the scene afterwards, ' put his hand to his head, and said, " Good God ! if the Tipperary Bank should fail the fault will be entirely mine, and I shall have been the ruin of hundreds and thousands." He walked about the office in a very excited state, and urged me to try and help him, because he said he could not live to see the pain and ruin inflicted THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. on others by the cessation of the bank. The interview ended in this, that I was unable to assist him in his plans to raise money.' 1 As the day went on, Sadleir heard news more disastrous. Mr. Wilkinson had previously lent him large sums of money. The money had been lent on one of the many securities Sadleir had forged during the previous year, and the suspicions of Mr. Wilkinson having been aroused, he had sent over his partner, Mr. Stevens, to Dublin to inquire into the matter. Thi? was probably a portion of the news which was brought to Sadleir at ten o'clock on the night of this eventful Saturday by Mr. Norris, solicitor, of Bedford Row, one of his intimate friends. The two talked over the situation. It was agreed that there was no help for it, and that on Monday the Tipperary Bank must stop payment. At half-past ten Mr. Norris left. Sadleir spent some time in writing letters. He then got up to go out. As he passed through the hall, and was taking his hat from the stand, he met his butler, told him not to stay up for him, and then shut the door with a firm hand. As he left it was just striking twelve ; it was Sunday morning. The next morning, on a mound on Hampstead Heath, the passers-by observed a gentleman lying as if asleep. A silver tankard smelling strongly of prussic acid was at his side. It was the dead body of John Sadleir — dead Dy his own hand. ' On Monday,' writes A. M. Sullivan, 2 ' the news flashed through the kingdom. There was alarm in London ; there was wild panic in Ireland. The Tipperary Bank closed its doors ; the country people flocked into the towns. They surrounded and attacked the branches^ the poor victims imagined their money must be within, and they got crowbars, picks, and spades to force the walls and "dig it out." The scenes of mad despair which the streets of Thurles and Tipperary saw that day would melt a heart of adamant. Old men went about like maniacs, confused and hysterical ; widows knelt in the street, and aloud asked God was it true they were beggared for ever. Even the Poor-Law Unions, which had kept their accounts in the bank, lost all, and had not a shilling to buy the paupers' dinner the day the branch doors closed. . . . Banks, railways, assurance associations, land companies, every undertaking with which he had been connected, were flung into dismay ; and for months fresh revela- tions of fraud, forgery, and robbery came daily and hourly to view. By the month of April the total of such discoveries had reached £1,250,000.' ' Considerably above the middle height,' Sadleir is described by one who knew him ; ' his figure was youthful, but his face — that was indeed remark- able. Strongly marked, sallow, eyes and hair intensely black, and the lines of the mouth worn into deep channels.' 3 OTlahei ty fled ; Sadleir dead ; how was it, meantime, with Keogh ? His name had been coupled with Sadleir and with Edmund O'Elaherty in the most intimate political association for nearly six years ; was he going to be exposed also, and to choose flight or death in preference to shame and exposure ? There was no such fate in store for him. It was reported that he was going to be raised to the bench ! At once the national press of Ireland protested against this last indignity upon the country. 1 Mr. William Keogh a judge !' wrote the Nation at an earlier period, when the report was first circulated, 4 with life and death on his hands ; 1 1 New Ireland,' p. 179. 3 II., pp. 180, 181. 3 fl,, f p . igQ. THE GREAT BETRAYAL, 109 with the peace, and honour, and property of the community hanging on the breath of his lips ; with the liberties and the safeguards of society under his direct control. Mr. William Keogh, with the antecedents of his unprincipled political career, his mediocre professional character, his false pledges, his disreputable associates ; this gentleman a judge ! And the youngest judge, and the judge of the least standing at the bar, who has mounted the Irish bench within the memory of living man. We hesitate to believe it can be possible.' 1 Then it spoke of the other judges on the bench, condemning their political partisanship, but admitting their professional claims and their personal integrity. ' There is not a man among them,' it went on, ' who has solemnly called God to witness a pledge of public conduct — who has ratified that pledge after months of mature consideration with another equally solemn— and who has scandalously broken both. There is not a man among them who, within seven years of public life, has been a Tory, a Whig, a Catholic Conservative, an anti-Repealer, an Ultramontane Radical, and a Tenant Leaguer — who has written pamphlets and spoken speeches on every side of every question, and tried the cushions of every bench in the House of Com- mons. There is none of them who need fear, when he takes up an indict- ment for forgery, that he will find the name of his bosom friend at its head — the name of the man upon whose word of honour he relied, and sustained himself in a position compromising his own political character. There is none of them who, when the officer of justice administers the oath of evi- dence before him, need blush, as the words " So help me God " are uttered, to think how that most solemn of human adjurations could not bind even him, a judge of the land, to the truth.' 2 When after the death of John Sadleir the rumours were again re- sumed : 4 It is very generally supposed,' wrote the Xation, ' that, after the scan- dalous conduct of Mr. Edmund OTlaherty, the hideous suicide of Mr. John Sadleir, Government may feel a difficulty in elevating to the ermine of a justice a gentleman who was so intimately identified with both in their political profligacies, and who had, indeed, rather a worse public character than either.' 3 ' Can such a profanation be possible ?' asked the Wexford People. 'Can public decency be so outraged ? . . . We believe the Government of Lord Palmerston is capable of doing a large amount of iniquity ; but there is a limit beyond which they dare not pass, or the whole world would cry shame on them, and this is one.' 4 ' It was in the month of March, 1856,' writes T. D. Sullivan, 5 'that these protests, and scores of others such as these against the probable elevation of Mr. Keogh to the bench of justice, were being published, The papers at the time were being loaded with the details of the Sadleir forgeries and swindles ; the law courts were glutted with trials, motions, and all sorts of proceedings arising out of them ; the air was ringing with the cries of the unfortunate people who were reduced from a state of sol- 1 T. D. Sullivan's ' Record, ' pp. 46, 47. 2 lb., p. 47. 3 lb., p 53. 4 lb. 5 fa, p. 54. no THE PARNELL MO YEMENI. vency and comfort to one of pauperism by the Sadleirite plunder. It wa§ little wonder that the bare idea of the advancement of Mr. Keogh to the bench at such a time should have caused in the minds of honest men almost a frenzy of pain and horror.' The protests were in vain. The death of Judge Torrens was announced in the Dublin papers of the morning of Tuesday, April 1. On Wednesday, April 2 — the day after — Keogh had obtained the vacancy, and was one of her Majesty's judges. * The administration of justice in Ireland,' said the Nation, 'has sustained a most grievous disgrace — a disgrace which would not be tolerated by the bench, by the bar, or the people of any other country on the face of the earth. . . . Fancy the effect of Mr. William Keogh, going judge of assize to try the Westmeath Ribbonmen whom he cited to midnight violence — trying perjury in Athlone or Cork, before whole communities who heard him swear the oath of whose breach his presence on the bench before them is the startling evidence ! It is an example sufficient to disgust or to de- moralize the whole profession, and shake faith in justice. . . . What a start- ling and a scandalous spectacle it is to see this man, yet young — every year of whose life has been marked by infamous political tergiversation, whose career has never had in it a day of that patient, arduous, and laborious effort which is the peculiar dignity of the forensic robe, but has been like the advance of the chamois-hunter, springing from peak to peak, and always on the point of toppling over — now, after having been everything by turns and nothing long, broken faith with every party and laughed at every principle, set in ermine over this city, a judge among the twelve judges of the land !' 1 Well may it be asked,' continues the national journal in the same article, ' Has God's providence ceased to rule in Ireland V 1 There is one scene more in this episode of Irish history. One prominent member of the 1 Irish Brigade ' had not been made a judge or committed suicide. It was James Sadleir, brother of John. On February 16, 1857, Mr. J. D. Fitzgerald, then Attorney- General for Ireland, moved the expul- sion of James Sadleir for having fled before charges of fraud, and the motion was carried, nemine contradicente. An Englishman was lamenting, a short time ago, to a brilliant Irishman who had formerly sat in Parliament, the disagreeable contrast between the Irish members of former days and the unpleasant specimens of the present hour. The Irishman surprised his interlocutor by admitting the contrast, but not after the same fashion. Then he put thus tersely the story which has just been told : 1 There were four members of Parliament, personal in- timates and political associates. One was a forger, and committed suicide; the other was a forger, and was expelled from Parliament ; the third was a swindler, and fled ; and the fourth was made a judge.' * X. D. Sullivan's 1 Record,' pp. 56, 67, RUIN AND RABAGAS III CHAPTER VI. RUIN AND RABAGAS. The years which followed the treason of Judge Keogh are among the darkest in Irish history. The British Government and the landlords saw their power once more unquestioned by popular leaders and unopposed by popular organization or popular hopes. The landlords took advantage of the situation after their usual fashion. And here again I must pause in the narrative to add another chapter to the long and monotonous history of the Land Question. The oppression which the landlords practised on their tenants at this period knew no limit of age or sex or circumstance ; it penetrated into the smallest as well as the largest affairs of the tenant's life. The rent was raised year by year, the landlord knowing no other limit to his exactions than those of his own appetites or caprice or wants. The building of a new mansion in London, a bad night at the card-table, the demands of generous and exacting beauty, or the loss of a great race, remote as they were from the concerns of the Irish farmer in his cabin and on his patch of land, influenced and darkened his destiny ; and year after year his rent steadily kept rising. When at last successive generations of folly and vice swept the old land- lord into the maelstrom of debt, the change of landlord meant in nearly every case a rise of rent and a master — penurious, perhaps, where the old proprietor had been spendthrift, but as grinding and as greedy. There was in connection with most of the properties a code for the regulation of the tenantry which went under the name of ' office rules.' These rules dogged every action of the tenant's Life. A minute system of fines existed. Take these, for instances : William Bewley, a tenant on one of the estates of Lord Leitrim, was fined £11 because he sold hay contrary to the rules of the estate ; Lord Leitrim himself visited this man's house in order to find fault with him, and the sight of this dreaded landlord and his brutal language drove Bewley's daughter insane. The widowed mother of the Bev. Mr. Lavelle, a well- known Catholic priest, was evicted because, contrary to the rules of the estate, she took in her son-in-law and daughter for companionship. A tenant on Lord Lucan's estate. was fined 10s. for being three days late in the payment of his rent, and another tenant was fined 14s. 8d. for receiving a tenant's daughter into his house while her husband was in England. On the Ormsby estate in County Mayo, this system of petty fining reached its highest development. Thus a woman named Ann Cassidy could recall the infliction of the following fines upon her husband : 5s. for being absent from duty work one day; 10s. for a similar offence; 2s. 6d. for being absent from duty work on the day of his child's burial ; 2s. 6d. because a pig rooted part of his land ; 2s. 6d. for allowing an ass to stray on the road ; 10s. 6d. because the top stone of a gable was not rightly whitewashed. James Sheerin, formerly a tenant on the Ormsby estate, was fined 10s. for cutting a branch from an ash -tree which he himself had planted ; 5s. because a pig strayed back into a house from which he had been evicted ; and Is. 6d. because a horse was allowed out on the road. Margaret Conlon describes how, on the same estate, her husband was fined 7s. 6d. for not making a drain at a time when he was engaged in mowing for the landlord ; 12s. 6d. for changing a window from one side of the house to the other in order to get more light ; and It2 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. 2s. 6d. for being too late at his work. Charles Durkin, a tenant on the estate of Sir Robert Blosse, was fined for taking carts of bog-mud from one part of his land to manure another ; and £2 17s. 6d. for cutting loads of turf from a bog for which he was paying £1 8s. per acre. 1 Thus beggared and driven, the tenant naturally took refuge or found some consolation in the contemplation of his religion, which promised a future life in which the poverty and tyranny of this world would exist no more, and where hearts would find peace, and sorrow could dry its tears. But even the poor luxury of his intercourse with the Unseen the landlord would not permit the tenant to enjoy in peace. Lord Plunket, for instance, evicted a large number of his tenants because they refused to send their children to the proselytizing schools. This system of prosely- tizing was one of the worst portents of the time. A society was formed, and is still in existence, the nominal purpose of which is to wean the Catholic population from the errors of their religion by lectures. Under this organization, known as the Irish Church Mission, the Catholics of Ireland have the privilege of seeing in the streets on public placards the most flagrant reflections on the most sacred mysteries of their creed. In the poorer parts of the country, food was the bribe by which the starving parents were seduced into selling the creed of their children. During periods of very deep distress these missions enrolled some of the popula- tion, but the return of such prosperity as the Irish farmer was allowed to enjoy brought back the people to the observance of the faith in which they believed. In some parts of the country the small churches which at) one time had congregations of Catholics converted by such means are now empty and in ruins. The parents who thus deserted their religion naturally became the objects of their neighbours' contempt. They and their tempters were called by a nickname which sufficiently indicated the reason of their change of faith. 1 Souper ' is one of the vilest epithets that one person in Ireland can hurl at another, even up to the present hour. In another way also the landlords substituted a penal code of their own for that abolished by statute. On several estates every effort was directed towards expelling the Catholic population so as to replace them by Protestant tenants. ft might have been expected that the tenant thus reduced to an ill-paid labourer, as absolutely dependent as a serf, would not be an object of any further misgiving or annoyance to his landlord. But the frenzy for the destruction of the people that set in towards the beginning of the century seemed still to rage like an unholy and accursed mania in the souls of the landlords ; and the period is marked by wholesale clearances on a scale that is appalling, and amid circumstances of horror and cruelty that are scarcely credible. The instances are so numerous of such wholesale clearances that one has to pick and choose. It will suffice to take out a few of the typical cases ; they will indicate what landlordism meant in those days. Five names stand out in bold relief among the wholesale evictors of this and other periods and that immediately preceding it. These are the Marquis of Sligo, the Earl of Lucan, Mr. Allan Pollock, Lord Leitrim, and Mr. John George Adair. The Marquis of Sligo cleared out at various 1 These cases -were supplied to the solicitors for the traversers in the case of the Queen v. Parnell and others, by persons who were prepared to swear to their occur- rence. The briefs containing this evidence were placed at my disposal by the widow ->f A. M. Sullivan. It will be referred to as ' Evidence for Queen v. Parnell.' RUIN AND RABAGAS. periods no fewer than two thousand families, with the result that a single tenant of his, with a few herds, occupied an area of no less than two hundred square miles. The Earl of Lucan absolutely swept from the earth the town of Aughadrina. Mr. Pollock evicted one hundred families from one estate, fifty from another. He was a Scotchman, and one of the objects of these wholesale evictions was to replace the Irish population bj men of another race, and the tenantry by sheep and bullocks. 1 Befor? the face of this "stranger" no less than five thousand souls had to fly thi bounds of their country and their sweet fields.' 1 In 1856 Mrs. James Blake evicted fifty families, not one of whom owed her a penny of rent, and the land was changed into grass land. ' Some of the tenants then evicted are beggars in Loughrea,' says Dr. Duggan. 2 In County Cavan, seven hundred tenants were turned out by Messrs. O'Connor and Malone in the course of two days. In County Meath, Mr. Nicholson cleared out from eighty to one hundred people in 1862, and about three hundred persons in 1869-70, and the land was entirely turned into pasture. In 1857, Mr. Rochford Boyd, a Westmeath landlord, evicted a large number of tenants, not one of them owing any rent. Wholesale eviction of this kind could not be carried on, of course, without terrible hardship. Sometimes people were turned out on Christ- mas Eve. Here is a case described by Father Lavelle. 1 A certain landlord in County Galway got a cheap decree at Quarter Sessions against a tenant on his property. This was early in October ; October and November passed over, and a gleam of hope began to enter the poor man's soul that, at least, he would be permitted to pass the Christmas holidays in his old home. December was fast running out ; the sun of Christmas Eve had actually risen, and with it the poor man and his wife and family, when, horror of horrors ! whom does he see approaching his cabin door, followed by a pos-°e comitatus of the Crowbar Brigade, but the sheriff surrounded by a detachment of the constabulary force ! The family were flung out like vermin, and the work of demolition occupied but a few minutes. The evicted family passed that and the subsequent Christmas night with no other covering but that of the wide canopy of heaven, as strict prohibitions had been issued to all the other tenants to harbour him on pain of similar treatment.' 3 Father White, of Milltown-Malbay, tells how, in the winter of 1864 or 1865, he was present at the eviction of five or six families on Mr. Westby's estate in the parish of Carrigaholt. It was late in the evening of a cold winter's day ; the bailiffs were in the act of carrying out an old woman about eighty years of age, and apparently in a dying state. She had been, it seemed, taken from her bed, being wrapped in a sheet. They laid her on the dunghill. ' I was so shocked that I threatened to prosecute the sub-sheriff for murder if she died,' says Father White. 4 The eviction of each of these tenants was carried out in the most heartless manner. The houses were nearly all afterwards unroofed. These tenants, until the bad years of 1862-3-4, were all comfortable and well-to-do. They held from five to forty acres. 'Whilst in Newmarket parish,' says the same clergyman, 'about 1872, Lord Inchiquin raised the tenants' rents considerably — I believe added 1 Lavelle's ' Irish Landlord since the ^Revolution,' p. 271. 2 Evidence for Queen v. Parnell. 3 Lavelle, pp. 271, 272. 4 Evidence for Queen ». Parnell. I »4 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. about £5,000 to his rental. He evicted a number of tenants, not owing a penny rent, for the purpose of adding to his demesne.' At an eviction in 1854, on a property under the management of Marcus Keane, James 0'Gorman,one of the tenants evicted, died on the roadside. His wife and ten children were sent to the workhouse, where they died shortly afterwards. John Corbet, a tenant on another townland, was evicted by the same agent. He died on the roadside ; his wife had died previously to the eviction ; his ten children were sent into the workhouse and there died. Michael McMahon, evicted at the same time, was dragged out of bed to the wallside, where he died of want next day. His wife died of want previously to the eviction, and his children, eight in number, died in a few weeks in the workhouse. 1 1 Though it does not belong to this period, it may be well to quote here a description of an eviction which has become historical. The eye-witness to it was the Most Rev. Dr. Nulty, Lord Bishop of Meath, and the event occurred in September, 1847, near Mount Nugent, Co. Cavan. The names of the owners of the property were O'Connor and Malone ; that of the agent was Mr. Guiness, then M.P. for Kinsale, but shortly afterwards unseated for bribery. Dr. Nulty says : ' In the very first year of our ministry, as a missionary priest in this diocese we were an eye-witness of a cruel and inhuman eviction, which even still makes our heart bleed as often as we allow ourselves to think of it. ' Seven hundred human beings were driven from their homes in one day and set adrift on the world, to gratify the caprice of one who, before God and man, probably deserved less consideration than the last and least of them. And we remember well that there was not a single shilling of rent due on the estate at the time, except by one man ; and the character and acts of that man made it perfectly clear that the agent and himself quite understood each other. ' The Crowbar Brigade, employed on the occasion to extinguish the hearths and demolish the homes of honest, industrious men, worked away with a will at their awful calling until evening. At length an incident occurred that varied the monotony of the grim, ghastly ruin which they were spreading all around. They stopped suddenly, and recoiled panic-stricken with tenor from two dwellings which they were directed to destroy with the rest. They had just learned that a frightful typhus fever held those houses in its grasp, and had already brought pestilence and leath to their inmates. They therefoi-e supplicated the agent to spare these houses a little longer ; but the agent was inexorable, and insisted that the houses should come down. The ingenuity with which he extricated himself from the difficulties of the situation was characteristic alike of the heartlessness of the man and of the cruel necessities of the work in which he was engaged. He ordered a large winnow- ing-sheet to be secured over the beds in which the fever victims lay — fortunately they happened to be perfectly delirious at the time — and then directed the houses to be unroofed cautiously and slowly, "because," he said, "he very much disliked the bother and discomfort of a coroner's inquest;" I administered the laat sacrament of the Church to four of these fever victims nettday ; and, save the above-mentioned winnowing-sheet, there was not then a roof nearer to me than the canopy of heaven. ' The horrid scenes I then witnessed I must remember all my life long. The wailing of women — the screams, the terror, the consternation of children— the speechless agony of honest, industrious men — wrung tears of grief from all who saw ^.tliem. I saw the officers and men of a large police force, who were obliged to attend ' on the occasion, cry like children at beholding the cruel sufferings of the very people whom they would be obliged to butcher- had they offered the least resistance. The heavy rains that usually attend the autumnal equinoxes descended in cold, copious torrents throughout the night, and at once revealed to those houseless sufferers the awful realities of their condition. I visited them next morning, and rode from place to place administering to them all the comfort and consolation I could. The appear- ance of men, women, and children, as they emerged from the ruins of their former homes — saturated with rain, blackened and besmeared with soot, shivering in every member from cold and misery — presented positively the most appalling spectacle I ever looked at. The landed proprietors in a circle all around— and for many miles in every direction — warned their tenantry, with threats of their direst vengi ance, against the humanity of extending to any of them the hospitality of a single night's shelter. Many of these poor people were unable to emigrate with their families ; while, at home, the hand of every man was thus raised against them. They were driven from the land on which Providence had placed them ; and, in the state oi RUIN AND J? ABA GAS. "5 In one estate at least an 4 office rule ' regulated even the marriage rela- tions of the tenantry. One of the estates on which this practice was most rigidly carried out was that of the Marquis of Lansdowne. The late Sir John Gray, in a speech in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester (October 18, 1869), describes this episode of landlord life in these graphic terms i 1 ' In the book he had already quoted from — " Realities of Irish Life " — there was told a very pathetic story of "Mary Shea," the pretty black-eyed girl of seventeen, who lived with her parents on a mountain farm. Mr. Trench tells with touching pathos how, when the " hunger " — the name given by the people to the famine — came, Mary's mother died, and was buried in the garden, because Mary and her father had not strength to carry her to the churchyard. He tells how Mary smothered the bees she had reared herself, though they all knew her well, and sold their store of honey for 15s., and bought meal, and kept her father alive for a month, but how, when it was exhausted, her father died too, and how he, too, was buried in the garden by herself and " Eugene," and how, thus left an orphan and alone, the kind-hearted Eugene took home " Mary Shea " to his mother's house, and shared the scanty meal with her. Mr. Trench with great power described, in the book he held in his hand, this sad " reality," and told oow, when walking one day through his pleasure-grounds, he saw two bright spots shining from behind a holly-tree, and coming nearer he saw that behind the tree something moved, and forth came Mary Shea, the graceful Irish maiden of seventeen, with Spanish face, and almost kneeling, she said with blushing confidence, "Please, yowr honour, will you put Eugene's name on the book instead of mine ?" Then a beautiful tale was told of Mary's woes, of her modesty, of her beauty, and of her marriage, on perusing which no English matron or noble maiden with tender or womanly heart could restrain their tears, so sweetly was told the affecting story of Mary Shea. But alas ! Mr. Trench did not tell the dismal truth of landlord tyranny that was concealed behind the rose-tinted romance of this "reality of Irish life." He did not tell why it was that this blushing maiden of seventeen, the black-eyed Mary Shea, came to him, a man she had never before seen, to tell of her innocent love, and to introduce Eugene ; he did not tell that, by "the rule of the estate," had Mary Shea or any other tenant dared to get married without the leave of "his honour" the agent, she would be hurled from her farm, and the roof torn down about her bridal-bed.' (Cries of ' Shame on him !' and loud cheers.) ' He (Sir John Gray) would now read for them an extract from a petition to a noble marquis, whose name was given in the title-page of Mr. Trench's book as one of those nobles whose agent he is, which would tell some of the true realities of Irish life ; for these were realities of Irish life of which no glimpse was given in Mr. Trench's book. In the title-page of that book it would be found that the author, Mr. Trench, was agent to a noble marquis and two other great estated persons in Ireland ; and in M. Perraud's " Ireland in 1862," he found a copy of a petition presented no farther back than 1858, by the whole body of the tenantry of the noble marquis, who was, he believed, the landlord of black-eyed Mary Shea. ' (Cries of ' Name, society surrounding them, every other walk of life was rigidly closed against them. What was the result ? After battling in vain with privation and pestilence, they at last graduated from the workhouse to the tomb ; and in little more than three years, nearly a fourth of them lay quietly in their graves.' 1 «Au#i*"V3ed Report.* jod. 28 — 30. 8—2 ri6 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. name.') ' The name of the landlord was the Marquis of Lansdowne, the estate was in Kerry, and this was the petition : '"We (the tenants) have been made keenly sensible of this abject dependence, by certain rules and regulations, which are now forced on this estate. By these rules no tenant can marry, or procure the marriage of his son or daughter, without permission from your lordship's agent, even when no change of tenancy would arise." ' (Cheers, and loud cries of ' Shame.') ' That was the petition of the tenantry of Lord Lansdowne in April, 1858.' The Lansdowne property brought another of the many 'rules ' on estates over Ireland to its logical and tragic conclusion. Again the words of Sir John Gray will be quoted : ' He would now ask leave to read, not from the petition of the tenantry, but from the judgment of the Chief Earon of the Irish Court of Exchequer, another illustration of the " rule of the estate," which forbade a tenant to give shelter even to a relative in his most dire distress upon that very same property. Passing sentence upon some persons in the dock who were accused of the manslaughter of a boy of twelve years of age, Chief Baron Pigott said : ' The poor boy whose death you caused was between twelve and fourteen years of age." Now mark the history of that boy, aCj told by the Chief Baron : " His mother at one time held a little dwelling from which she was expelled. His father was dead. His mother had left him, and he was alone and unprotected. He found refuge with his grand- mother, who held a little farm, from which she was removed in consequence of her harbouring this poor boy, as the agent of the property had given public notice to the tenantry that expulsion from their farms would be the penalty inflicted upon them if they harboured any persons having no residence on the estate." These two cases, not of eviction, but cases where eviction did not occur, showed that the tenantry were, because of the extraordinary powers conferred by law on landlords, in such a state of serfdom, that the mother could not receive her daughter — that the grand- mother could not receive her own grandchild unless that child was a tenant on the estate ' ('Shame,' 'Inhuman') — 'and the result in the case he was referring to . . . was this, that the poor boy, without a house to shelter him, was sought to be forced into the house of a relative in a terrible night of ■storm and rain. He was immediately pushed out again, he staggered on a little, fell to the ground, and the next morning was found cold, stiff, and dead.' (Sensation.) 'The persons who drove the poor boy out were tried for the offence of being accessories to his death, and their defence was, that what they did was done under the terror of " the rule of the estate," and that they meant no harm to the boy.' ('Shame.') 1 Finally, on this point there were cases in which the landlord had made even harder claims. The droit de seigneur reigned as completely in Ireland as in France ; but while in the one case it ended with the French Revolu- tion, it endured in Ireland — thanks to British rule — until our own times. Lord Leitrim in this way, as in many others, raged like a plague over the people, whom a hideous destiny and evil laws left entirely at his mercy. On his estates a comely girl was ordered to come nominally as a domestio servant inside his house. The house became a prison, and the service was the service of shame. In due time the lord of the seraligo sent the 1 ' Authorised Report.' pp SO, 31. RUIN AND £ ABA GAS. 117 distasteful mistress to America, and to some other hapless girl on his estate the dread choice was offered between entering the harem or exposing her parents and her family to eviction, i.e., starvation. Such are a few instances, selected out from hundreds, of what landlordism meant for Ireland during the years between the treason of Keogh and the year 1865. To complete the picture it is necessary to describe in some detail one other eviction scene, which, from its peculiar cruelty, attracted universal attention. The story of Glenveigh has been told often since, not merely in history, but in romance. Derryveigh is situate in the highlands of Donegal, and has some of the most beautiful scenery in Ireland. The beauty of its scenery attracted the attention of Mr. John George Adair, a Queen's County landlord, while on a sporting visit to the locality, and he resolved to buy the property. Up to this period the population enjoyed a universal reputation for the virtues associated usually with remote moun- taineers. They were quiet, industrious, and on excellent terms with their landlords. The advent of Mr. Adair changed all this. The struggle between him and his tenants began in a small dispute about his right to shoot over some land formerly in the possession of one of their landlords. The farmers attempted to prevent Mr. Adair shooting ; there was a scuffle ; litigation ensued with varying success, and with increasing bitterness between Mr. Adair and one of the tenants. A further cause of dispute arose soon after. Mr. Adair had, like some other of the landlords, imported a number of Scotch black-faced sheep, which were supposed to be a very profitable in- vestment. These sheep disappeared in considerable numbers ; Mr. Adair charged his tenants with having maliciously destroyed them, and succeeded for a while in obtaining large sums in compensation from the grand jury. These taxes fell very heavily upon the tenantry, and tended to exasperate feeling still further. It was represented, too, that while the sheep only cost 7s. 6d. to 10s. a head, the amount claimed at the presentments was from 17s. 6d. to 25s. a head. The Judge of Assize — the late Chief Justice Monahan — indignantly refused to fiat these monstrous claims, and an im- pression began to prevail that the disappearance of many of the sheep at least was due, not to malice, but to the stress of weather. This, however, was not the view taken by Mr. Adair. He had been exasperated so much by the quarrel over the rights of sporting and the disappearance of the sheep, that he came to regard himself as engaged in a fierce and merciless struggle with the tenantry. He had prepared for such a struggle by getting possession of the entire district by purchase at different but closely following dates, and he was in the end the absolute master of ninety square miles of country. Several small acts led up to a final cause of quarrel. Two of his dogs were poisoned, as he thought maliciously, although the grand jury refused him compensation, and- an outhouse was set on fire. Finally, one of his herds was murdered. This fixed Mr. Adair's determination : the banishment of the whole population — nothing less would feed fat his big revenge. The tenantry heard of this fell intention, but, removed from much con- tact with the outside world, and unable to face even in imagination such a terrible possibility, they went on without taking any particular notice. But they were the only persons who were undisturbed. The other land- lords, alarmed at the transformation of the country from its normal tran- quillity into all this tumult of conflict, passed a strong resolution in favour of the tenantry ; the clergymen of all denominations were as vehemently on their side ; the local authorites were loud in their anger. ' Is it my THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. duty,' wrote Mr. Dillon, the resident magistrate, to Sir Thomas Larcom, then Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, ' to stand by and give protection while the houses are being levelled V In Dublin Castle itself they were in a fever of apprehension, and they made preparations for assisting the land- lord in this act of brutal and wholesale cruelty as extensive as if they were preparing for a small campaign. Mr. Adair's bailiffs were supplied with the services of a large number of soldiers and police. On the night of Sunday this body took possession quietly and without any warning of all the approaches to the valley in which the doomed people slept : on the following morning — Monday, April 8 — the work of eviction began. The Derry Standard, a Presbyterian journal of the district, described through its special correspondent what followed : ' The first eviction was one peculiarly distressing, and the terrible reality of the law suddenly burst with surprise on the spectators. Having arrived at Lough Barra, the police were halted, and the sheriff, with a small escort, proceeded to the house of a widow named M' Award, aged sixty years, living with whom were six daughters and a son. Long before the house was reached loud cries were heard piercing the air, and soon the figures of the poor widow and her daughters were observed outside the house, where they gave vent to their grief in strains of touching agony. Forced to dis- charge an unpleasant duty, the sheriff entered 'the house and delivered up possession to Mr. Adair's steward, whereupon six men, who had been brought from a distance, immediately fell to to level the house to the ground. The scene then became indescribable. The bereaved widow and her daughters were frantic with despair. Throwing themselves on the ground, they became almost insensible, and, bursting out in the old Irish wail — then heard by many for the first time — their terrifying cries re- sounded along the mountain-side for many miles. They had been deprived of the little spot made dear to them by associations of the past — and with bleak poverty before them, and only the blue sky to shelter them, they naturally lost all hope, and those who witnessed their agony will never forget the sight. No one could stand by unmoved. Every heart waa touched, and tears of sympathy flowed from many. In a short time we withdrew from the scene, leaving the widow and her orphans surrounded j| by a small group of neighbours who could only express their sympathy for the homeless, without possessing the power to relieve them. During that and the next two days the entire holdings in the land mentioned abova were visited, and it was not until an advanced hour on Wednesday the evictions were finished. In all the evictions the distress of the poor people was equal to that depicted in the first case. Dearly did they cling to then? homes till the last moment, and while the male population bestirred them- selves in clearing the houses of what scanty furniture they contained, the women and children remained within till the sheriff's bailiff warned them out, and even then it was with difficulty they could tear themselves away from the scenes of happier days. In many cases they bade an affectionate adieu to their former peaceable but now desolate homes. One old man, near the fourscore years and ten, on leaving his house for. the last time,, reverently kissed the doorposts, with all the impassioned tenderness of an emigrant leaving his native land. His wife and children followed his example, and in agonised silence the afflicted family stood by and watched the destruction of their dwelling. In another case an old man, aged ninety, who was lying ill in bed, was brought out of the house in order RUIN AND RABAGA* 119 that formal possession might be taken, but readmitted for a week to permit of his removal. In nearly every house there was some one far advanced in age — many of them tottering to the grave — while the sobs of helpless children took hold of every heart. When dispossessed, the families grouped themselves on the ground, beside the ruins of their late homes, having no place of refuge near. The dumb animals refused to leave the wallsteads, and in some cases were with difficulty rescued from the falling timbers. As night set in the scene became fearfully sad. Passing along the base of the mountain the spectator might have observed near to each house its former inmates crouching round a turf fire, close by a hedge ; and as a drizzling rain poured upon them they found no cover, and were entirely exposed to it, but only sought to warm their famished bodies. Many of them were but miserably clad, and on all sides the greatest desolation was apparent. I learned afterwards that the great majority of them lay out all night, either behind the hedges or in a little wood which skirts the lake ; they had no other alternative. I believe many of them intend re- sorting to the poorhouse. There these poor starving people remain on the cold bleak mountains, no one caring for them whether they live or die. 'Tis horrible to think of, but more horrible to behold. ,x This tragedy excited the attention of many people. An appeal was made for assistance, and the appeal was signed in a province unfortunately remarkable for religious dissension by the Catholic bishop, the Protestant rector, the Presbyterian minister, and the Catholic parish priest of the dis- trict, who united in warm defence of the people against their landlord. In Australia, meantime, one of their countrymen, who was a member of the Legislature — the late Hon. Michael 0' Grady — had formed a relief com- mittee, and offered to assist them to homes in a better and freer land than their own. The late Mr. A. M. Sullivan — from whose book I have quoted the details of the story — actively interested himself in their welfare. ' The poor people,'* he writes, ' were sought out and collected. Some by this time had sunk under their sufferings. One man, named Bradley, had lost his reason under the shock ; other cases were nearly as heartrending. There were old men who would keep wandering over the hills in view of their ruined homes, full of the idea that some day Mr. Adair might let them return ; but who at last had to be borne to the distant workhouse hospital to die.' 1 With a strange mixture of joy and sadness,' continues Mr. Sullivan, 1 the survivors heard that their friends in Australia had pai#their passage- money. On the day they were to set out for the railway station en route, for Liverpool, a strange scene was witnessed. The cavalcade was accom- panied by a concourse of neighbours and sympathisers. They had to pass within a short distance of the ancient burial-ground where the " rude forefathers " of the valley slept. They halted, turned aside, and pro- ceeded to the grass-grown cemetery. Here in a body they knelt, flung themselves on the graves of their relatives, which they reverently kissed again and again, and raised for the last time the Irish caoine, or funeral wail. Then — some of them pulling tufts of the grass, which they placed in their bosoms — they resumed their way on the road to exile.' 2 It was not alone to the tenants themselves and the country population generally that these wholesale clearances were disastrous. Agriculture ii « Quoted in 1 New Ireland,' pp. 227, 228. ■ lb., p. 229, 230. 120 THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. practically the one industry of Ireland, and with the disappearance of the farmers around disappeared the customers and the trade of the towns. Nor was this the only way in which the towns suffered from the general exodus. The evicted farmers, in many cases, had not sufficient capital to pay their passage to America, and drifted into the towns. There but a comparatively small number of them could obtain employment, and they were transformed by due gradation into the vast army of beggars that in- fest the Irish towns, or into the paupers that rot in idleness within the workhouses. The towns thus suffered doubly in the decrease of the customers and the increase in the pauper popiilation ; and hence it is that to-day there is in the villages and the smaller towns of Ireland poverty more hopeless, chronic, and appalling than we can find even in the country. The agricultural labourers, the misery of whose condition has passed into a by-word even among Irish Chief Secretaries, and into the facts sadly acknowledged by even the most hostile and opposite sections of Irish opinion, are for the most part farmers whom eviction divorced from the soil. On the decadence which the clearances brought to the Irish in towns, the evidence is overwhelming ; indeed, any Irishman that has revisited after some years of absence his native place can give testimony on this point by recounting the painful impressions the terrible change he every- where sees has left upon his mind. He finds a painfully large proportion of the people he has known gone in despair from the place — to America, or Australia, or England. Of those who remain behind, the majority are in the unrelaxing grip of unconquerable poverty. Take, out of the numberless instances, the case of two towns. Mr. John Hynes tells 1 how on Mr. Lahiff's estate, close to the town of Gort, there used in his young days to be two hundred families and a mile in tillage. Now — he was speaking of 1880 — all was grazing land and the town of Gort had been changed for a lane, and prosperous town to a struggling village. Francis Nicholls tells 2 the effect of the clearances by Mr. Nicholson on the neighbouring town of Kells ; the pauper population had been largely in- creased, and it was impossible to tell how many of them lived through the winter months. These people were in almost every case evicted families. Ireland to day bears the still fresh scars of the terrible sufferings of the years I am describing and the years which immediately preceded them. The most prominent, the most frequent, the ever -recurring feature of the Irish landscape is the unroofed cottage. There are many parts of the country whe4Pl these skeleton walls stare at one with a persistency and a ghastly iteration that convey the idea of passing through a land which had been swept by rapidly successive and frequent waves of foreign invasion — by war, and slaughter, and the universal break-up of national life. Or shall I rather say that Ireland conveys the idea, not of a nation ptill young in hope and daily increasing in wealth and in possibilities, but rather the image of one of those Oriental nations whose history and empire, wealth and hopes, belong to the irrevocable past. There are several counties where one can pass for miles without ever catching sight of a house or of any human face but that of the shepherd, almost as isolated as his hapless brother in the stretching plains of California. Meantime, while throughout Ireland this ghastly destruction of a nation was going on, the season was the most pleasant and profitable that the political adventurer has ever known in Ireland. The country had fallen 1 Evidence for Queen v. Parnell. ■ lb. RUIN AND R ABA GAS. 121 from rage to despair, and from despair to cynicism j The electoral contests of the time were conducted on a principle well understood though not publicly avowed. The political aspirant was to make profession of strong patriotic purpose, which the elector professed on his side to believe, and, »3 the candidate used Parliament solely for the purpose of personal advancement, the elector pocketed the bribe while professing to believe the candidate. A good deal of this corruption was the result of two other causes besides the daily increasing poverty of the country. First, there, was no grei had been condemned after the failure of 1848, supplied the Irish of Amunca with names and ability to keep alive and to inspire the movement for the rescue of Ireland. To America, too, had gone James Stephens, who as a young man had stood by Smith O'Brien at Ballingarry. Stephens was in Ireland in 1858, and he visited, among other places, the town of Skibbereen, in which had been recently established a society half literary, half political, and the chief spirit of which was a man whose name was destined to be long afterwards a name of horror and of fear. This was Jeremiah O'Donovan, as he was originally called, and Jeremiah O'Donovan (Rossa) as he is now better known. Between O'Donovan and Stephens an interview took place, at which Stephens informed O'Donovan that the Irish in America were willing and anxious to supply arms for insurrection to so many Irishmen as would be enrolled in a revolutionary conspiracy in Ireland. The bargain was sealed, and the movement made some way, but was confined in its operations to the south- west districts of the country. Finally the Government were informed of the position of matters, and the conspirators were put on their trial. Many of them were convicted, among others O'Donovan (Rossa), but the Crown, despising the movement as futile, did not insist on heavy punishments being inflicted on any of the conspirators. The Irish -American revolutionaries now set to work again, and the busi- ness of propagandism continued to go on actively. No particular progress was made, however, and probably the movement would not have assumed formidable proportions but for the outbreak of the Civil War in America. This portentous event brought into actual warfare many thousands of the exiled Irish, made them familiar with the use of arms, and thereby gave a stimulus to the idea of liberating Ireland through insurrection. An acci- dental occurrence gave the propagandists of the revolution an immense start. Terence Bellew McManus, one of the '48 leaders, having, like the others, escaped from Australia, settled and died in San Francisco in 1861. It was resolved that his remains should be buried in his native country. The body was conveyed across America with every circumstance of pomp and solemnity. To Ireland at last came the funeral procession that had thus swept solemnly across the vast continent and the wide expanse of ocean. Such a spectacle was well calculated to inspire the imagination and to stimulate the patriotic passions of the people. The coffin was landed at Queenstown on October 30, 1861, and the funeral took place in Dublin on Sunday, November 10. Fifty thousand people followed the remains ; at least as many lined the streets ; and the procession solemnly paused, with uncovered heads, at every spot sacred to the memory of those who had fought and died in the good fight against English tyranny. Finally, as night closed in, the body was deposited in Glasnevin Cemetery. From this time forward the advance of Fenianism was extraordinarily REVOLUTION. 135 rapid. Organizers went all over the island, swearing in men by the dozen, eometirnes by the score, every night. In one quarter the conspiracy met with unexpected and almost inexplicable success. This was in the army. At that time there were in Ireland a large number of Irish regiments. Several of the ablest of the Fenians became soldiers for the purpose of gaining recruits to their ranks. The calculations of the Fenians them- selves, even in these days of cool reflection, is that by 1865 they had en- rolled in their ranks, amongst the British army alone, 15,000 men. With the close of the American war hundreds of Irish- American officers were released from their duties. They poured into Ireland, and the air became thick with rumours of the impending rising. Meantime, the Government were kept well informed of everything that was going forward by their spies in the enemy's camp. The Irish People, the organ of the revolutionaries, was seized on September 15, 1865. Mr. Luby, Mr. John O'Leary, and O'Donovan (Rossa) were arrested, and in the following November Mr. Stephens. Before the latter was brought to trial he suc- ceeded, by the aid of two prison officials, in escaping from Richmond Gaol. Parliament promptly suspended the Habeas Corpus Act, and throughout the country the.leaders of the movement were seized and imprisoned. When these prisoners were brought to trial, there occurred the spectacle of such ghastly familiarity to the student of Irish history. The criminal courts at Green Street and throughout the country were for months em- ployed in the trial of prisoners, and man after man was convicted and sentenced to penal servitude. It was one of the many scandals in these trials that the most prominent judge in trying them was Judge Keogh. Of all men and forces that created Fenianism, Judge Keogh was the most potent. It was his treason that broke down all faith in constitutional agitation, and it was the want of faith in constitutional agitation that drove men to the desperate risks to life and liberty of a physical-force movement. It was the treason of Judge Keogh that, destroying the Tenant Right movement of 1852, brought the dread epoch of rack-renting, eviction, and widespread emigration, and it was the horrors of these things that produced the frenzied temper of which revolutionary movements are born. The columns of the Irish People, the organ of Fenianism, supply abundant testimony of this. Whenever a voice was raised in favour of constitutional agitation and constitutional agitators, the Irish People mentioned the names of Keogh and Sadleir, and there was no reply. The original scandal of appointing such a man to preside over the Fenian trials was aggravated by his conduct of the cases. He bullied the prisoners so flagrantly that at last some even of the English press cried shame. And occasionally he poured upon some unhappy crea- ture he was about to send to penal servitude for several years the plenteous vials of his abundant Billingsgate. But the conspiracy was not yet dead. The men in America still cherished the idea that an armed rising was necessary and possible, and sent en- couraging messages home. Stephens publicly pledged himself that there would be a rising in 1866. 1866 went by, and no insurrection came. At last the conductors of the movement at home became desperate, and it was resolved that, whether assistance came from America or not, the insurrection should be attempted. Sporadic efforts occurred all over the country ; men assembled to the word of command, and met at the trysting-place, but they found no arms there, and were easily dispersed. Another series of State trials followed, at which the chief spirits of the 136 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. movement were again sentenced in batches to penal servitude. The mov» ment was now apparently extinct, but before its conclusion it was marked by two incidents that have exercised a deep influence on succeeding events. Much of the strength of Fenianism lay among the Irish population of England, and emissaries were constantly passing between the two countries. It thus came to pass that some of the leaders were arrested and lodged in English gaols. One of these, General Burke, was incarcerated in Clerken- well prison. It was resolved that he should be rescue I. The task was entrusted to ignorant hands. A barrel of gunpowdei was placed in a narrow street by the side of the wall in that part of the prison where General Burke was supposed to be exercising. The wall was blown down. The prisoner, fortunately for himself, was not in that portion of the prison at all ; if he had been, his death would have been certain. A number of mfortunate people of the poorer classes, living in tenement houses opposite the prison, were the victims. Twelve were killed, and a hundred and twenty maimed. This occurred on December 13, 1867. A man named Barrett was tried and convicted, and was hanged in front of Newgate prison. The second event brought out with equal emphasis the hold which the insurrectionary movement had taken upon the Irish in England, and the reality and proportions of the danger to the empire. The conduct of the movement bad passed, after the arrest of Stephens, and during his absence in America, into the hands of Colonel Kelly. In the autumn of 1867 Colonel Kelly was in Manchester, at a Fenian meeting. As he was return- ing home with a companion, Captain Deasy, the two were arrested on suspicion of loitering for a burglarious purpose. They gave false names, but were soon discovered to be the formidable leader of the conspiracy and one of his chief lieutenants. The Fenian organization was at the time extremely strong in Manchester, and a rescue was resolved upon. On Wednesday, September 18, 1867, the prison van, while being driven to the county gaol at Salford, was attacked at the railway arch which spans Hyde Road at Bellevue. A party of thirty rushe.d forward with revolvers, shot one of the horses, and the police, being unarmed, fled. An attempt was made to open the door of the van with hatchets, hammers, and crow- bars, but this failed ; and meantime the police came back, accompanied by a large crowd. Sergeant Brett, the policeman inside, had the keys, which some of the part} 7 , opening the ventilator, asked him to give up. He re- fused ; a pistol was placed to the keyhole for the purpose of blowing open the lock ; the bullet passed through Brett's body, and he fell mortally wounded. The keys were taken out of his pocket and handed out by one of the female prisoners ; Kelly and Deasy were released, and hurried off into concealment, and were never recaptured. Meantime, a crowd had gathered, several of the rescuing party were seized and almost lynched ; one of them, William Philip Allen, was almost stoned to death. Soon after William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, Thomas Maguire, Michael O'Brien (alias Gould), and Edward O'Meara Condon (alias Shore) were tried for the wilful murder of Sergeant Brett. They were convicted, and all sentenced to be hanged. The trial took place amid a hurricane of public passion and panic. The evidence was tainted, and was soon unex- pectedly proved to be utterly untrustworthy. Thomas Maguire, tried on the same evidence, identified by the same witnesses, convicted and sen- tenced by the same judges, was proved so conclusively innocent that he was released a few days after his trial. Allen and the others declared REVOLUTION. 137 iolemnly that they had not intended to hurt Sergeant Brett. Condon, in speaking, used a phrase that has become historic : 'I have nothing,' he said, in concluding his speech, ' to regret or to take back. I can only say, " God save Ireland." ' His companions advanced to the front of the dock, and, raising their hands, repeated the cry, 'God save Ireland.' Maguire \ras released, and Condon was reprieved. For some time there was a hope that the breakdown of the trial in the case of Maguire would result in a reprieve in the cases of the other three. But the authorities ultimately decided that the three men should be hanged, and on the morning of November 23, 1867, Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien were executed in front of Salford gaol. A short time afterwards their bodies were buried in quick lime, in unconsecrated ground, within the precincts of the prison. It is impossible, even after the considerable interval that has elapsed, to forget the impression which this event produced upon the Irish people. In most of the towns in Ireland vast multitudes walked in funeral processions through the streets to testify the terrible depths of their grief. A few days after the execution, Mr. T. D. Sullivan wrote the poem with the refrain uttered from the dock, ' God save Ireland !' and wherever in any part of the globe there is now an assembly of Irishmen, social or political — a con- cert in Dublin, a convention at Chicago, or a Parliamentary dinner in London — the proceedings regularly close with the singing of ' God save Ire- land.' To one Irishman, then a youth, living in the country-house of his fathers, and deeply immersed in the small concerns of a squire's daily life, the exe- cution of the Manchester martyrs was a new birth of political convictions. To him, brooding from his early days over the history of his country, this catastrophe came to crystallize impressions into conviction, and to pave the way from dreams to action. It was the execution of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien that gave Mr. Parnell to the service of Ireland. An indirect effect of all these startling occurrences was to force the atten- tion of the English people and their Parliament upon the Irish Question. In other words, the evils that had been allowed to eat out the vitals of Ire- land for so long a period amid apathy tempered by scoffs, began to attract attention when Irishmen abandoned the paths of constitutional and tran- quil agitation, and sought remedy in conspiracy and force. By several circumstances the. Irish Church was pushed to the front, the Irish Members began to actively discuss it in Parliament, and finally, as everybody knows, after a fierce struggle and a General Election, the Church was disendowed and disestablished. This great reform turned attention once more to Parliamentary methods ; the spirit of apathy, which had given the fruits of electoral contests without care or regret to the first adventurer, was broken, and people began to think again that it was of some importance whether an honest man or a rogue should be sent to "Westminster to represent Ireland. The awakening of Ireland from the long slumber since 1845 had begun, and the awakening of Ireland means the revival of an agitation for self-government. Another movement was destined to add a new and even more potent force to the growing cause of Home Rule. Though the Church Question had been pushed to the front, the Land Question still retained its place as the su- preme issue to the majority of the population. Throughout the country mass meetings were held, and the demand of the farmers was put forward with thunderous emphasis. The demand was for the 'Three FV — 13? THE FARNELL MOVEMENT, fixity of tenure, free sale, and fail rent ; and the farmers had heard this demand advocated so often, had shouted themselves hoarse by so many hillsides in uttering it, had been so stimulated and encouraged by the sight of their battalions in regular array, Sunday after Sunday, and in county after county, that by the time Parliament met they regarded the 1 Three F's ' as having already passed from the region of popular platforms to that of Parliamentary debates and of statute law. The introduction of Mr. Gladstone's Bill was the mournful awakening that came to all these splendid dreams, for the measure of the Prime Min- ister stopped far short indeed of the 1 Three F's.' The sentimental forces which had been gathering in such might in favour of self-government were new materially increased by the accession of the mighty battalions of the disillusioned and disappointed farmers of the country. But the foundation of the Home Rule movement, curiously enough, was laid, not in obedience to the impulse of the masses of the people, but in the rancour of a small and a defeated minority of the population. The Dises- tablishment of the Church had brought back a certain proportion of the Protestant population to that spirit of nationality which had found its most eloquent advocates in the exclusively Protestant Parliament of the ante- Union days. A certain number of very moderate gentlemen of the Catholic faith saw in a movement which Protestant Conservatives were able to support elements which need not alarm the most milk-and-water adherents of the doctrine of Nationality. There were more stable elements in constitutional agitators who had fought doggedly on for a Native Par- liament through the long eclipse of national faith between 1855 and that hour, like Mr. A. M. Sullivan ; and in some men — such as Mr. O'Kelly, M.P. for Roscommon — who, appearing under disguised names, sought, after the breakdown of their efforts to free Ireland by force, whether there was any chance of success through Parliamentary action. The latter element took up this attitude at that period with a certain amount of trepidation, and at some personal risk ; for the distrust of constitutional agitation, and the hatred of constitutional agitators, still survived among the relics of Fenianism, and the new movement was looked upon by them with the same latent and perilous distrust as all its predecessors. The meeting was held on May 19, 1870, in the Bilton Hotel, Sackville Street, Dublin. At this meeting were present Conservatives as well knewn as Mr. Pur- don, then Conservative Lord Mayor of Dublin ; Mr. Kinahan, who had been High Sheriff ; and Major Knox, proprietor of the Irish Times, a Con- servative organ ; nor should the name be omitted of a gentleman who was for a considerable time to play a prominent part in the new movement — Colonel, then Captain, Edward R. King-Harman. Mr. Butt was the chief speaker, and on his proposition, and without a dissentient voice, the resolu- tion was passed, ' That it is the opinion of this meeting that the true remedy for the evils of Ireland is the establishment of an Irish Parliament with full control over our domestic affairs.' A new organization was founded under the name of 1 The Home Govern ment Association of Ireland.' Before long, the movement spread with the rapidity which always comes to movements founded on indestructible as- pirations. Now, just as in 1843, the people had only to see a movement ia favour of self-government to flock enthusiastically to its ranks. Then thq REVOLUTION. 139 Prime Minister had parsed another measure which transcended in import- ance any other of the great Acts which made his first Premiership so momentous an epoch in the resurrection of Irelandy This was the Ballot Act. For the first time in his history the Irish tenant could vote without the fear of eviction, with the attendant risks of hunger, exile, or death. The Ballot Act as an act of emancipation to the Irish tenant in a sense far more real tb„u the Emancipation Act of 1S29. From the passage of that Ballot Act is to be dated the era when, for the first time in her history, the real voice of Ireland had some opportunity of making itself heard. The new force advanced against all opponents, and every constituency that had its choice declared with unfaltering fidelity in favour of the National can- didate. > In four bye-elections the Home Rule candidates triumphed over every obstacle. The struggle between Whiggery and Home Rule was now over. Ireland had definitely declared for the new movement. This will be the place to tell the end of Judge Keogh. In the year 1878 the sensational rumour reached Dublin that he had developed symptoms of insanity in Belgium, whither he had been removed for the benefit of his health, and that he had attempted to kill his attendant and himself. The rumour proved correct. From this period forth he seems never to have recovered full possession of his senses, and gradually sank. He was removed to Bin- gen, and there died on September 30, 1878. An Englishman, with charac- teristic appreciation of Irish character, is said to have placed a stone over his remains with the inscription, 1 Justum et tenacem propositi virum* The country which he had betrayed and ruined, on the other hand, con- gratulated itself in not having received his remains. Indeed, some desper- ate spirits had resolved that the remains should never rest in hallowed Irish ground ; a plot was complete' for seizing the body during the funeral and throwing it into the Liffey. CHAPTER VIII. ISAAC BUTT. Isaac Butt, the leader of the new movement, was the son of a Protestant clergyman of the North of Ireland. The place of his birth was near the Gap of Barnesmore, a line of hills which is rarely, if ever, without shadow — not unlike Butt's own life. It was one of his theories that people born amid mountain scenery are more imaginative than the children of the plains. His own nature was certainly imaginative in the highest degree, with the breadth and height of imaginative men, and also with the doubt- ings, despondency, and the dread of the Unseen. For many years he stood firmly by the principles of Orange Toryism, and he had the career which then belonged to every young Irish Protestant of ability. He went to Trinity College, which at the time presented large prizes, and presented them to those only who had the good luck to belong to the favoured faith. Butt's advancement was rapid. He was not many years a student when he was raised to a Professorship of Political Economy. i 4 o THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. When he went to the Bar his success came with the same ease and rapidity. He was but thirty-one years of age, and had been only six years at the Bar, when he was made a Queen's Counsel: In politics, however, he had made his chief distinction. It will be remembered that when O'Connell sought to obtain a declaration in favour of Repeal of the Union from the newly emancipated Corporation of Dublin, Butt was selected by his co-re- ligionists, young as he was, to meet the Great Liberator, and his speech was as good a one as could be made on the side of the maintenance of the Union ; and many a year after, when he had become the leader of a Home Rule Party, was quoted against him by Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, the Irish Chiof Secretary of the period. Of great though irregular industry, deeply devoted to study, with a mind ief large grasp and a singularly retentive memory, he was intimately ac- quainted with all the secrets of his profession ; and throughout his life was acknowledged to be a fine lawyer. He represented in Parliament both Youghal in his native county, and Harwich in England. His entrance into Parliament aggravated many of his weaknesses. It separated him from his profession in Dublin, and thereby increased his already great pecuniary liabilities. His character in many respects was singularly feeble. Some of his weaknesses leaned to virtue's side, and many of the stories told of him suggest a resemblance to the character of Alexandre Dumas pere. He borrowed largely and lent largely, and often in the midst of his sorest Btraits lavished on others the money which he required himself, and which often did not belong to him. Throughout his life he was, as a consequence, pursued by the bloodhound of vast and insurmountable debt. At least once he was for several months in a debtors' prison, and there used to be terrible stories — even in the days when he was an English member of Parliament — of unpaid cabmen and appearances at the police-courts. But he was a man of supreme political genius ; one of those whose right fco intellectual eminence is never questioned, but willingly conceded with- out effort on his side, without opposition on the part of others. The irregularities of his life shut him out from official employment, and he saw a long series of inferiors reach to position and wealth while he remained poor and neglected. There is a considerable period of his life which is almost total eclipse. There came an Indian summer when he returned to the practice of his profession in Ireland, and once more joined in the political struggles of his countrymen. Mr. Gladstone's dissolution of 1874 came upon Butt with the same bewildering surprise as upon so many other people. That election found him in a cruel difficulty. On the one hand, the country was beyond all question with him ; he knew that he could count on the masses to vote in favour of self-government as securely as every other popular leader who has ever been able to make the appeal. The majority of the constituencies were ready, he knew, to return Home Rule candidates ; and thus the General Election afforded him the opportunity of creating a greater Home Rule Party. But, on the other hand, elections cannot be fought without money ; elections were dearer then even than they are now, and Butt wanted to fight, not a seat here and there, but a whole national campaign ; for three-fourths of the constituencies could be won by a Home Rule candi- date if a Home Rule candidate could be brought forward. For so immense a work he had nothing to fall back on but a few hundreds of pounds in the unds of the Home Rule Association, and he himself was at one of his re- ISAAC BUTT, 141 current periods of desperate need. He was arrested for debt on the very morning of the day when, learning of the dissolution, he was making hi& plan of campaign, though the matter was arranged in some way or other, he had to fly to England, and this prevented him from exercising that personal supervision over the General Election which is absolutely re- quired from the leader of a movement. Butt could only adopt, under the circumstances, a policy of compromise, and make the best out of bad but inevitable material. Where there was a real and genuine Home Rule candidate ready to come forward, and able to bear the expenses of an election contest, Butt fought the seat. In this way he was able to bring into public life many earnest men who had for years found it impossible to take any Parliamentary part in rescuing the country. His party contained A. M. Sullivan, Mr. Biggar, Mr. Richard Power, Mr. Sheil, and several others, who were really devoted to the National cause. On the other hand, he had to accept, in constituencies where he had not the men or the money to fight, the ' deathbed repentance,' as it was called, of men who had grown gray in the service of one or other of the English parties. These time-worn Whigs or Tories — such as Sir Patrick O'Brien and Sir George Bowyer — of course swallowed the Home Pule pledge. Some of the new men were little better. The race of Rabagas had been scotched but not killed, and among Butt's recruits was a certain proportion of lawyers, who were as ready as any of their predecessors to sell them- selves and their principles to the highest bidder. Many of them have since received office ; all of the tribe have expected and asked it. It was, then, a very mixed party Butt had gathered around him — a party of patriots and of place-hunters, of men young, earnest, and fresh for struggle, and of men physically exhausted and morally dead, a party of life-long Nationalists and of veteran lacqueys. There was a tragic contrast between such a party and the renewed and sublime and noble hopes of the nation. Of the 103 Irish members, sixty were returned pledged to vote for the entire rearrange- ment of the legislative relations between the two countries. Such was the party ; and now how was it with the leader ? His weakness with regard to pecuniary matters has been already touched upon ; he had, besides, all the other foibles, 'as well as the charms, of an easy-going, good-natured, pliant temperament. Though his faults were grossly exag- gerated — for instance, many intimates declare that they never saw him, even during the acquaintance of years, once under the influence of drink — he had, unquestionably, made many sacrifices on the altars of the gods of indulgence. It may be that with him, as with so many others, the pursuit of pleasure was but the misnomer for the flight from despair. He was all his life troubled by an unusually slow circulation, and it may be that the central note of his character was melancholy. In his early days he was a constant contributor to the Dublin University Magazine, and his tales have a vein of the morbid melancholy that runs through the youthful letters of Alfred de Musset. Allusion has been already made to his imaginative- ness : this imaginativeness did much to weaken his resolve. Curious stories are told of the superstitions that ran through his nature. Though a Pro- testant, he used to carry some of the religious symbols — medals, for instance — which Catholics use, and he would not go into a law court without his medals. There are still more ludicrous stories of his standing appalled or delighted before such accidents as putting on his clothes the wrong way, and other trivialities. Then, the demon of debt, which had haunted him H2 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. all his life, now stood menacing behind him. He had just re-established himself in a considerable practice when he again entered Parliament, and membership of Parliament is entirely incompatible with the retention of his entire practice by an Irish barrister. He was, throughout his leadership, divided between a dread dilemma : either he had to neglect Parliament, and then his party was endangered ; or neglect his practice, and then bring ruin on himself and a family entirely unprovided for, deeply loving and deeply loved. There is no Nemesis so relentless as that which dogs pecu- niary recklessness ; the spendthrift is also the drudge ; and in his days of old age, weakness, and terrible political responsibilities, Butt had to fly between London and Dublin, to stop up o' nights, alternately reading briefs and drafting Acts of Parliament : to make his worn and somewhat un- wieldy frame do the double work, which would try the nerves and strength of a giant with the limber joints and freshness of early youth. And at this period Butt's frame was worn, though to outward appearances he was still vigorous. The hand of incurable disease already held him tight, and the dark death, of which he had so great a horror, was not many years off ; finally, in 1874, he was sixty-one years of age. On the other hand, he had great qualities of leadership. He was unquestionably a head and shoulders above all his followers, able though so many of them were, and was, next to Mr. Gladstone, the greatest Parliamentarian of his day. Then he had the large toleration and the easy temper that make leadership a light burden to followers ; and the burden of leadership must be light when — as in an Irish Party — the leader has no offices or salaries to bestow. " And, above all, he had the modesty and the simplicity of real greatness. Every man had his ear, every man his kindly word and smile, and some his strong affection. Thus it was that Butt was to many the most lovable of men ; and more than one political opponent, impelled by principle to regard him as the most serious danger to the Irish cause, struck him hard, but wept as he dealt the blow. This sketch of the character of Butt will show the points in which he was unsuitable for the work before him. He was the leader of a small party in an assembly to which it was hateful in opinion, and feeling, and temperament. A party in such circumstances can only make its way by audacious aggressiveness, dogged resistance, relentless purpose ; and for such Parliamentary forlorn hopes the least suited of leaders was a man. whom a single groan of impatience could hurt, and one word of complu ment delight. The history of Butt's attempts to obtain land or any other reform in Ireland from the Imperial Parliament was the same as that of so many of his predecessors. Year after year, session after session, there was the same tale of Irish demands mocked at, denounced with equal vigour by the leaders of both the English parties alike, and then rejected in the division lobbies by overwhelming English majorities. The following is the list of the Land Bills proposed by Parliament between 1871 and 1880 i 1 1 Eealy, p. 67. ISAAC BUTT. 143 I 1G72 1S73 1ST 3 1878 187S 187S 1879 1S79 1S79 risso 1 1880 ' Landed Property. Ireland, Act, 1S47, 1 I Amendment Bill ; Ulster Tenant Right Bill Ulster Tenant Right Bill j Landlord and Tenant Act, 1S70, I Amendment Bill ■ Landlord and Tenant Act, 1S70, Amendment Bill. Xo. 2 Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870, j Amendment Bill 1 Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870, Amendment Bill, No. 2 I Ulster Tenant Right Bill Irish Land Act Extension Bill I Landed Proprietors, Ireland, Bill . Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 1S70, Amendment Bill Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 187C, Amendment Bill Tenant Right on Expiration of Leases Bill Land Tenure, Ireland, Bill Land Tenure. Ireland, Bill Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 1870, Amendment Bill Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 1870, Amendment Bill Tenant Right Bill Tenant Right, Ulster, Bill Tenants' Improvements, Ireland, Bill Tenants' Protection. Ireland. Bill... Ulster Tenant Right Bill Ulster Tenant Right Bill, No. 2 ... Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Bill Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 1870, Amendment Bill Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 1870, Amendment Bill, No. 2 ... Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 1S7C, Amendment Bill Ulster Tenant Right Bill rNTRODUC ED ET Serjeant Sherkek Mr. Butt ... Mr. Butt ... Mr. Heron Mr. Butt Sir J. Gray Mr. Butt The 0'Donoghue Mr. Smyth Mr. Crawford .. Mr. Crawford .. Mr. Mulholland.. Mr. Butt Mr. Butt Mr. Crawford .. Mr. Herbert Lord A. Hill .. Mr. Macartney .. Mr. Martin Mr. Moore Mr. Macartney .. Lord A. Hill Mr. Herbert Mr. Taylor Mr. Downing ., Mr. Taylor Mr. Macartney ., Withdrawn Dropped Dropped Dropped Dropped Dropped Dropped Dropped Dropped Dropped Rejected Withdrawn Dropped Rejected Rejected Dropped Rejected by Lords Withdrawn Rejected Dropped Rejected Withdrawn Dropped Dropped Rejected Dropped Dropped The English journals at the same time gave equally abundant testimony of the invincible ignorance of English opinion upon Irish questions. While in every part of Ireland the tenants were being crushed under a yearly in- creasing load of rack-rents into a deeper abyss of hopeless poverty, and the whole country was drifting once again to the periodic famine, an influential London journal was gaily declaring that Mr. Butt's whole case rested on an agreeable romance. Of the squalid lives of Irish farmers in their miserable patches of over-rented land ; of the crushing of hearts and the break-up of homes through eviction and emigration ; of the swift and inevitable advance of the spectre of famine — of all the cruel and intoler- able suffering and wrong that provoked the cyclone of the Land League, the Daily Telegraph could write this airily and pleasantly : * A large allowance must be made for the vivid fancy of Irishmen. But for that reflection the sad story which Mr. Butt told the House of Commons 144 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. last night about the effects of the Irish Land Act (of 1870) would be dis- heartening indeed. . . . Mr. Butt warns us that the old " land war " is breaking out again ; not through any fault of the farmers, he is careful to explain, but through the infatuation of those landlords who have used their wits to make the Act a dead letter. Were all this true, we should not wonder at Mr. Butt's demand for a Royal Commission to see how the Act works. But then, we repeat, allowance must be made for the vivid imagi- nation of Irishmen. ... It might have been contended that Mr. Butt had made a fair case for a small inquiry, if he had not betrayed at every turn of his speech his real aim, which is, not to amend the Land Act, but to secure the Irish farmers fixity of tenure at a rent arranged on some general ground. . . . Mr. Butt could scarcely have expected the Government to treat such a project seriously, and he must have been prepared for its decisive rejection by the House.' 1 Butt was very much pained and disappointed by this universal rejection of all his proposals, and began to have gloomy forebodings as to the success of his policy. Intimately acquainted as Butt was with the working of the Land Act of 1870. he probably knew very well that a crisis was inevitable — such as came upon Ireland in 1879. And possibly, in one of those moments of gloom and depression with which he was too familiar, he may have anticipated an hour when there would come the same tragic and terrible close to his agitation which had wound up the career of O'Connell — a country not freed and prosperous, but once more tight in the grip of hunger, and more helpless than ever against oppression. To preach patience to a people under such conditions was to mock a starving man with honeyed words. There was, however, another and a graver danger to the success of Butt's movement. Butt knew very well that, as time went on, he was bound to lose a certain proportion of such a party. When there is on the one side a certain number of men willing . to sell themselves and on the other a Government with vast resources and occasional t»<~ed for the services of corrupt Irishmen, the moment when the two will come to a bargain is a matter of mutual arrangement. The Home Rule Party had not been many years in existence when two or three of its members had accepted place, and there was not the least doubt that several others were willing. Then, apart from the want of pence, which was driving several of Butt's followers into office-seeking, the party was suffering from that hope deferred which depresses and then disintegrates political bodies. Session passed afte* session, motion after motion, Bill after Bill, and still no advance was madu Then the party, drawn from elements so heterogeneous as Colonel King- Harman and Mr. Gray, Sir Patrick O'Brien and Mr. Richard Power, could not be held in any strict bonds of discipline. Butt was exceedingly anxious to get the party to act together as a party on the great questions which divided the twc> English parties ; all his efforts in this direction failed. I» the Parliament of 1874, it gave Sir Stafford Northcote very little concern if Colonel King-Harman voted in favour of Home Rule, after the annual and academic discussion, when the Irish were put down by a combination of all the English, parties in the House ; for in all English party divisions he was secure of Colonel King-Harman's vote, as though he had not corrupted the general purity of his Conservatism by the heresy of Home Rule. And, similarly, even Lord Hartington might excuse the occasional 1 Quoted in ' New Ireland,' pp. 398, 399. ISAAC BUTT. error of an expectant Whig like Mr. Meldon, when Mr. Meldon's vote against the Tories was as certain as his desire for a place. Butt fully grasped this truth of Parliamentary tactics, but, of course, was nnable to get men to act as an Irish Party who were bound by corrupt hopes or party predilections to give their first allegiance to an English Party and an English leader. Thus his whole policy was founded on sand. All these various causes, working together, had produced in the Irish Party of 1874 disorganization, depression, the breakdown of the barriers of shame among the corrupt, the sealing up of the fountains of hope among the pure. The period of dry-rot had set in. In the light of subsequent events, it is now easy to see the dread abyss to which the Home Euie Party was once more bringing Ireland. The accession of a Liberal Ministry would have immediately completed the disaster which the defeat of Butt's proposals had begun. At least half the party would at once have become applicants for office, and probably a considerable number would have realized their wishes. The remainder r would gradually have sunk deeper and deeper into a position of obedience ) to the English whips, and Irish national interests would once more have I been made absolutely subservient to the interests of a single English party, to the convenience of Ministers, and to the opportunities of an overworked, listless, and generally hostile House of Commons. The first result of this state of things would have been to break down once more all faith in Parliamentary agitation. A portion of the people would have found some hope for the redress of intolerable grievances in another resort to revolutionary methods. The majority, following the precedent of the period immediately subsequent to Keogh's betrayal, would, in the cynicism begotten of blighted hope, once more have chosen bad or good men, honest patriots or self-seeking knaves, in the spirit of chance and of caprice. This downfall of constitutional agitation would have been made the more disastrous by events which at this moment were hurrying upon Ireland.. The year 1879, as will presently be seen, brought one of those crises which were bound to recur in Ireland as long as its land system remained unreformed. Famine would have followed the distress of 1879, as it followed the blight of 1846. The country, without an honest and energetic Parliamentary repre- sentation, would have been left at the mercy of the ignorance, and the flippant levity of English Ministers, and Ireland, once more on the threshold of s successful movement, would have been dragged back for another generation into the slough of hunger, eviction, dishonest representatives, and futile insurrection. The men and the methods that warded off this catastrophe were chosen with the ironical capriciousness of destiny. The one was a man already advanced in years, without the smallest trace of oratorical ability, without culture, with no political experience wider than that to be acquired on a water board or a town council. The other, at this time at least, was a young and obscure country gentleman, who had given no pledges to the political future save those of a very unsuccessful election contest, and two or three stumbling and very ineffective attempts at public speech. On the night of April 22, 1875, the House of Commons was engaged in the not unaccustomed task of passing a Coercion Bill for Ireland. Mr. Butt, for some reason or other, thought it desirable that the progress of the measure on this evening should be slow, and he asked a member of his party, who was still young to the House, to speak against time. ' How long,' aslred the member of his leader, ' would you wish me to speak ?' ' A pret r -v 10 S4& THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. good while,' wag Mr. Butt's reply. Mr. Biggar, who was the member appealed to, gave an interpretation to this mot d'ordre far larger than probably Mr. Butt had ever imagined or Intended. It was five o'clock when Mr. Biggar rose, it was five minutes to nine when he sat down. Let us quote Hansard for a description of the scene ; its unconscious humour and significance will be interesting : The hon. member proceeded to read extracts from the evidence before the Westmeath Committee — as was understood — but in a manner which rendered him totally unintelligible. At length ' The Speaker, interrupting, reminded the hon. gentleman that the rules required that an hon. member, when speaking, should address himself to the Chair. This rule the hon. gentleman was at present neglecting. ' Mr. Biggar said that his non-observance of the rule was partly because he found it difficult to make his voice heard after speaking for so long a time, and partly because his position in the House made it very inconvenient for him to read his extracts directly towards the Chair ; he would, however, with permission, take a more favourable position. 1 The hon. member accordingly, who had been speaking from below the gangway, removed to a bench nearer to the Speaker's chair, taking with him a large mass of papers, from whi»h he continued to read long extracts, with comments. 1 At length the hon. member said he was unwilling to detain the House at further length, and would conclude by stating his conviction that he had proved to every impartial mind that the Government had made out no case for the maintenance of this monstrous system of coercion, and that their proposal was perfectly unreasonable. The hon. gentleman, who had been speaking nearly four hours, then moved his amendment.' 1 Neither Mr. Butt, nor the House of Commons, nor Mr. Biggar himself, could possibly have foreseen the momentous place which this night's work was destined to hold in all the subsequent history of the relations between England and Ireland. It was on this night that the policy was born which has since become known to all the world — the policy known as ' obstruction ' by its enemies and as the ' active policy ' by its friends. There are few men of whom friends and enemies form so different an estimate as Mr. Biggar. The feelings of his friends and intimates is affectionate almost to fanaticism. When there are private and convivial meetings of the Irish Party, the effort is always made to limit the toasts to the irreducible minimum, for talking has naturally ceased to be much of an amusement to men who have to do so much of it in the performance of public duties. There is one toast, however, which is never set down and is always proposed : this toast is the 'Health of Mr. Biggar.' Then there occurs a scene which is pleasant to look upon. There arises from all the party one long, spontaneous, universal cheer, a cheei straight from every man's heart ; the usually frigid speech of Mr. Parnell grows" warm and even tender ; everything shows that, whoever stands highest in the respect, Mr. Biggar holds first place in the affections of hi& comrades. There is another and not uninteresting phenomenon of these occasions. To the outside world there is no man presents a sterner, a more prosaic, and harder front than Mr. Biggar. On such occasions the other side of his character stands revealed. His breast heaves, his face flushes, he dashes his hand with nervous haste to hie eyes ; but the tears have already risen and are rushing down his face. 1 Hansard, voL ccxxiii., p. 1458. ISAAC BUTT. H7 To his intimates, then, Mr. Biggar is known as a man overflowing with kind- ness ; of an almost absolute unselfishness, A man once bitterly hated M Biggar until he had a conversation with one of Mr.Biggar's sisters, and found that she was unable to speak of all her brother's kindness with an unbroken voice. In the House of Commons, with all his fifty-seven years, he is at the beck and call of men who could be almost his grandchildren. Mr. Healy is preparing an onslaught on the Treasury Bench : ' Joe,' he cries to Mr. Biggar, 'get me return so-and-so.' Mr. Biggar is off to the library. He has scarcely got back when the relentless member for Monaghan requires to add to his armoury the division list in which the perfidious Minister has recorded his infamy, and away goes Mr. Biggar to the library again. Then Mr. Sexton, busily engaged in the study of an official report, approaches the member for Cavan with a card and an insinuating smile, and Mr. Biggar sets forth on an expedition to see some of the importunate visitants by whom Members of Parliament are dogged. As a quarter to six is approach- ing on a Wednesday evening, and Mr. Parnell thinks it just as well that the work of Government should not go on too fast, he calls on Mr. Biggar, and Mr. Biggar is on his legs, filling in the horrid interval — Heaven knows how ! The desolate stranger, who knows no Member of Parliament, and yearns to see the House of Commons at work, thinks fondly of Mr. Biggar, and obtains a ticket of admission. He is seen almost every night surrounded by successive bevies of ladies — young and old, native and foreign — whom he is escorting to the Ladies' Gallery. Nobody asks any favour of Mr. Biggar without getting it. The man who to the outside public appears the most odious type of Irish fractiousness is adored by the policemen, worshipped by the attendants of the House ; and there is good ground for the suspicion that there was a secret treaty between him and the late Serjeant-at-Arms, the genial and universally popular Captain Gossett, founded on their common desire to bring sittings to the abrupt and in- glorious end of a 1 count out.' But this is only one side of his character. His hate is as fierce and un- questioning as his love, and he hates all his political opponents. He has the true Ulster nature: uncompromising, downright, self -controlled, narrow. The subtleties by which men of wider minds, more complex natures, less stable purpose and conviction, are apt to palliate their changes are entirely incomprehensible to Mr. Biggar, and the self -justifications of moral weak- ness arouse only his scorn. His purpose, too, when once resolved upon, is inflexible. It is this inflexibility of purpose that has made him so great a political force. Finally, he is as fearless as he is single-minded. The worst tempest in the House of Commons, the sternest decree that English law could enforce against an Irish patriot, and equally the disapproval of his own people, are incapable of causing him a moment of trepidation. He has said many terrible things in the House of Commons : the instance has got to occur of his having retracted one syllable of anything he has ever said. There is a scene in ' Pere Goriot ' in which the pangs of the dying and deserted father are depicted with terrible force. He is speaking of his daughters and of their husbands : of the one he speaks with the tenderness of a woman's heart ; of the other, with the ferocity of an enraged tiger. The passage suggests the two so contrary sides of Mr. Biggar's nature : in the depth of his love, in the fierceness of his hate, he is the ' Pere Goriot' of Irish politics. A great difficulty meets the biographer of Mr. Biggar at the outset. He is not uncommunicative about himself, but he does not understand himself, 10—2 48 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, and he much underrates himself. Asked by a friend to write his auto- biography, his answer was : ' I am a very commonplace character.' Inhia early days, when he used to be asked to make a speech, he cheerfully started out on the attempt, having made the preliminary statement, 4 1 can't speak a d d bit.' He was born in Belfast on August 1, 1828, and was educated at the Belfast Academy, where he remained from 1832 to 1844. The record of his school-days is far from satisfactory. He was very indolent ■ — at least, he says so himself — he showed no great love of reading — in this regard the boy, indeed, was father to the man — he was poor at composition, and, of course, abjectly hopeless at elocution. The one talent he did ex- hibit was a talent for figures. It was, perhaps, this want of any particular success in learning, 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, who — as is known — was engaged in the provision trade, and he continued as assistant until 1861, when lie became the head of the firm. This part of his career may be here dismissed with the remark that he retired from trade in 1880, and is now entirely out of business. Mr. Biggar always took an interest in politics, and it will not surprise those acquainted with his subsequent career to know that he was always on the side which was in a hopeless minority, and which opposed the reigning clique and the established regime.. For instance, when the late Mr. McMechan sought on one occasion the representation of Belfast, he had only fourteen supporters in all, and Mr. Biggar was one of the four- teen. In 1868, Mr. Biggar had a share in creating the curious combination by which Mr. William Johnston, of Ballykilbeg, was elected by Orange Democrats and Catholic Nationalists. In 1870 Mr. Biggar made an attempt to get into the Town Council, standing for his native ward, which had always been regarded as a Tory stronghold. He was well beaten. Mr. Biggar received his defeat with the declaration that he would fight the ward on every occasion until he be- came its member. In the following year he again stood, with the result that he was returned at the head of the poll. He had previously to this obtained a seat on the Water Board, and he was chairman of that body from August, 1869, to March, 1872. Some stormy scenes occurred during Mr. Biggar's tenure of office ; for the future member for Cavan gave his colleagues some specimens of that absolutely irreverent freedom of speech which has since alternately shocked and amused a higher assembly. There was a meeting in county Antrim for the purpose of expressing sympathy with the Queen on the recovery of the Prince of Wales ; and, whether it was because of his disbelief in princes generally, or because he was dis- gusted with the fulsomeness of some of the language employed, Mr. Biggar wrote to the newspapers to say that the attendance at the meeting did not exceed fifty. When his year of office closed he was superseded, and was even refused the customary vote of thanks. 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-hearrted friend. The candidates were Mr. (now Sir Charles) Lewis, Mr. (now Chief Baron) Palles, and Mr. Biggar. At that moment Mr. Palles, as Attorney- General, was prosecuting Dr. Duggan and >ther Catholic bishops for the part they had taken in a famous Gal way ISAAC BUTT. 149 election, and Mr. Biggar made it a first and indispensable condition of his withdrawing from the contest that these prosecutions should be dropped. Mr. Palles refused ; Mr. Biggar received only 89 votes, but the Castle official was defeated, and he was satisfied. The bold fight he had made marked out Mr. Biggar as the man to lead one of the assaults which at this time the rising Home Rule Party was beginning to make on the seats of Whig and Tory. When the General Election of 1874 came, it was repre- sented to Mr. Biggar that he would better serve the cause by standing for Cavan. He was nominated, and returned, and member for Cavan he has since remained. It was not long after the night of Mr. Biggar's four hours' speech that a young Irish member took his seat for the first time. This was Mr. Parnell, elected for the county of Meath in succession to John Martin — a veteran and incorruptible patriot who had died a few days before the opening of this new chapter in the Irish struggle. When the dissolution of February, 1874, came, Mr. Parnell wished to 3tand for Wicklow ; but he was then high sheriff of the county, and the Government would not allow him to qualify himself by resigning. Shortly after^ Colonel Taylor's acceptance of office as Chancellor of the Duchy in the new Disraeli Administration made a vacancy for the county Dublin, and it was deemed advisable to fight the seat. The contest was regarded as a forlorn hope, and was known at the same time to be necessarily an ex- pensive one. The offer of Mr. Parnell to fight the seat at his own expense same at a time when there was scarcely a penny in the exchequer of the National Party, and the mere fact alone of his willingness to bear the burden in such a contest was enough to secure him a hearing ; but there were many doubts and fears, and the first impression was that, if a young Landlord, hitherto entirely unknown in the national struggle — for the outer, and still more, the inner history of this shy, reserved young man, buried in his Wicklow estate, was a closed book to everybody in the world — if such a man wished to represent a constituency, it was from no higher motive than 30cial ambition ; and men who had become Members of Parliament for such reasons have left a long record of half-hearted adherence, ending in violent hostility to the national cause. At last it was agreed that the young aspirant should at least get the privilege of a hearing, and he had a per- sonal interview with the Council of the Home Rule League. John Martin and Mr. A. M. Sullivan were favourably impressed ; the latter undertook to propose his adoption at a meeting in the Rotunda, and here is his account of what followed and of Mr. Parnell's debut in public life : ' The resolution which I had moved in his favour having been adopted with acclamation, he came forward to address the assemblage. To our dismay he broke down utterly. He faltered, he paused, went on, got con- Fused, and, pale with intense but subdued nervous anxiety, caused everyone to feel deep sympathy for him. The audience saw it all, and cheered him kindly and heartily ; but many on the platform shook their heads, sagely prophesying that if ever he got to Westminster, no matter how long he stayed there, he would either be a "Silent Member," or be known as u Single -speech Parnell." n Nobody was surprised when, as the result of the election, Colonel Taylor was returned by an overwhelming majority. If anything were needed to account for the expected result, and to encourage hope for a better chance 1 « New Ireland,' p. 409. 7 HE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. next tittui, A #as found in the universal sentiment that the Nationalists had been represented by an extremely poor candidate. Then, as now, Mr. Parnell had none of the qualities which had 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 power of saying exactly what he means and his thorough grasp of his own ideas and wants. 1 But Mr. Parnell has become this in spite of himself. He retains to this day an almost invincible repugnance to 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 a speaker more than usually stumbling. Then his manner was cold and reserved ; he seemed entirely devoid of enthusiasm, and he spoke with that strong English accent which in Ireland has come to be inevitably associated with the adherents of the English garrison and the enemies of the national cause. But, if the truth were known, Mr. Parnell, in entering upon political life, was reaching the natural sequel of his own descent, of his early train- ing, 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. Parnelh 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 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 exuberance 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. But from various casual and unintentioned hints the following may be taken as a fair summary of his life and its influences. The history of his own family was well calculated to make him a strong Nationalist. The family comes from Congleton, in Cheshire, and it is from this town that one branch, raised to the peerage, has taken its title. Thomas Parnell, the poet, was one of the race. The Parliamentary dis- tinction dates, in the ParneU family, from the early part of the last century. John Parnell was member for Maryborough, in the Irish House of Com- mons, one hundred and fifty years ago. He was son of a judge of the Queen's Bench. He died in 1782, and he was immediately succeeded by his son John, afterwards Sir John. In 1787 Sir John was made Chan- cellor of the Exchequer. In the 'Red List,' in which Sir Jonah Barrington sums up his impressions of the Irish politicians of his time, he writes oppo- site the name of Sir John Parnell the one word 4 Incorruptible.' He proved his claim to the title by giving up the office he had held for seven- teen years, and voting steadily against the Union. Henry Parnell, the son of Sir John, was a member of the Irish House of Commons at the same time, and, like his father, stood steadily by Grattan and the other advocates of Irish nationality to the last. Sir John was elected to the United Parliament, but died in the first year of his new posi- 1 1 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. Gladstone, Hansard, vol. cclxxvii., p. 482, ISAAC BUTT. tion, and was immediately succeeded by Henry. Sir Henry Parnell wa5 for many years a strong advocate of the rights of his fellow-countrymen, and was in favour of the abolition of the Corn Laws, short Parliaments, extension of the franchise, vote by ballot, and. curiously enough, the aboli- tion of flogging in the army and navy, at a period when such doctrines were associated with advanced Radicalism. He was Secretary for War in Lord Grey's Ministry for 1S32, and Paymaster of the Forces in the Administra- tion of Lord Melbourne, and in 1811 he was created first Baron Con- gleton. John Henry Parnell, of Avondale, was grandson of Sir John Parnell, and nephew of the first Lord Congleton. Making a tour through America while still a young man, he met, at Washington, Miss Stewart. Miss Stewart was the daughter of Commodore Charles Stewart, who played an important part in the history of America. It was he who, in his ship the Constitution, in the war between England and America in 1815, met, fought, beat and captured the two English vessels — the Cyane, and the Levant — with the loss of seventy-seven killed and wounded among the Brit- ish, and only three killed and ten wounded in his own vessel. It is, perhaps, characteristic of the love for legality in his race that he did not enter upon this engagement until the British vessels first attacked, for he had received from a British vessel, three days before the engagement, a copy of the Lon- don Times, containing the heads of the Treaty of Ghent, as signed by the Ministers of the L~nited States and Great Britain, and said to have been ratified by the Prince Regent. 1 After a series of striking adventures, Stewart reached home with his vessel. His victory excited extreme enthu- siasm among the Americans, and every form of public honour was bestowed upon him. In Boston there was a triumphal procession ; in New York the City Council presented him with the freedom of the city and a gold snuff- box, and he and his officers were entertained at a dinner ; at Pennsylvania he was voted the thanks of the Commonwealth, and presented with a gold- hilted sword. Congress passed a vote of thanks to him and his officers, and struck a gold medal and presented it to him in honour of the event. Afterwards Commodore Stewart was sent to the Mediterranean, where there was something approaching a mutiny amongst the officers under a different commodore. He soon came to a definite issue with his subordi- nates. He ordered a court-martial on a marine to be held on board one of his vessels. The officers preferred to discuss the case at their leisure in a hotel in Naples, and there tried and convicted the marine. The commo- dore promptly quashed the conviction, and, when the Court passed a series of resolutions, put all the commanding officers of the squadron under arrest. The result was the complete restoration of order, and the approval of Com- modore Stewart's conduct by the President and the Cabinet. Admiral Stewart, as he became, lived to a great age, and in time had taken a place in the affections of his countrymen somewhat s imila r to that of old Field-marshal Wrangel among the Germans of our day. He used to be known as ' Old Ironsides,' and the residence which he purchased in Bordentown was baptized ' Ironsides Park. ' He was once promi- nently spoken of as a candidate for the Presidency, and, in less than four months, sixty-seven papers pronounced in his favour. He was eighty-three years of age when Fort Sumter was fired upon. At once be wrote asking to be put into active service : ' I am as young as ever,' he ■ * The Life of Charles Stewart Parnell/ by Thomas Sherlock, p, 23. THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, declared, * to fight for my country.' 1 But of course the offer had to be re- fused. He survived nine years. The following is a description of his appearance and character : ' Commodore Stewart was about five feet nine inches high, and of a digni- fied and engaging presence. His complexion was fair, his hair chestnut, eyes blue, large, penetrating, and intelligent. The cast of his countenance was Roman, bold, strong, and commanding, and his head finely formed. His control over his passions was truly surprising, and under the most irritating circumstance his oldest seaman never saw a ray of anger flash from his eye. His kindness, benevolence, and humanity were proverbial, but his sense of justice and the requisitions of duty were as unbending as fate. In the moment of greatest stress and danger he was as cool and quick in judgment as he was utterly ignorant of fear. His mind was acute and powerful, grasping the greatest or smallest subjects with the intuitive mastery of genius.' 2 It is said that, in many respects, Mr. Parnell bears a strong resemblance to the characteristics of his grandfather, whose name he bears. In physique he is much less English or Irish than American. The delicacy of hi8 features, the pallor of complexion, the strong nervous and muscular system, concealed under an exterior of fragility, are characteristics of the American type of man. Mentally, also, his evenness of temper and coolness of judg- ment suggest an American temperament. Mr. Parnell was born in Avondale, county Wicklow, in June, 1846. Curiously enough, nearly the whole of his early life was passed in England, and in entirely English surroundings. When he was six years of age he was placed at school in Yeovil, Somersetshire. Next, he was under the charge of the Rev. Mr. Barton at Kirk-Langley, Derbyshire ; next, under the Rev. Mr. Wishaw, in Oxfordshire ; and, finally, he went to Cambridge University — the alma mater of his father. He did not graduate, and probably did not pay any very great attention to the study of the curricu- lum of the university. He 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 said to be 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 Engineer- ing and other mechanical papers, and he takes the keenest interest in all machinery. The surroundings of the house in which he was born and still lives were well calculated to arouse in young Parnell the hereditary disposition to strong national opinions. Wicklow, on the whole, is the most beautiful and the most historic county in Ireland, and Avondale is in the centre of its greatest beauties and its most historic spots. Many of the lessons which these historic spots were calculated to teach were reinforced by the servants around the family mansion. I have made the remark that it is particularly difficult to follow the mental history of a man who is neither introspective nor expansive ; and it is not from the lips of Mr. Parnell himself that one could learn much of his internal history. But one day, sitting in his house at Avondale, he happened to mention the name of Hugh Gaffney, a gate-keeper in Avondale, and retold 1 1 The Life of Charles Stewart Parnell, ' by Thomas Sherlock, p. 28. 2 lb., p. 28, ISAAC BUTT. 153 ft story which the gate-keeper used to tell him when he was a youth. Gaffney was old enough to have seen some of the scenes of the Rebellion ; and one of his stories was of a man who was taken by the English troops in the neighbourhood. The sentence upon him was that he was to be flogged to death at the end of a cart. The interpretation of the sentence by Colonel Yeo — such was the name of the commander — was that the flogging was to be inflicted on the man's belly instead of on his back. Gaffney saw the rebel flogged from the mill to the old sentry-box in Bath- drum — the town near which Avondale is situate — and heard the man call out in his agony, ' Colonel Yeo ! Colonel Yeo !' and appeal for respite from this torture ; and also heard Colonel Yeo reject the prayer with savage words ; and finally saw the man, as he fell at last, with his bowels protruding. When Mr. Parnell told the story, in his usual tranquil manner, the thought suggested itself to my mind that, at last, I had reached one of the great influences that made Mr. Parnell the man he is, and that in this poor gate-keeper was to be found the early instructor whose lessons on British rule and its meaning imbued the young and im- pressionable heir of the Parnell name and traditions with that love and admiration for British domination in Ireland which have characterized his public career. Such stories appeal to what is, beyond doubt, the strongest feeling, the most positive instinct of Mr. Parnell's nature — his hatred of injustice. He has the loathing of masculine natures for cruelty in all forms. This feeling, though never expressed in words, finds strong manifestation often in acts. One of his acts while still the unknown sojrire was to prosecute a man for cruelty to a donkey. Eecently, while a very important and vital resolu- tion was under discussion at a meeting of the Irish Party called to arrange the plan of the electoral campaign, the meeting was amused, and a Httle disconcerted, to see Mr. Parnell rise with naif unconsciousness, leave the chair, and disappear from the room. He was followed by a handsome dog, which had been presented to him by his friend and colleague, Mr. Corbet ; and the meeting had to tranquilly suspend its discussions until the leader of the Irish people had seen after the dinner of a retriever. It was characteristic of the modesty and, at the same time, scornfulness of his nature, that all throiigh the many attacks made upon him by Mr. Forster, and other gentlemen who wear their hearts upon their sleeves, he 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 por- tion of the agitation, were occasionally committed upon them. In 1867, the ideas that had been sown in his mind in childhood first began to mature. His mother was then, as throughout her life, a strong Nationalist, and so was, at least, one of his sisters. There is a tradition among the survivors of the literary staff of the Irish People newspaper of a young lady, closely veiled, coming with a contribution to the office of the journal during its troubled career. This was Miss Fanny Parnell. Many of the Fenian refugees found shelter and protection in the house of Mrs. Parnell, and were in this way enabled to escape from the pursuing bloodhounds of the law. It was at this epoch that the execution of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien took place in Manchester ; and this, as has already been mentioned, was the turning-point in the mental history of Mr. Parnell, and set him irrevocably in favour of Nationalist principles. However, it was a considerable time before he even thought of entering political life. Like his father, he spent some time in travel in America, 154 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. While th ire he met with a railway accident in company with his brother John. ' The best nurse I ever had,' said Mr. John Parnell to me in America, ' was my brother Charlie.' And then he told me how, for weeks, his brother had remained night and day by his side. In 1871, Mr. Parnell returned to Avondale, and began the life of a country squire. His American blood showed itself in a keener sense of the possibilities of his property and of his own duties than are usually associated with the Irish landlord. Then, though he cannot be described as a joyous man, he takes a keen interest in life and everything going on around him, and could not, under any circumstances, keep from being actively occupied in some pursuit. He hunted and he shot like those around him ; but, besides this, he set up saw-mill and brush factory, and sunk shafts in search of the mineral ore in which Wicklow was said to abound. He was a kind and generous landlord, and enjoyed the affection of all around him. His subsequent history has been told ; and now the narrative returns to an account of his Parliamentary career. Mi. Biggar and Mr. Parnell brooded for some time over the strange spectacle of the impotence that had fallen upon the Irish Party. Beth were men eager for practical results ; and debates, however ornate ard 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. 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 indi- viduals ever proposed to themselves to work out. '• They set out, two of them, to do battle against 656 ; 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 -nightiest of modern empires ; they were accused of seeking to trample on the power of the English House of Commons, and six centuries of Parliamentary government looked down upon them in menace and in reproach. In carrying out their mighty enter- prise, Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar had to undergo labours and sacrifices that only those acquainted with the inside life of Parliament can fully appreciate. 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 subject, and the House of Commons loves and respects only those who love and respect it. But the first principle of the active policy was that there should be absolute indifference to the opinions of the House of Commons, and so vanity had first to be crushed out. Then the active policy demanded incessant attendance in ihe House, and incessant attendance in the House amounts almost to a punishment. And the active policy required, in addition to incessant attendance, con- siderable 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 dis- obliged one man or offended another ; and therefore, kindliness of feeling was to be watched and guarded by remorseless purpose. The years oi ISAAC BUTT. tierce conflict, of labour by day and by night, and of iron resistance to menace, or entreaty, or blandishment, must have left many a deep mark in mind and in body. 'Parnell,' remarked one of his followers 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 the character of the member for Cavan — and it is a cha- racter worth study — one must read carefully, and by the light of the pre- sent day, the events of the period at which he first started on his enterprise. In the session of 1875 he was constantly heard of ; on April 27 in that session he ' espied strangers ' ; and, in accordance with the then existing rules 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 considerable effect to the proceeding of the member for Cavan. At once a storm burst upon him, beneath 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 denounce this outrage upon its dignity ; and to mark the complete union of the two parties against the daring offender, Lord Hartington rose immediately 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 hon. member for Cavan,' said he, 'appears to forget that he is now admitted to the society of gentlemen.' 1 This was one of the many allusions, fashionable at the time — among genteel journalists especially — to Mr. Biggar's occupation. It was his heinous offence to have made his money in the wholesale pork trade. ' Heaven knows' (said a writer in the World) 'that I do not scorn a man because his path in life has led him amongst provisions. But though I may unaffectedly honour 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. Biggar brings 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 odour of the kippered herring. One unacquainted with the actual 1 Mr. Biggar's action on this occasion had a secret history, which may here be told. It was the desire of the Liberals to bring the relations of the press with Parliament into a more satisfactory position. Especially it was felt to be a grievance that the press could be excluded by a single member. Mr. Disraeli favoured leaving things as they were : and it was thought that he should be brought to his senses by such patent proof of his mistake as the ordering out of the reporters by the words, ' 1 espy strangers.' Mr. Biggar's intrepidity suggested him as a proper person to take so audacious a step. A few nights afterwards, when Lord Harrington was demanding a reform, and Mr. Disraeli was advocating the old state of things, Mr. A. M. Sullivan cleared the House ; and the whole Liberal Party cheered him to the echo. Mr. Biggar was deserted and denounced, though he acted on the suggestion of other*, because he happened to interfere with the convenience of Royalty. THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. condition of affairs might be forgiven if he thought there had be^n a large failure in the bacon trade, and that the House of Commons was a meeting of creditors and the right hon. gentlemen sitting on the Treasury Bench were members of the defaulting firm, who, having confessed their inability to pay ninepence in the pound, were suitable and safe subjects for the abuse of an ungenerous creditor.' 1 These things are mentioned by way of illustrating the marks and symp tarns of the time through which Mr. Biggar had to live, rather than because of any influence they had upon him. On this self-reliant, firm, and mascu- line nature a world of enemies could make no impress. He did not even take the trouble to read most of the attacks upon him. Those that were made in the House of Commons in his own hearing neither touched him nor angered him. The only rancour 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. The Irish people have long since decided between Mr. Biggar and the members of his own party with whom he was at war. If anj^one desire to see how far that party is removed from the party of to-day, he has but to read the descriptions of some of the encounters between the member for Cavan and some of his colleagues upon the Coercion struggles of those days. Thus, on one occasion, Mr. McCarthy Downing, a so-called Nationalist, went out of his way to compliment -Sir Michael Hicks-Beach on the courtesy with which he treated the Irish members when carrying through the House a Bill destructive of the liberties of their country. This was the speech which drew from Mr. Ronayne the grim remark that such compliments to the Minister in charge of a Coercion Bill reminded him of the shake-hands of the murderer with his executioner. On another occasion, when Dr. O'Leary proposed an adjournment of a stage of a debate on a Coercion Bill to another day, his own colleagues rose in revolt against the unreasonable proposal ; and Dr. O'Leary, scared and overwhelmed, had to consult the convenience of the Government to accelerate the destruction of his country's liberties, and to withdraw his motion for adjournment. More in- teresting than these collisions with small and now forgotten men was Mr. Biggar's conflict with the leader of his party. The contest between these two men is one of the most picturesque in Parliamentary history. Rarely has a struggle appeared more unequal. The House of Commons never had an opportunity of seeing Butt at his best, but with an audience before him sympathetic with his views, he was a speaker of a persuasiveness as great as that of Mr. Gladstone himself. There was not a resource of the orator, a trick of the lawyer, a device of the Parliamentary tactician's art unknown to him. He was, indeed, marked out as a leader of men in Parliamentary struggles. Mr. Biggar, on the other hand, had not one of the gifts that make a great Parliamentarian. He spoke haltingly, and with difficulty ; his sparse education was not improved by reading ; he was absolutely new to Parlia- mentary and, practically, to political life. But the moral chasm between Biggar and Butt was as wide as the intellectual chasm between Butt and * March 5, 1875. ISAAC BUTT. 157 Biggar. The relentless self-control of Biggar, the subordination of all his wants to his means, 1 his inflexible courage, and his unshakable persistence, made him a dangerous competitor for a man of the loose habits, of the easy self-indulgent nature, of the weak will and capricious purpose of Butt. Biggar was ultimately conqueror in this struggle. Sheer strength of cha- racter broke down sheer intellectual superiority. The new policy, which had been inaugurated by Mr. Biggar in the session of 1875, was developed rather than formulated. It began simply in the practice of blocking a number of Bills in order to bring them under the half -past twelve rule, which forbids opposed measures to be taken after that hour. It also became the custom of either the member for Cavan or the member for Meath to propose motions of adjournment in various forms when half -past twelve was reached, on the ground that proper discussion could not take place at so late an hour. Then, interstices of time which the Government would gladly employ for advancing some stage of their measures were filled in by the Irish members. Thus, for instance, a Bill standing for second reading would be approaching that stage at twenty minutes past twelve at an ordinary sitting, or half -past five on a Wednesday. To the horror and disgust of everybody else, Mr. Biggar or Mr. Parnell would rise and occupy the time between that hour and half-past twelve or a quarter to six, when contentious business could be no longer discussed, and further consideration of the measure had to be postponed to another day. In this manner the two members gradually felt their way, became more practised in speaking, and obtained an intimate acquaintance with the rules of the House. Throughout all this time, of course, they were harassed by interruptions, shouts of 1 Divide,' groans, and calls to order ; and for a time, at least, Mr. Parnell used occasionally to lay himself open to effective interruption by his yet immature acquaintance with the laws of the assembly. ' How,' said a young follower of his to the Irish leader, ' are you to learn the rules of the House V 1 By breaking them,' was Mr. Parnell's reply ; and this was the method by which he himself gained his information. It was not till the session of 1877 that Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar be- came engaged in the passionate and exciting scenes which made their names known all over the world, and brought the House of Commons definitely face to face with the new and portentous force which had unmasked itself within the Parliamentary citadel. Anyone who has been a member of the House of Commons will know how tremendous is its reserve power. There had been 4 obstructives,' of course, before the time of Parnell and Biggar. During the great Ministry of Mr. Gladstone, between 1868 and 1874, obstruction had been developed to a fine art by several of the gentlemen who at this moment held official positions under Lord Beaconsfield. Every- body remembers how the Church Bill and the Land Bill, the Ballot Bill, and the Bill for the abolition of purchase in the army, had been dogged at every step of their progress by endless and silly amendments, by speeches against time, and by countless motions for adjournment. It was part of the skilful tactics of Parnell and Biggar that their inter- - vention in the debates of the House was always rational. They did not indulge in any wild declamation, nor make speeches full of empty and purposeless talk. Their plan was to propose amendments to the different 1 Mr. Biggar lost heavily In his business for a couple of years while he was a Member of Parliament. He so rigidly economised that, instead of dining in the House, he trotted off to a cheap restaurant outside. i 5 8 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. measures before the House ; and their amendments were rarely, if ever, opeu to the charge of irrelevance or frivolity. On March 26, 1877, there was a lengthy discussion on some new clauses of the Prison Bill for the better treat- ment of prisoners. At a little after one o'clock Mr. Biggar proposed to report progress. Some eight members, who had acted with the ' obstructives ' up to this time, now deserted ; and, when the division was called, there were in favour of the adjournment but 10, while 138 voted against it. Motions for adjournment followed each other in rapid succession, and, at three o'clock in the morning, the Government gave way. Mr. Butt had watched these proceedings with no friendly eye. There was no doubt about his genuineness asaHome Ruler, but he had been a Conservative for many years, and a friend and associate of the party in power, and he was certainly con- siderably under the influence of its leaders. Curiously enough, one of the men who was supposed to have the most influence over him was the then Chief Secretary, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, though there had never been a Chief Secretary who met all demands for Irish reform with rejection more uncompromising and more insolent. It is characteristic of the natures of the two men that it was the attitude of Hicks-Beach towards Mr. Butt which drove Mr. Biggar, as much as anything else, forward into the policy he had now adopted. He .was asked by Sir Michael to chide his supporters, and he consented. It showed a strange want of any appreciation of the real facts of the case that the Irish leader should have thus interpreted the request addressed to him. The recognition of his power came only when it was employed in meeting the views of the Ministry and in yielding to the tem- per of Parliament ; it had received no recognition so long as it was used in pressing forward against the Ministry, and against the House — demands for the redress of the intolerable wrongs of his country. Where was his memory gone of the contemptuous rejection for the past three years of every one of the proposals that he made with the assent of the overwhelm- ing majority of his countiymen ? A leader who, with such recollections, and such incontestable proof of the futility of soft methods, of appeals to the sense of justice in English Ministries, and to the reason of Parliament, could think of the 'dignity of Parliament,' and not the wrongs of Ireland, 'lacked gall to make oppression bitter.' Mr. Butt, however, threw in his lot with the enemies of his country, and attacked his two subordinates with fierce anger and reproach. Condemned by their own leader, and by the majority of their own party, Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar were naturally the more hated by the House of Commons, and their conduct the more bitterly resented ; and the resolve to put them down grew more vehement and more passionate. It was on the South African Bill that the long-pent-up storm burst forth with tem- pestuous violence. On July 25, 1877, the House was in committee on the Bill. Mr. Jenkins had rendered himself obnoxious to some of the mem- bers of his own party by his opposition to tho measure, and Mr. Monk accused him of abusing the forms of the House. Mr. Jenkins rose to order, vehemently denied the charge, and then moved that those words be taken down. Mr. Parnell at once rose. ' I second that motion,' he said ; 'I think thelimitsof forbearance have been passed. I say that I think the limits of for- bearance have been passed in regard to the language which hon. members opposite have thought proper to address to me arid to those who act with me.' At once Sir Stafford Northcote, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House, rose and moved that the latter words of Mr. Parnell be taken down. The motion of Mr. J enkins was irregularly got rid of by th« ISAAC BUTT. Intervention of the Chairman of Committees — Mr. Raikes — who declared that the words of Mr. Monk were not a breach of order. The chairman, how- ever, proceeded to raise another subject of dispute by calling upon Mr. Par- nell to withdraw his statement, ' accusing hon. members of this House of intimidation.' ' The hon. member must withdraw that expression,' said Mr. Raikes, amidst the cheers and intense excitement of the House. Mr. Parnell rose to explain ; he was constantly interrupted by 1 conversation, coughs, ex- clamations, cries, and groans.' He denounced the Bill as mischievous both to the colonists and to the native races, and instituted a comparison between Ireland and the South African colonies ; ' therefore, 'he went on, 'as an Irish- man, coming from a country which had experienced to its fullest extent the result of English interference in its affairs, and the consequence of English cruelty and tyranny, he felb a special satisfaction in preventing and thwart- ing the intentions of the Government in respect to this Bill.' The moment these words had been uttered, the House thought that it had at last caught the cool, wary, and dexterous Irish member in a moment of forgetfulness and passion, and that he had given the long-sought oppor- tunity for bringing him to account. Amid loud shouts, Sir Stafford North- cote rose and moved that the words of Mr. Parnell be taken down ; and this having been done, he proposed that all further business should be stopped, and that the Speaker should be sent for. The Speaker was brought in, the House filled with an excited crowd, and Sir Stafford Xorthcote moved that Mr. Parnell 'be suspended till Friday next.' Mr. Parnell was called upon to explain. While the House was storming around him, and he was brought face to face with the prospect of undergoing Parliamentary censure after a manner unprecedented, and thus viewed with horror by all the men around him, he began by a technical objection. He pointed out that another motion had been proposed to the House before that of Sir Stafford Xorthcote's, and that, therefore, the motion of the leader of the House was out of order. But the Speaker ruled this objection as untenable ; and Mr. Parnell had to proceed with his own defence. He addressed to the House a speech full of the boldest defiance and of stinging suggestion. The House was now beside itself with rage, and there were loud shouts that Mr. Parnell should withdraw, as is the custom when the conduct of a member is under consideration. Mr. Parnell left his seat and calmly pro- ceeded to a place in the Speaker's Gallery, and from this point of vantage looked down on the proceedings in which he himself was the subject of debate. Sir Stafford Xorthcote now moved that ' Mr. Parnell having wilfully and persistently obstructed the public business, is guilty of contempt of the House, and that Mr. Parnell for his said offence be suspended from the service of the House till Friday next.'" A fatal flaw was discovered in the proposal of Sir Stafford Xorthcote. Mr. Parnell had certainly declared his interest in ' thwarting and preventing the designs,' not of the House, which, of course, would be obstruction, but ' of the Government,' which is the object and the legitimate pursuit of every opponent of a Ministerial measure. Sir Stafford Xorthcote had evidently lost his head in his eager- ness to throw a Christian to the lions, and he was obliged to postpone tuither debate upon the question until the following Friday. Mr. Parnell, escorted by Mr. Biggar, re-entered the House, stood up again, and resumed his speech exactly at the point at which he had been interrupted two hours before by the impulsive motion of Sir Stafford Xorthcote. On the Friday following Sir Stafford Xorthcote proposed two new rules. The first was, that any member called tu order twice by the Speaker or the * ' New Ireland,' p. 424, THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. Chairman of Committees could be suspended for the remainder of the sitting ; and the second, that no member be allowed to propose more than once in the same sitting a motion for reporting progress or the adjournment of the debate. The resolutions met with some criticism from the Liberal benches, but the Irish members offered no opposition, and the two rules were adopted for the session. On Wednesday, July 31, occurred the first of those prolonged sittings which have since become so familiar. The Government, owing to the dogged and persistent opposition of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar, and to some extent of the Radicals below the gangway, were very far behind with their legislative proposals, and especially with the South African Bill. At last it was resolved that the measure should be pushed through on the night of Tuesday, the 31st ; and on that night, for the first time, the expedient of relays which has since become so familiar was employed. The Irish members, aware of the arrangement that had been made against them, accepted the challenge, and determined to carry on the contest as long as their strength would hold out. There were but a few of them to make the fight — seven in all. They were supported for some time by Mr. Courtney, who was as hostile as they to the principle of the South African Bill, and who has since been justified, as well as Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar, by the disastrous termination to the measures of which the South African Bill was the starting-point. But Mr. Courtney fave up the struggle in the small hours of the night. The fight still went on. At a quarter-past eight in the morning, after he had been fifteen hours at work, Mr. Parnell retired to rest ; he came back at a quarter-past twelve, four hours later, and resumed his share in the debates. At two o'clock the last amendment on the South African Bill was disposed of, and the Bill was through. When the House rose it had been sitting for twenty-six hours. One other little incident is worth recording. Throughout the long watches of the night the Ladies' Gallery was occupied by one solitary and patient figure ; this was Miss Fanny Parnell, who shared and inspired the convictions of her brother, and who afterwards gave to the Irish cause some of its most stirring lyrics and its ablest argumentative defences, and an in- cessant labour amid daily increasing weakness and fast -approaching death. This unprecedented sitting in the House of Commons produced in Eng- land a tempestuous burst of anger and excitement, and for some days Mr. Parnell, Mr. Biggar, and their associates were denounced with a wealth of invective that would not have been unequal to the merits of Guy Fawkes or Titus Oates. In their own party, too, the dissent from their tactics was reaching a climax ; Mr. Butt seemed resolved to throw down the final gage of battle, and call upon the party to make their choice between the con- tinuance of his leadership and the suppression of the two mutineers. But all efforts to get the party to take decisive action proved abortive. Time- servers and office-seekers, they wanted to survive till the advent of the blessed hour when the return of the Liberals to power would give them the long-desired chance of throwing off the temporary mask of national views, to assume the permanent livery of English officials. Before that period could arrive, they well knew that a General Election had to intervene, and who knew what control over that election might be exercised by such extremists as Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar ? This fact adds another element of tragedy to the woeful eclipse in which the last days of Butt ended. His opponents were honest and resolute ; his friends, self-seeking, treacher- ous and half-hearted, ready to turn without a blush or a pause from the Worship of the setting to that of the rising sun. ISAAC BUTT. There was another portent of the time which still more disquieted Butt, and brought the peril of the situation more clearly and unmistakably before his eyes. The policy of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar might not as yet have won the intelligence of Ireland, but it had beyond all question gained its heart. The session of 1877 had ended on August 13 ; on the 21st of the same month there was a meeting in the Rotunda in Dublin in honour of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar ; the meeting was crowded ; the reception was enthusiastic ; the verdict of Dublin was given, and it was in favour of the new men and the new policy. The reader, to understand the success of the active policy, h tionary. O'Kelly passed through it all with that calm courage and that cool-headedness which everybody recognises, and, through determination, vigilance, and prudence combined, succeeded in coming out unscathed. THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Again the French cause drew him from politics, and during the Franco- Prussian war he rejoined the French army ; when Paris surrendered, ha once more left the French service. He then went to New York. Up to this time he had not seriously contemplated adopting journalism as a profession, and his efforts had been confined 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 in all manners of life, was received coolly enough. At last, through the absence of all the regular employe's of the journal on a special Sunday morning, O'Kelly got his opportunity. General Sheridan was to arrive from Europe on that morning, and there was a general anxiety to know what the American Napoleon had to say about th* military resources and the military strategy of the old world. The task of interviewing so distinguished a soldier was a highly honourable one, but it had one great drawback — General Sheridan was a man who was known to hold the 1 interviewer ' in mortal hate. There was a whole host of reporters on board the steamer which went out to meet the General. The competition, therefore, was keen with a keenness which nobody who has not been in America can completely understand. Each reporter, in his turn, tried his hand on the General, and each went back disappointed. At length O'Kelly made the attempt. He began his attack altogether out of the ordinary : mentioned places in France which the General, as well as he, had recently seen, gave a military estimate or two, and in this way conveyed the im- pression to the General that he was something of a kindred spirit, and knew what he was talking about. The General unbent, and O'Kelly, who was the ' greenhorn,' as newcomers are scornfully called, of the journalistic host, was the one who was able to give the best account of General Sheridan's views on his European tour. O'Kelly, starting thus well, was gradually advanced, until he became one of the leader-writers — or ' editors,' as they are called in America — of the New York Herald. In 1873 there arose an opportunity of making or marring his fortune — an opportunity which O'Kelly gladly embraced, but which ninety-nine out of every hundred men would have absolutely and unhesitatingly rejected. The rebellion in Cuba was going on, and it was a movement in which the people of the United States took a keen interest, these being the days when the annexation of Cuba was one of the political possibilities and aspirations of the hour. But what was the nature, and what were the methods, of the rebels ? These were points upon which no trust- worthy information could apparently by any possibility be obtained. The Spaniards had the ear of the world, and the story they told was that there was no such a thing as a rebellion at all. If there had ever been anything of the kind, it was entirely crushed, and Cespedes, its leader, was dead. What now remained was simply a few scores of scattered marauders, who were nothing but itinerant robbers and murderers. There was a strong conviction in the United States that these representations were not alto- gether to be relied on, and there were plenty of Cuban refugees and insur- rectionary committees in the United States who circulated reports of quite a different character. It was said, for instance, 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. But how were these statements to be confirmed ? The rebels, whether few or many, were hidden behind the impenetrable forests of the Mambi Land (as the country 7 HE LAND LEAGUE. frequented by them was called) 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 perform. He knew when he set out for Cuba that his task was difficult enough, but it was not until he arrived in Cuba that he realized to the full the meaning of his enterprise. He imagined that he might have been able to accompany the Spanish troops, then to pass through their lines to the rebels, and, investigations among the latter being completed, to return to the Spanish lines again. He therefore asked a safe-conduct from the Captain- General ; but that functionary soon made it apparent that nothing would induce him to facilitate O'Kelly's task in any way ; and he plainly told him that, if he persisted in trying to get to the rebels, he would do so at his own risk. O'Kelly soon realized the true meaning of these words. Through- out 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. Any person who, therefore, was under the frown of the authorities was avoided as if he had the plague. Thus O'Kelly was invited to dinner in the heartiest manner by a descendant of an Irish- man ; but when this gentleman heard of O'Kelly's mission, he begged him not to pay the visit, and promptly went to the Spanish authorities to explain the unlucky invitation. ' It was not possible,' 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 dis- honour, and, though it cost even life itself, I would have to visit the Cuban camp.' * My word,' he says in another place, ' had been given to accom- plish this, and at whatever cost it should be done ' — language that in the mouth of a man like O'Kelly really means the resolve to meet the worst that fortune could inflict. He made various efforts to accompany expeditions of the Spanish troops which were supposed to be marching against the insurgents ; but these ex- peditions either were postponed, or, after they had been started, turned back without coming even within sight of the rebel lines. Then O'Kelly thought that his purpose might be carried out if he got into communication with some of the secret sympathizers with the rebellion who remained in the towns ; but they, carrying their lives every hour in their hands, would not trust a stranger. At last he formed the desperate resolve to set out for the rebel lines alone, with the chances of being shot by the Spaniards as a rebel, by the rebels as a Spaniard, through a country which in parts was supposed to be overrun by robbers, quite ready to murder, with impartial ferocity, Spaniard or rebel ; and into the midst of almost impenetrable forest, where the loss of the trail meant death. But he had not proceeded far on his way when he was placed under arrest by the Spanish authorities. Then came an order which made the situation still more hopeless : the order was that under no circumstances should O'Kelly be permitted to penetrate to the rebel lines, and the penalty was affixed in no obscure language. Brought before General Morales, one of the Spanish authorities, O'Kelly made the remark, ' I should regret very much if one of these days you should be obliged to shoot me.' ' I would regret it very much also,' was the reply of the Spaniard ; ' but if you are found in the insurgent lines, or coming from them, you will be treated as a spy or as one of the insurgents ' — in other words, shot. And still O'Kelly persevered. His plan now was to trust to the sym- pathizers with the rebellion ; and at last he found a letter on the floor of 192 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, his room in his hotel one night, telling him that if he would proceed to a certain point alone on the following day, he would be conducted to the rebel lines. O'Kelly, armed with a couple of revolvers, set out the next day, reached the trysting-place, and after hours of waiting in the blackness of a dark night, was conducted into the rebel lines, saw General Cespedes, President of the Republic, and spent a month in marching and counter- marching, and in generally studying the resources, the customs, and the prospects of the rebels. His task he had now succeeded in accomplishing, though every other person attempting it had failed. He had ascertained the existence and estimated the chances of the rebels, and the only thing now left for him was to return to America. Cespedes offered to send him home by Jamaica, but O'Kelly thought it necessary to go into the Spanish lines, in order that there might be no possibility of a denial that he had actually entered into the rebel camp. He had scarcely returned to the settlements of the Spaniards when he was thrown into a dungeon in a fortress, where the stench was terrible, his only companion a forger ; and he was convinced that the object of his captors wa3, if they could not shoot him, to kill him through scarlet fever. For weeks he was daily tortured while in this terrible den by inquisitions and threats of immediate execu- tion, alternating with tempting offers of large bribes and immediate release if he would betray the men who had helped him to reach the Cuban lines. In time he was removed to another prison, bound with ropes as he was conveyed there. In this guise he reached Havana, and there again he was incarcerated in a cell — this time of such sickening odour that he had to fly continually to the grated door in the hope of breathing a little fresh air. It was evident that the Spanish authorities were thoroughly bent on in- ducing his death from yellow fever. He escaped all these perils, however, was sent to Spain, and then, through the united efforts of General Sickles, Seiior Castelar, and Isaac Butt, was set at liberty. Later on, in the war with ' Sitting Bull ' and the Sioux Indians, an expedition of considerable peril, O'Kelly remained throughout the business, until 1 Sitting Bull ' was driven to take refuge in Canada. More recently O'Kelly conceived the bold idea of reaching the Mahdi. The continued obstacles which were placed in his way frustrated his object, but he did not abandon his purpose until he had adopted many expedients of characteristic daring and adroitness. The letters which he contributed to the Daily News excited much attention, and were the first to throw any light upon the character and strength of the movement under the Mahdi. With singular accuracy he pointed out the future of the movement, and some time later, in a series of articles in the Freeman's Journal, on the strategy of Lord Wolseley, he forecast the perils and the final failure of the campaign with striking truth. He writes with the bold, slightly rugged, realistic pen of the special correspondent diverted to journalism from his true avocation as a soldier. Though he has given proof so abundant of a courage that dares all, 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 favour of the adaptation of ways and means to ends, of mathe- matical severity in estimating the strength of the forces for, and of the forces against, his own side. He is, like so many men, a bundle of contra- dictions. 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. A friend jokingly described him once as the 1 Whig- THE LAND LEAGUE. febel.' Again, his large experience of life and the ruggedness of his sense, give to his thoughts the mould of almost cynic realism, and yet he is an idealist of the first water ; for throughout his whole life he has held to th8 idea of his country's resurrection with a fanatical faith which no danger could terrify, no disaster depress, no labour fatigue. And it is as a steady though silent labourer for the elevation of his people that O'Kelly would himself wish to be remembered. 1 My best work, 5 he wrote to a friend, ' was not the showy pages which have caught the general eye, but rather the quiet political work which I have done for the last twenty years. To the mere sabreur's part of my life I attach no importance whatever, except that within certain limits it has furnished me with the opportunity of observing men, and acquainting myself with the motive forces which induce men to do or not to do.' One figure was absent from this gathering which was destined to play a prominent part in subsequent struggles. This was Mr. J ohn Dillon. Mr. Dillon at this moment was absent in America completing the organization of the Land League movement that had been started by Mr. Parnell before his departure from that country. Mr. Dillon, as so often happens, is the very opposite in appearance and manner from what the readers of his speeches, especially the hostile readers, would expect. He came in the course of time to be regarded by large sections of the English people as the embodiment of everything that was brutal and sanguinary in th<> Irish nature. He was accustomed during the fiercer days of the Land League to the most violent denunciation, and he was daily in receipt of letters of menace or of insult. To those who know him this popular image was grotesquely inaccurate. Talk 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 long and narrow ; the features singularly delicate and refined. Coal-black hair and large, dark, tranquil eyes, make up a face that Imme- diately arrests attention, and that can never be forgotten. A stranger would guess that Mr. Dillon was an artist of the school that found delight in painting Madonnas, that spoke of the pursuit of art for art's sake alone, with a sublime unconcern for the struggles and aims and welfare of the workaday world. A tranquil voice and a gentle manner would further combat the idea that this was one of the protagonists in one of the fiercest struggles of modern days. The speeches of Mr. Dillon are violent in their conclusions only. The propositions which startled or shocked unsympa- thetic hearers are reached by him through calculations of apparently mathe- matical frigidity, and are delivered in an unimpassioned monotone. John Dillon is the son of Mr. 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, and then was among the first to risk liberty and life when it was finally resolved upon. John was born in Blackrock, county Dublin, in the year 1851. He never went to a boarding-school, and probably he owes more of his education to home than to other influences. He was mainly instructed in the institutions connected with the Catholic University : first in the University school in Harcourt Street, Dublin, and afterwards in the Uni- versity buildings in Stephen's Green. He was intended for the medical profession, passed through his course of lectures, and took the degree of Licentiate in the College of Surgeons. His entrance into the political struggle was not precocious. It was not until after the arrival of John Mitchel in Ireland to fight the Tipperary struggle after his many years o£ £94 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. exile that Dillon first appeared in the political arena. Mitchel had been one of the oldest friends, as he had been one of the earliest companions, of his father ; and John Dillon was among those who went down to Queenstown to bid a welcome to Ireland to the returning and still unrepentant rebel. He then took an active part in the electoral contest, and helped to get Mitchel returned. The rise of Mr. Parnell and the active policy brought Mr. Dillon more prominently to the front. He was one of the first to appre- ciate correctly the new policy, and to see the road to salvation to which it pointed the way. At once he became an eager advocate of Mr. Parnell and his policy. This brought him into direct collision with Mr. Isaac Butt, and his was the fiercest and most damaging speech made against the old leader in the Molesworth Hall meeting, at which Butt made his last political speech. When the Land League movement was started, Dillon at once threw himself into the agitation, and was appointed to accompany Mr. "Parnell upon his historic visit to America. There were many other members at the meeting in the City Hall whose history would throw light upon the circumstances and tendencies of Irish life, social and political, but I have not space to give them more than a few passing words., Richard Power, who was elected in 1874, when he waa barely of age, is a member of a Waterford family which has played a prominent and often a romantic part in Irish history for centuries. Richard Lalor, one of the members for Queen's County, represented a family ancient in Irish struggle. His father was one of the fierce spirits that led the movement against the tithes, and for many years was the foremost man in every political effort in the Queen's County. James Finton Lalor, his brother, was perhaps the most truly revolutionary temperament of '48. He lives again in the pages of Duffy, 1 and he it was who suggested to Mitchel the No Rent movement, which Mitchel is alleged to have spoiled, and which for the first time was carried into effect more than a quarter of a century after Finton Lalor's fiery and restless spirit had passed to rest. Another brother, who sought a home in Australia, was the leader in a small insurrection at Ballarat, and there lost an arm. When the reforms he fought for were granted, he became one of the ruleis of the country, and is now Speaker of the Victorian Parliament. Richard Lalor is of the same stern spirit as all his stock. To-day he is a feeble and bent man with wearied eyes and a thin voice, and a constant prey to ill-health, but his spirit is exactly the same as in his hot youth. In 1848 he had his pike and his thousands of pikemen ready for action ; to-day, as then, he is the unconquerable and irreclaimable rebel — the Blanqui of Irish politics. The 'Gorman Mahon, to whom was entrusted the duty of proposing the name of Mr. Parnell, belonged to even an older agitation. Tall, erect as a pine, with huge masses of perfectly white hair and a leonine face, he is the majestic relic of a stormy and glorious youth. He is the last survivor of the once multitudinous race of the Irish gentleman, as ready with his pistol as with his tongue. Nobody can enumerate the number of times he has been ' out,' and the still larger number of occasions in which he de- spatched or received the cartel. A man of the spirit of The O'Gorman Mahon was necessary in such times as those of his youth. The Irish Catholic was still an unemancipated serf, and the Lords of Ascendency looked down upon him with the contempt of centuries of unbroken sway. It was at such a time that the swaggering adherent of English domination * See 'Four Tears of Irish History ' (A new Tribune, a Policy). T>p. 464-532. THE LAND LEAGUE. 95 had to be met by a representative of the ancient faith and of the hidden longings of the oppressed majority, before whose eagle-eye privilege had to quail. O'Connell was the tongue, but The O'Gorman Mahon was the sword, of the Irish Democracy rising against its oppressors after its cen- turies of bondage ; and so he did his own useful work in his own day. There was something strangely picturesque in the appearance in that group of young men engaged in a still infant movement of a man who had stood by the side of O'Connell at the Clare election which won Catholic emanci- pation. It was almost as if Thomas Jefferson were to rise, and with the same pen that had written the ' Declaration of Independence ' to join in the composition of Abraham Lincoln's proclamation against slavery. In the years that had passed since that day, The O'Gorman Mahon had gone through a life of strange and varied adventure. When, in the whirligig of time, he was thrust from Irish politics, he had gone to South America, and there had taken part in the struggles of the young Republics for emanci- pation. Returning to his native land, he found Isaac Butt starting the new movement for Home Rule. Several' constituencies competed for him, but he had chosen the historic county in whose history he had played so prominent a part. Garrett Byrne, member for "Wicklow, is in direct descent from Garrett Byrne, who was hanged in the Rebellion of '48. John Barry, his colleague, beginning life at almost its humblest rung, had become an important member in a Scotch manufacturing firm, and shortly afterwards was in business for himself. He had also taken a share in political struggles the history of which has yet to be told. Mr. Corbet was a member of an ancient Irish family, and a man himself of culture and of considerable literary power. One more figure requires description. On ihe first day of the meeting of the Irish Party the chair was occupied by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. E. Dwyer Gray, M.P. for the county Carlow. Mr. Gray is the son of the late Sir John Gray, whose name has figured so frequently in preceding pages. He was born in the year 1S46. Brought up from his earliest youth in the opinions of his father, whose favourite son he was, he attained at an early age a correct judgment of political affairs. His father had received many bitter lessons during a long political career. One story he was never tired of repeating to his son. It was of a man who offered to him, during the Young Ireland excitement, a plan of the defences of Dublin Castle. Gray treated the offer of the surrender of the Lord-Lieutenant's citadel with suspicion, and a few days afterwards was not surprised to find that the would-be traitor was a police-spy in disguise. 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. In this way Gray has sometimes been regarded as backward when he was simply demanding the full reason for the proffered policy, and had not yet been able to see its eventual outlet. He succeeded his father in the management of the Freeman's Journal, the chief newspaper of Ireland, and soon raised it to double its previous circulation. Becoming a member of the Dublin Cor- poration, of which his father had been the guiding star for many years, he soon attained to the position of its leading figure, and took a keen interest in advancing the hygienic improvements of the city. At this period he was Lord Mayor, and had under his control vast sums which had been subscribed to the Mansion House for the relief of distress. Anticipating a livtle, Gray subsequently came into fierce collision with James Carev. whom 13-8 196 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. he exposed for an attempted fraud upon the Corporation ; and Carey fr jm that day was his bitter and relentless enemy. 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 de- baters. There is no man in the Irish Party, and few outside it, who can state a case with such pellucid clearness. When Gray has completed his statement, the whole facts are as clear to the minds of his hearers as they have already been to his own searching intellect. The great question to be decided at this meeting was the future leader- ship of the party. Up to a few days before the meeting there was practically no intention even of proposing Mr. Parnell as a leader. The idea never even assumed shape until the night before the meeting in the City Hall. There happened to be stopping at the Imperial Hotel several gentlemen who had been returned or had resolved to support Mr. Parnell's policy. Among them they discussed the question of leadership. The gentlemen who took part in this informal and accidental conference were Mr. John Barry, Mr. Richard Lalor, Mr. O'Kelly, Dr. Commins, Mr. Biggar, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, and, strangely enough, Mr. McCoan ; Mr. Healy, who had not yet been elected a member of Parliament, was also present. There was an understanding rather than a formal resolution among these gentlemen that they would propose Mr. Parnell as leader. He himself did not come to Dublin until next morning ; some gentlemen went to his hotiel and others met him on his way to the City Hall. In his bedroom, and afterwards as he passed through the streets, mention was made to him of the suggestion that had been made at the informal meeting of the pre- vious night. He neither rejected nor encouraged the idea, but seemed, on the whole, rather inclined to the notion, in case Mr. Shaw were displaced, of proposing that the office should be held by Mr. Justin McCarthy. This was the state of things when the meeting assembled. Finally the vote was : for Mr. Parnell, 23 ; for Mr. Shaw, 18. 1 Mr. Shaw apparently received his defeat at the moment with good humour, but when, the next day, the party formulated its policy and declared in favour of Peasant Proprietary as the final solution of the Land Question, Mr. Shaw already indicated a certain difference from Mr. Parnell and his friends. When the party came over to London the first occasion arose for the two sections taking opposite sides. It was on a seemingly trivial question. The point at issue was the part of the House in which the Irish members should take their seats. In the view of Mr. Shaw and his friends, the existing Ministry was so friendly to Ireland that the Irish Party should signify their general adherence by sitting on the same side of the House. The supporters of Mr. Parnell maintained that even between a friendly Liberal Ministry and an Irish National Party there might arise irreconcil- able difference on the Irish National Question and on several others. They held that the only hope of a satisfactory solution of the Irish Question was that Irish members should maintain a position of absolute independence of the English parties, that therefore the attitude of Irish Nationalists was 1 The members on both sides were : For Mr. Parnell — Sexton, Arthur O'Connor, O'Kelly, Byrne, Barry, McCarthy, Biggar, T. P. O'Connor, Lalor, T. D. Sullivan, Commins, Gill, Dawson, Leamy, Corbet, McCoan, Finigan, Daly, Marum, W. H. O'Sullivan, J. Leahy, O'Gorman Mahon, and O'Shea. For Mr. Shaw— Macfarlane, Brooks, Colthurst, Synan, Sir P. O'Brien, Foley, Smithwick, Fay, Errington, Gabbett, Bmyth, R. Power, Blake, McKenna, P. Martin, Meldon, Callan. and Gray. THE LAND LEAGUE, 197 one of permanent opposition to all English Administrations, and that this political attitude should be signified by their continuing to keep their seats on the Opposition side of the House. Meantime, in Ireland, the Land Question was reaching a crisis. The increase of evictions, which had begun with 1877 — the first year of the distress — showed still further signs of increase : the number of tenantry unable to meet their rents was reaching daily larger proportions, and the Relief Committee had on their rolls something like 500,000 recipients of charity. Side by side with all this the Land League was daily advancing with gigantic strides, and every week was receiving a vast impetus through the immense subscriptions sent from America. It was clear that the time had come when Ireland must make a tremendous step either of advance or retrogression. Either distress was to develop into famine, and famine to lead to wholesale eviction, and another lease of landlord power and oppres- sion, or the Irish people were to throw off the chains of centuries, to revolt against the perpetuation of their miseries and of their servitude, and to dash forward in an effort for a new and a better era. Such was the state of Ireland, and such the position of the Irish Party, when Parliament met in 1880. But how was it with the Ministry ? They did not know the existence of the distress ; they did not know the strength of the agitation ; they were far more ignorant of the condition of the island than of countries separated by thousands of miles on land or by sea ; above all things, they had no idea whatever of making an attempt to deal with the Land Question. The first witness of the state of feeling among the Ministry is the Duke of Argyll, who, speaking in 1881, said : 'The present Government was formed with no expressed intention of bringing in another great Irish Land Bill ... it formed no part of the programme upon which the Government was formed. Perhaps no Govern- ment was ever formed on a greater or wider programme, if we are to take the speeches of my right hon. friend the Prime Minister in the course of the Midlothian campaign as the programme of the Government ; but, so far as I recollect and am concerned, it was not intimated in those speeches that it was the intention of the Government to unsettle the settlement of the Land Act of 1870.' 1 In the Session of 1880 the Marquis of Hartington showed that his mind was not only not made up in favour of Land Eeform in Ireland, but that he was, on the whole, rather antagonistic to any such reform. He was speaking in reply to a motion of Mr. Justin McCarthy that a tenant farmer should be added to the Commission of Inquiry into the Land Question. Several of the Irish members had spoken of the Land Act of 1870 as an absolute failure, and had taken it for granted that the Ministry had made up their minds that another and a larger Land Act waa_ required. Thus Lord Hartington rebuked them : ' The Marquis of Hartington said he was not surprised that the hon. member for Tralee (The O'Donoghue) objected to the composition of the Commission, seeing that with him the failure of the Land Act was a fore- gone conclusion. To some minds the conclusion was not so absolutely certain that the Land Act had failed, or that it had not, and it was in solving that question that the Commission was expected to be useful. The 1 Hansard, vol. ccbdL, pp. 1754, 1755- THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. speeches attacking the Commission had all been pervaded by a fallacious supposition, namely, that the Government looked to Baron Dowse and the other members of the Commission for a comprehensive scheme of land reform. . . . What they wanted was facts. In the last four years there had been almost continuous debates on the Irish Land Question. . . . The result was that neither the House nor the Government could arrive at any certain conclusion on the matter. What could be more advisable under these circumstances than to ask a set of honest and impartial men to make inquiry on the spot, and to report the facts brought under their notice ? That was the object of the Commission, and not, as the hon. member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) seemed to suppose, the elaboration of a comprehensive scheme of land reform.' 1 The chief and most significant testimony of the mind of the Ministry at this period is that given by Mr. Gladstone himself. During his visit to Midlothian in the autumn of 1884, he said : 4 1 must say one word more upon, I might say, a still more important subject — the subject of Ireland. 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 Ireland 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 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.' 2 Such, then, was the condition of the problem presented to Mr. Parnell and his followers. In their own country thousands of people face to face with starvation ; land tenure still in such a position that the tenant had no protection from rack-rent and from eviction, and therefore from periodic famine ; an agitation rising daily in passion and in strength ; the hour demanding revolutionary land reform ; and the mind of even an honest Ministry either blank or hostile. This contradiction between the demands of the Irish Question and the resolves of the Government is a central fact in all that follows. It will justify to any candid man measures which at the time appeared uncalled for and extreme ; and, above all things, it 'will'explain how it was that the Parnellites were driven at the very outset of the Session of 1880 into an atti- tude of hostility to a Ministry that was Liberal and inclined to be friendly. The Queen's Speech was soon to give evidence of the unmistakable ignorance and unreadiness of the Government. It was of considerable length ; it dealt with Turkey, and Afghanistan, and India, and South Africa ; but it contained not one word about the Irish Land Question. Immediately after the reading of the Royal Address the Irish members retired to the dingy rooms in King Street, Westminster, which were then their offices. The omission of all mention of the Irish Land Question was pointed out with indignant surprise, and it was immediately resolved that the moment the House reassembled, the Irish members should take action by at once giving notice of an amendment to the Queen's Speech. The 1 Hansard, vol. cclv., pp. 1415-16, 9 Times., September %, 1884. THE LAND LEAGUE. 199 amendment to the Queen's Speech in 1880 was the germ which afterwards was transformed into the Land Act of 1881. The section led by Mr. Shaw had much to say in favour of the difficulties of the Government, and could urge with some justice that it was unfair to demand immediate treatment from the Ministry of a question of such vast importance and such extraordinary complexity as the Irish Land Question. The section led by Mr. Parnell, on the other hand, pointed out that the Irish Land Question had already reached a stage when further delay meant wholesale destruction ; showed how long and patient had already been the endurance of the postponement of the land settlement by their constituents ; and, above all, urged that the primary consideration of a National Party was the need of the Irish people, and not the fortunes of an English Ministry. If the Irish demand were allowed to occupy a second and subsidiary place ; if that demand were made dependent upon the conveni- ence of the Ministry, it was held by Mr. Parnell and his followers that the cause would be lost. The amendment was brought forward on the reassembling of the House after the interval which follows the reading of the Queen's Speech. It was in these words : ' And to humbly assure her Majesty that the important and pressing question Mr. Forster disappears from history as an advocate of reform, and becomes the chief, the fiercest, and the main champion of coercion. As the days went on, instead of resignation came symptoms of the most stringent resolution to carry out the unjust law to its bitterest end. Extra police were drafted into the counties of Mayo and G-alway, thus raising the burden of taxation upon the two counties that had suffered the most bitterly and escaped the most narrowly from the bitterest horrors of famine. The Orange writers in the North of Ireland adopted their usual policy of representing as a vast conspiracy against Protestantism a movement the unsectarian character of which was universally acknowledged, and sought to prevent an alliance of Protestant and Catholic farmers against their common enemy by the characteristic effort to rouse the dying embers of religious hate. The landlord organs began to cry out for repression ; and the London papers played their characteristic part of blackening events in Ireland and of exasperating the growing resentment between the two countries. Towards the beginning of October the cry for coercion had swollen to a tempest, but for a moment it was laid by two remarkable speeches from Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain. ' I saw,' said Mr. Bright, 'the statement the other day that about 100 of them (the Irish landlords), equal nearly to the number of the Irish members, had assembled in Dublin and discussed the state of things, and they had nothing but their old remedy — force, the English Government, armed police, increased military assistance and protection, and it might be measures of restriction and coercion which they were anxious to urge upon the Government. The question for us to ask ourselves is, Is there any remedy for this state of things ? Force is no remedy ' (loud cheers)." ' There are times when it may be necessary, and when its employment may be absolutely unavoidable, but for my part I should rather regard, anr2 rather discuss, measures of relief as measures of remedy, than measures of force, whose influence is only temporary, and in the long-run, I believe, is disastrous.' 1 A conflict then arose within the Cabinet itself. I cannot pretend to tell the story of this internal struggle, and I can only repeat what was the gossip of the period. It was said that Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Charles Dilke, and Mr. Bright held out steadily, and for a considerable time, against the demand for coercion made by Mr. Forster. But Mr. Forster put forward this demand with daily increasing vehemence. For some days, according to the remark of the time, the Cabinet was within short distance of being broken up. The main argument before which the hesitations of the Ministry broke down was the enormous increase which Mr. Forster was able to show in the outrages in October and November. And the increase which appeared in the figures he laid before his colleagues was enormous indeed. By-and-by these figures will be examined, and it will be seen what the merits of the case were upon which Mr. Forster based his de- 1 Times, November 17, 1SS0. TEE LAND LEAGUE. 2:7 mands. For the present, suffice it to say that Mr. Forster carried his point ; the opponents of coercion resolved to remain in the Cabinet, and it was announced that the next session of Parliament would open with a proposal for the enactment of coercive legislation. Meantime a blow was made at the leaders of the movement. On November 2, 1SS0, an informa- tion was filed at the suit of the Right Hon. Hugh Law, then the Attorney- General, 5 against Mr. Parnell and four of his Parliamentary colleagues, Mr. T. E>. Sullivan. Mr. Sexton, Mr. John Dillon, and Mr. Biggar ; and also against Mr. Patrick Egan, treasurer, and Mr. Brennan, secretary, of the organ- ization. In the indictment were also bundled several persons who held sub- ordinate places in the organization, or were entirely unconnected with it. There were nineteen counts in the indictment against the traversers. The main charges were — conspiring to incite the tenantry not to pay their rents ; deterring tenants from buying land from which other tenants had *£>een evicted ; conspiring for the purpose of injuring the landlords ; and forming combinations for the purpose of carrying out these unlawful ends. This, then, was the proceeding of the Government ! There is scarcely one of these charges which was not the glory instead of the shame of Mr. Parnell and his fellow- traversers. Mr. Parnell had found the people face to face with famine and groaning under the oppression of centuries. He had brought them to such assertion of their rights, to such a potent com- bination, that, instead of being swept away, as in all previous crises, by wholesale hunger and plague and eviction, and thereafter reduced to deeper wretchedness and more hopeless slavery, not one man among them died from hunger or from disaster, and that, rising up from their misery and impotence, they gradually reached the position of practical omni- potence over their oppressors. The events and calamities which seemed to drive the tenantry back into the doom of hunger and of servitude had brought to them a new birth of political hope and power ; and an hour of apparently darkest misery had been changed into thu dawn of a new and ?> better day. A man of any other nationality who had accomplished such things — if he had been an Italian or a Pole ; still more, at this epoch, if he had been a Bulgarian or a Montenegrin — would have taken an imperish- able place in the adoration of Englishmen ; and his reward, being an Irishman, was that a Liberal Ad rn i nis tration dragged him through the mire of a criminal court. The trial was opened by a startling episode. With their usual mistake in regarding things in Ireland as necessarily the same as in England, because called by the same names, the English public were and are accustomed to look upon an Irish judge as raised above the passions of political partisanship. They were strangely shocked in the course of the preliminary proceedings of the trial to read a judgment of the Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, in which the trial was to take place — a judgment in which the traversers were denounced with vehement passion. The times had been so changed since the elevation of a man like Judge Keogh to the Bench, that the Lord Chief Justice found that even the English people could not stomach such conduct, and he retired at the opening of the trial. The trial was one of the solemn mockeries of the time. It was known by the Crown that no impartial jury would convict the saviour of the nation of treason to the nation ; and after a trial extending over twenty days, the jury were discharged without agreeing to a verdict, ten, accord- ing to universal rumour, being in favour of acquittal and two for conviction, Another event of importance occurred during this recess. Shortly after 208 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. his arrival in America on his memorable mission, Mr. Parnell found the Bervices of a secretary absolutely necessary. He had previously made the acquaintance of a young Irishman who at that period was secretary in a London house of business and the London correspondent of the Nation newspaper. The young man had made a strong impression upon the Irish leader, had gained his confidence, and had taken part with some others in many of the important consultations at critical moments. This was Mr. T. M. Healy. To Mr. Healy Mr. Parnell's thoughts turned when he found himself immersed in a hopeless sea of correspondence. He requested Mr. Healy's presence in America by telegraph. On the day he received this telegram Mr. Healy threw up his situation, and on that same evening he was on his way to the vessel which took him to America. Timothy Michael Healy was born in Bantry, county Cork, in the year 1855. Bantry, as has been seen, is also the birthplace of the Sullivans, and here Healy had beheld all the scenes of quick decay which have been already described. 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, and his occupation brought him into contact with all the dread realities of that terrible time. He has told his son that for the three famine years he never once saw a single smile. Outside the abbey in which the forefathers of Healy and the other men of Bantry are buried, are pits in which many hundreds of the victims of the famine found a coffinless grave ; and Mr. Healy will tell you, with a strange blaze in his eyes, that even to-day the Earl of Bantry, the lord of the soil, will not allow these few yards of land to be taken into the graveyard, preferring that they should be trodden by his cattle. Reared in scenes like these, it is no wonder that Healy, whose nature is vehement and excitable, should have grown up with a burning hatred of English rule in Ireland. He went to school to 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 the difficult business of making a livelihood. It is characteristic of his nature that, 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 the * rude barbarian ' of the imagination of English journalists is keenly alive to the most delicate beauties of Alfred de Musset or Heinrich Heine, and could give his critics lessons in what constitutes literary merit and literary grace. Another of the accomplishments which Mr. Healy taught himself was Pitman's shorthand ; and shorthand in his case — as in that of Justin McCarthy and several other of his colleagues — was the sword with which he had in life's beginning to open the oyster of the world. At sixteen years of age he went to England and obtained a situation as a shorthand clerk in the office of the superintendent of the North-Eastern Railway at New- castle. Newcastle-on-Tyne has a very large and a very sturdy Irish popula- tion, who take an active part in all political movements that are going on, and when Healy went there he found himself at once surrounded by countrymen who, if anything, held to the National faith more sturdily than their brethren at home. Probably he himself, if he were to trace the mental history of his political progress, would declare that in his case, as in that of THE LAND LEAGUE. bo many other Irishmen, it was an English atmosphere that first gave form and intensity to his political convictions. At all events, the newcomer was not long at Newcastle when he was a persistent and an active participator in all the political strivings of his fellow-countrymen, and it speaks strongly of his force of character and their discrimination that, though yet but a stripling, he was chosen for several positions of authority. Newcastle is one of the few towns in England that can boast of having a society exclu- sively devoted to Irish purposes, and of the Irish Literary Institute Mr. Healy was for a considerable time the secretary. He was also, as far back as 1873, secretary to the local Home Rule Association. Of Mr. Healy's habits in Newcastle a characteristic account is given by one of his friends. He lodged in the house of an excellent Irish family —known to every Irish visitor to Newcastle — and in the family there was a Celtic abundance of children. It will relieve many friends of Mr. Healy to be informed that this man, before whom Ministers tremble, and even potent officials grow pale, is the delight and the darling of children, whose foibles, tastes, and pleasures he can minister to with the unteachable instinct of genius. The moment the young clerk put his foot inside his lodgings there came a shout of welcome from the young world upstairs ; the next minute he was romping with them all ; and, during the whole period of his stay within doors, he was the gayest and the youngest in the house. But when the time came for starting into the outside world of Newcastle and of English- men, Healy at once put on his suit of mail ; his hat was tightened down on his head, his face assumed a frown of a most forbidding aspect, and even his teeth were set. And so he went out to encounter the world of strangers among whom he lived. In March, 1878, he removed to London. He is distantly related to Mr. John Barry, M.P. for Wexford, and at that period Mr. Barry was asso- ciated with a large Scotch floor-cloth factory. Mr. Healy was employed as confidential clerk in this firm. He began at the same time to contribute a weekly letter to the Nation on Parliamentary proceedings, which had just begun to get lively. From this time forward his face accordingly became familiar in the lobby of the House of Commons. He had previously made the acquaintance of Mr. Parnell and the other prominent Irish figures of the last Parliament at Home Rule meetings and elsewhere ; and his con- nection with the Sullivan family had made him more or less familiar with the 1 inside ' of Irish political movements. 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 remarked that it was to Mr. Healy's advocacy and explanation of his policy in the columns of the Nation that the active party owed much of its success in those early days, when its objects and tactics were misunderstood and actively misrepresented. The London cor- respondence of Mr. Healy was, indeed, a rare journalistic treat. In the opinion of many, his pen is even more effective than his tongue ; mor- dant, happy illustration, trenchant argument — all this was to be found in those London letters, and is still, happily, at the service of Irish national journalism. The style of Mr. Healy is founded palpably on that of John Mitchel, and he has many of the excellences, and a few also of the faults, of that writer ; but these very faults only make him the more readable ; for liveliness, after all, is the first attraction of journalistic prose. Anticipating a little, Mr. Healy had scarcely taken his place in the House when he set to work, and his first speech was in reply to the 14 THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. Marquis of Hartington. It was late at night when the young membei rose ; the deputy-leader of the Ministerialists had made an effective address, and most of Mr. Healy's friends felt rather anxious as to the result. Mr. Healy can now bear to be told that there were very divided opinions as to the merits of his first appearance. His speech was delivered in a hard, dogged style, and gave evidence rather of fierce conviction than of debating power. It was some time, indeed, before the House would acknowledge that there was anything in Mr. Healy ; and there has scarcely ever been an Irish member who had in his early days to face the fire of such brutal, mean, and cowardly attack. Gentlemen of the Press professed to be shocked at the intelligence that the new member was poor — that he actually, like themselves, wrote for a living ; and even the cut of his clothes afforded proof of the ignobility of his character. But Mr. Healy took no notice of all this ribaldry, except, perhaps, to become fiercer in his wrath and more persistent in his activity. In the nine weeks' struggle against coercion he was, though a novice, one of the three or four men who did the largest amount of talking, and one has to go to the records of Biggars best days and Sexton's longest speech to find any approach to the performances of Healy. When at last the Coercion Bills were done with, in 1881, Mr. Healy found more profitable employment in discussing the details of the Land Bill. While ninety-nine out of every hundred of the members of Parliament were floundering in the mazes of that extraordinary measure, Mr. Healy had found the key of the labyrinth, and was perfectly familiar with its details. He worked, as is known, night and day at the Bill, obtained several concessions, and finally succeeded, under circum- stances to be presently described, in having the ' Healy Clause ' adopted. These various successes at last made the House begin to change its opinion of its latest recruit. It was observed that Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Law used to listen with the utmost attention to anything Mr. Healy had to say. The Premier was even one night beheld in pleasant converse with his young and unsparing antagonist, and at once the servile herd of Tory journalists began to recognise Mr. Healy's talents. The saying of the time is well known, that but three men in the House of Commons knew the Land Bill — Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Law, and Mr. Healy. A few words as to Mr. Healy's general characteristics. Perhaps the most remarkable of all his qualities is his restless industry. Prom the moment he crosses the tessellated floor of the lobby, at about four in the evening, 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. With eyes ablaze, he comes to tell you of some atrocious job that is perpetrated under sub-section B in the schedule to a Scotch Bill on Hypothec, or a Welsh measure on threshing- machines ; and he points out the advantage to an Irish Bill for reforming the grand jury by a ' block ' he has put against a Bill for increasing the number of Commissioners in Bankruptcy. The extent of his knowledge of Parliamentary measures is astonishing ; many bitter opponents in public policy seek his aid in this regard ; and — tell it not in Gath ! — there have been occasions when be has been seen explaining in the Library the mysteries of legislation to Mr. Herbert Gladstone. Indeed, Healy holds himself at the service of everybody. A puzzled colleague comes to ask for THE LAND LEAGUE, 211 enlightenment ; Healy has put his ideas into the shape of an amendment before he has had time to give them full expression. Besides all this, Healy has frequently to write a column or two for a newspaper in the course of the evening. And he is never absent from the House when any- thing of importance is going forward. He is, perhaps, the only man in the House, except Mr. Gladstone, who cannot bear a moment's idleness ; and, like the late Premier, he is distinguished from other members by the fact thai even in the division-lobbies he is to be seen utilizing the precious moments by writing at one of the tables. The characteristics of his oratory are by this time familiar. Often, when he stands up first, he is tame, disjointed, and ineffective ; 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 ardour of his temperament and the fierceness of his convictions often tempt him to exaggeration of language and of conduct. Those who play the compli- cated 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. He is betrayed into a rude expression, and then goes home and remains in sleepless contrition throughout the night. It was, of course, inevitable that, when the Land League agitation broke out, one of these antecedents and of this temperament should throw him- self into the movement ; and to those who now know Mr. Healy, it will not be surprising to hear that he worked with fierce energy and often spoke with passionate vehemence. Passing through the South of Ireland, Mr. Healy became acquainted with the case of Michael McGrath. McG-rath had held for years a farm, but, the rent having been raised from £48 to £105, had at last to yield in a struggle, and was evicted. His land was ' grabbed ' by another farmei .named Cornelius — or, as he was called in the district, ' Curley ' — Mangan, and a decree of ejectment was given against McGrath for the house which had been built by his own hands or by those of his father. McGrath and his family did not tamely submit to the judgment of the law. They stood a siege for some days, and, whenever the evicting party approached near enough, threw boiling water upon them. The family were watched so closely that they were unable even to go out to get a drink of water, and at last were reduced by famine to capitulation. But the struggle was not over. McGrath went back to his farm, and was sent to gaol. His wife took possession, and was sent to gaol. His sister took possession, and was sent to goal. As each member of the family was released he or she went back again, and again they were each in turn sent to gaol. At last they had to give up the struggle for the house, and they then adopted an expedient which, perhaps, could only be resorted to in Ireland, of all civilized lands. McGrath got a boat and turned it upside down, and under this boat lived himself, his wife, his sister, and his children. The many tourists who crowd in the summer season to the beautiful regions of Glengariff were accustomed to stop on the road between Glengariff and Ban try to see this curious house- hold. Mr. Healy was much struck with the story, and he and Mr. J. W. Walsh, then an organizer of the Land League, paid a visit to Mangan to remonstrate with him on the injustice he had done to the tenant, whose property he had helped the landlord to rob. For his action in this matter Mr. Healy was arrested, and this was the >2 212 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. first prominent arrest by the new Chief Secretary of the Liberal Govern- ment. Mr. Parnell and his friends at once resolved to make a return blow. The lamented death of Mr. William Redmond left a vacancy for the borough of Wexford. Mr. Healy was immediately nominated, and re- turned without even the mention of opposition. But he had not yet escaped from Mr. Forster's vengeance. He was charged under one of the Acts in the terrible code known as the Whiteboy Acts. The Acts date from the last century, and the prisoner convicted under them is liable to a lengthened term of penal servitude, and to be once, twice, or thrice publicly or privately whipped, each year. The case came before Judge Fitzgerald, and he joined the prosecuting counsel in exhausting every effort to procure a conviction. The two prisoners, Mr. Healy and Mr. Walsh, were, in the first place, tried at the winter assizes, and this was in itself an unusual and suspicious occurrence. The winter assizes are in- tended for the relief of prisoners who, being imprisoned, would otherwise have to wait till the spring assizes without having their cases decided ; but Mr. Healy and Mr. Walsh were not imprisoned. They were put on bail, and this was perhaps the first instance in which bailed prisoners were tried at these assizes. The disadvantage to Mr. Healy and Mr. Walsh was that they were not tried by a jury of county farmers, many of whom might be in their favour, as their crime, if any, had been committed in defence of the farmers' cause. Then they were tried as misdemeanants, which re- duced their power of challenge to six names ; and, throughout the trial, Judge Fitzgerald was a far more effective cross-examiner on behalf of the Crown than the prosecuting counsel. But in spite of all these efforts, Mr. Healy and Mr. Walsh were acquitted. It is, perhaps, as well here to tell the fate of McGrath. He continued in his boat for some years — still pursued by the many agencies that are on the side of the landlords in Ireland. For instance, he was charged by the county surveyor with trespassing on the road on which this boat-house was placed, and he only escaped through the inexhaustible ingenuity of Mr. Maurice Healy, Mr. Healy' s brother. But finally, through exposure to the weather, poor McGrath caught typhus fever, passed through the illness under the boat, died under it, and was there waked. Since then neigh- bours have built a small house for his widow and children. The scene now changed from the agitation in Ireland and from the State Trials : and interest was transferred from Dublin to Westminster. The result of the trial of Mr. Parnell was regarded as foregone, and excited but a languid interest. The real centre of attraction was the House of Commons. The Government had pledged themselves to propose coercion ; the Irish members at their annual meeting, held in the City Hall, Dublin, had, on their side, pledged themselves to exhaust every effort in opposing coercion. Everyone was anxious to see the opening of the portentous struggle. CHAPTER XI. THE COERCION STRUGGLE. Parliament met on Thursday, January 6. Nobody felt certain as to what would be the fate of the coercion proposals of the Government. The terms of the Queen's Speech were eagerly scanned ; the statements with regard to coercion were strong, the allusions to the coming Land Bill were THE COERCION STRUGGLE. 213 weak. ' Attempts upon life,' said the Queen's Speech, ' have not grown in the same proportions as other offences.' The burden of the charge was that what was called 1 an extended system of terror had been established 1 which had ' paralyzed almost alike the exercise of private rights and the performance of civil duties.' 1 In other words, the main offence was that the organization of the tenantry throughout tb e country had been made so complete that the landlords found it impossible any longer to get the tenants to play their game by internecine struggle for the privilege of paying a rack-rent for the land. If such a conspiracy existed, it was a national conspiracy ; for membership of the Land League at this period was practically coterminous with the citizenhood of four-fifths of the country. The statement was frequently put forward, of course, that the terrorism which existed was the creation of a few agitators who were at the head of the Land League ; but this theory was gradually dropped, and war was declared against the Land League as a body — that was, against the Irish people as a nation. The allusions in the Prime Minister's speech to the coming Land Act were even more vague and unsatisfactory than those of the Queen's Speech. He still stuck to the Act of 1870 as fairly successful. 2 He passed a general eulogium upon the landlords as a class, and he even denied that there had been any general increase of the rents. 3 Probably, for strategical reasons, he also did his best to minimize the reforms which he was about to propose. His legislation was to be nothing better than a development of the prin- ciples of the Act of 1870. There were some faint promises of a tribunal for settling fair rent and of free sale, but he studiously avoided all mention of fixity of tenure — the third of the ' three F's.' 4 This speech increased the general alarm ; and when the Irish members complained of the insufficiency of the proposals which the Government had shadowed forth, they were re- ceived with cheers from the Radical benches. 5 The Irish members, as has been seen, had pledged themselves to oppose coercion by all the forms of the House, and the plan they adopted was to propose several amendments in succession. Mr. Parnell started by pro- posing ' That the peace and tranquillity of Ireland cannot be promoted by suspending any of the constitutional rights of the Irish people.' Mr. McCarthy followed with an amendment, ' Humbly to pray her Majesty to refrain from using the naval, miliary, and constabulary forces of the Crown in enforcing ejectments for non-payment of rent in Ireland, until the measures proposed to be submitted to her Majesty with regard to the ownership of land in Ireland have been decided upon by Parliament.' And finally Mr. Dawson proposed ' That in the opinion of this House it is ex- pedient to submit a measure for the purpose of assimilating the Borough Franchise in Ireland to that in England, as promised in her Majesty's most gracious speech last session.' This brought the debate on the Queen's Speech up to Thursday, January 20. By this time the aspect of affairs had undergone a consider- able change. The exasperation caused by this prolonged resistance created a similar exasperation outside the House of Commons. There was graduallj 1 Hansard, vol. cclvii., p. 6. a 'We are not at all prepared to admit that the Land Act has been a failure.'— Hansard, voL cclvii., p. 119. 3 ' I do not wish at all to convey that it is my impression that rents in Ireland would in general be described with any fairness as being unfair or exorbitant,'— » Ibid., p. 120. 4 Ibid., pp. *20, 121, 5 Ibid., p. 222. 214 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. rising one of those tempests of popular passion in England which sweep down party ties. The Radicals grew fewer and fainter in their opposition, the two English parties practically coalesced, and the House was united against the little Irish phalanx. The latter, on their part, exhausted, but still angry and determined, resolved to fight on ; and they, too, were backed by the rising temper of their own country J The Land League grew daily in power and in resources ; the subscriptions from America rose to an amount that a short time before would have been considered fabulous ; and on January 13 the treasurer was able to announce that during the week then past there had been received from various sources no less a sum than £4,050. Eviction became daily more impossible, and, though all the forces of the Crown were placed at the disposal of the landlords, the decree fre- quently had to remain unfulfilled in the presence of crowds of peasants armed with pitchforks, scythes, and pike-heads, and ready to perish in defence of their homesteads. These various circumstances were also aggra- s vated by the daily contests at question-time between Mr. Eorster and the Irish representatives. Every act of repression to which he resorted lent fuel to the flame, and from this period forward he took up an ultra-Tory attitude. He admitted no case of exceptional hardship, defended the police through thick and thin, and in fact adopted the policy of repression pure and simple. At last, on the night of Thursday, January 20, the third Irish amend- ment was disposed of. On January 12 it was announced that Mr. Shaw had retired from the Home Rule Party. He was followed by all the other Home Rulers who with him had remained seated on the Liberal side of the House ; and thus the Irish Party found themselves deserted by their own friends in face of the enemy, and in the very agony of pitched battle. On Monday, January 24, Mr. Forster introduced the first Coercion Bill. The speech which he delivered was one of the ablest that he ever ad- dressed to the House. The matter was well arranged, the delivery was good, the fierce passion which he felt lent effect to his denunciations, and the speech was full of those asides and suggestions which were natural to one of the greatest masters of adroit suggestiveness the House of Commons ever saw. Its effect upon the House was very great, and the newspapers of the next morning proclaimed with unbroken unanimity that he had clearly and triumphantly proved the case for coercion. Let me examine rapidly the grounds on which Mr. Forster demanded soercion. Mr. Forster's first position was that the total of crime was enormous and unprecedented ; and this he proceeded to prove by stating that the total number of outrages in the year 1880 was 2,590, and that this was the greatest total of crime ever recorded from the date when agrarian crimes were first distinctly tabulated — which was another way of stating that the crime of 1880 was the largest of any year on record. This statement of the case, if true, gave a strong — almost an unanswerable — argument in favour of coercion. But the statement was entirely untrue. In the first place Mr. Forster had to reduce his big total of 2,590 down to 1,253, for the balance of 1,337 were threatening letters. If the House had been in a reasonable temper this announcement would have been so startling as to make it suspicious of the whole case of Mr. Forster ; for, of course, when Mr. Forster spoke to his colleagues of the appalling total of 2,590 crimes, what they would infer was that he was talking of crimes actually perpetrated, not t marked a praiseworthy desire on all sides to escape from the bad and bitter passions of the struggle. Thus, after nine weeks, the great fight came to an end. The merits of the struggle can now be surveyed with the calmness of an historical retro- spect. Many critics, then and since, have blamed the Irish Party for the violence and the vehemence of their action, and for their prolongation of the struggle. But if all these objections and a great many more were true, subsequent events have justified the wisdom of the tactics that were adopted. The nine weeks' coercion struggle made the Irish Party, and thereby gave unity, cohesion, and resistless strength to the great move- ment for the restoration of national rights. The first necessity at that period was to kindle into flames of enthusiasm the faith of the Irish people in themselves, in their representatives, and in *he results that might be achieved by Parliamentary warfare. The struggle that was going on at the time, too, in Ireland for the possession of the land was one which required all the strength of revolutionary enthusiasm to carry it to anything like a successful issue. With all the mighty forces that were arrayed against the cause of the tenant, the tenant could win by determination and by passion alone. Every scene of violence in the House of Commons roused still higher the temper of the Irish people, and if that temper had not reached fever heat, the Land Bill of 1881 would have gone to the same bourne of rejected proposals as the Compensation for Disturbance Bill and the thousand and one other proposals for the reform of the land tenure in Ireland had gone before. The power, too, which the Coercion Act placed in the hands of Mr. Forster, and the use which Mr. Forster made of this power, must always be considered as among the greatest forces in bringing the Irish cause to its present position. The Land Bill was introduced on April 7. The first impression produced upon the Irish members was one of pleased surprise. It was seen that the proposals were bold and sweeping. During the Easter recess, which came immediately after Mr. Gladstone's introduction of the measure, the Irish members proceeded to Dublin to consult with the country. A convention of the branches of the Land League was called, and was held in Dublin during two days. The two parties which existed in the Land League, as in every organization, were inclined to take up different attitudes upon the Bill. The majority of the Parliamentary Party were strongly in favour of accepting the Bill and of making it the starting-point of a new movement, Another section — resolute, bold, vehement — held as its fundamental belief that the Land struggle should now be pushed on to the bitter end until it was closed for ever, and that it was in the power of the Irish people, by the maintenance of a determined and united front, to bring matters to that triumphant issue. The weapon which this section had in view, probably from the beginning, was a universal refusal to pay rent. The success which had attended a similar movement against the tithes was the precedent chiefly relied upon. The discussion occupied two days, and for some time the result seemed doubtful. Finally, a resolution was passed which left Irish members freedom either to oppose or support the second reading of the measure. This was the instruction from the National Convention with which Mr. Parnell and his colleagues returned to Parliament ; but meantime events had been happening which had been doing a great deal to force the hands of the Irish leader. When the Coercion Act was passed, the state of THE COERCION STRUGGLE. 229 Ireland was one of almost complete tranquillity. The improvement in its condition had been further helped by the character of the Land Bill. But the Chief Secretary was soon to bring disturbance out of tranquillity, for he and the Irish officials throughout the country began to take steps which were calculated to drive even a less excited people into frenzy. He began to put the powers of the Coercion Act into operation ; and he displayed a sinister ingenuity in discovering the men who were least fitted to be entrusted with the large and arbitrary powers of such an Act. The most prominent of these officials were men who had already given abundant testimony of their unfitness for delicate duties and large authority. Major Bond bad been dismissed from the police force of Birmingham ; Major Traill was an officer who had been publicly reprimanded by the Com- mander-in-Chief ; and his removal from his regiment had been requested by his commanding officer. 1 The character of Mr. Clifford Lloyd is now bo notorious that it would be a waste of words to argue the gross blunder and even shameful outrage of sending such a man to administer a Coercion Act. Since his career in Ireland he has been tested in Egypt, and in the Mauritius, and, as everybody knows, was found to be a person with whom no other colleague could work in harmony, and had to leave the country and his office. But before he was taken up as a special protige by Mr. Forster, he had already given indications of the kind of man he was. On January 1, 1881, he bore down upon a meeting in Drogheda with a large body of police with fixed bayonets, and dispersed the meeting forcibly ; and even after he had thus succeeded in accomplishing his purpose, shouted to the people : 1 If you do not be off at once, I will have you shot down.' 2 For his conduct on this occasion he was denounced by Mr. Whitworth, brother of the then member for Drogheda, as a 'firebrand'; 3 and the member for Drogheda himself — and no man was a more bitter opponent of the Irish Party and the popular movement — declared in a debate his great surprise that the Government had employed Mr. Lloyd. ' A more dangerous man,' said Mr. Whitworth, 'they could not send to the South of Ireland. His (Mr. Whitworth' s) brother, who was a magistrate in Drogheda, told him that if this man were sent to disturbed districts, there would be bloodshed.' 4 Major Bond, m spite of ^iis antecedents, seems to have conducted himself with more discretion than might have been anticipated ; but Major Traill and Mr. Clifford Lloyd raged through the population with a perfect frenzy for insult, lawlessness, and cruelty. One of Major Traill's exploits was to go to a police barrack on a Sunday, where some men were in custody, to hold a court there and then, with himself as sole magistrate, and to impose on the men sentences varying from eight days to one month with hard labour. Of course, when the case was brought before the Superior Courts, the action of Major Traill was overruled. Baron Fitzgerald, the presiding judge — a strong Conservative — declared ' that he (Major Traill) had sen- tenced three several men to imprisonment illegally and the defence made by Major Traill's counsel was that, being only a major in the army, ' he 1 Mr. Forster, Hansard, voL cclviii., pp. 1667, 1668. 9 Mr. Healy, Ibid., vol. cclxiii., p. 1255. 3 Ibid., p. 639. Mr. Clifford 'Lloyd wrote to the papers afterwards to deny that hf ever used this expression ; but Mr. Healy and several Catholic clergymen who were present declared that they heard it. In nearly all such cases in which Mr. Clifford Lloyd was arraigned, he gave a version different from that of the persons who made the complaint 4 Ibid., vol. eclvi, pp. 998, 999. 230 ' THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. jould not be expected to know the law accurately, as he was not a lawyer. But, meantime, the persons who had thus been illegally convicted hac served the whole term of their imprisonment, and had taken their sleep upon plank beds. Mr. Forster thought, when the matter was brought before him, that Major Traill ' had been sufficiently penalised for the error he made, by becoming the defendant in three actions.' 1 But the exploits of Mr. Clifford Lloyd in Kilmallock and the other places to which he was sent leave in the shade everything done by his colleagues. On the first day on which he made his appearance in the town of Kil- mallock, he ordered the people who were talking in groups around the town to disperse to their homes, and when they did not immediately obey, struck them furiously with his cane. Shortly afterwards a band, which was playing as it passed through the streets, was attacked by the police under the direction of Mr. Lloyd, and the people were clubbed with the ends of the rifles. 2 Mr. Lloyd next attacked the women of Kilmallock. One evening a number of young ladies were standing in the street. The police ordered them to disperse on the ground that they were obstructing the highway, a charge of strange absurdity in the ghastly loneliness of a small Irish town. They were brought up before Mr. Lloyd and several other magistrates, and the police -constable who acted under Mr. Lloyd's orders accused the ladies of using insulting language, as well as of obstructing the highway. When the constable was examined, his complaint was found to be that he had been called ' Clifford Lloyd's pet.' Both the charge and the police-constable, as well as Mr. Clifford Lloyd, were laughed at, and the young ladies had to be discharged. Mr. Lloyd was more successful in his operations under the Coercion Act. He had inflicted fines upon two men and a married woman, and public sympathy went so strongly with these people that a subscription was raised to pay the fine, rather than allow them to go to prison. Andrew Mortel and Edmund O'Neill were the two men who carried around the subscription list. They were arrested and placed in prison under the Coercion Act on the ground of intimidation. Mr. O'Sullivan, then member for the County of Limerick and a resident in Kilmallock, got a declaration from all the persons who gave subscrip- tions that they had given the money voluntarily. Mr. Mortel and Mr. O'Neill, however, remained in prison. 3 Finally Mr. Lloyd obtained the arrest of Father Sheehy, and this arrest of a priest, eminent for his abilities and for his character, and with a strong hold upon the affections of the masses by his fearless spirit, added enormously Lo the exasperation of the country. It will be seen by-and-by that though at this period Mr. Lloyd had not succeeded in his crusade against women, he was more successful when the regime of coercion was entirely unchecked, and Mr. Forster set himself without shame or scruple to the dragooning of Ireland. And these offences were aggravated by the fact that every single act of police tyranny, petty or large, found a staunch advocate in the House of Commons in Mr. Forster. The landlords at the same time, too, proceeded to justify the worst anticipations of the Land Leaguers. It had been over and over again pointed out that the effect of the Coercion Act, coming as it did on the threshold of the Land Bill, would be to inspire the landlords with the idea that the tenants, once more terrorised and broken, could be treated with the cruelty of the old times. Large numbers of the tenants 1 Hansard, vol. ccxli., pp. 11, 12. 3 Ibid., p. 994. Letter of Father Sheehy to Mr. ParneU. 1 PAd., vol. cclxiii., pp. 1000, 1001. THE COERCION STRUGGLE. 231 had not recovered from the reeling shock of 1879, had not paid their rent, and could not pay it ; and even in the Land Bill that was coming there was no provision for them. The result was that evictions, which had been brought down when the Land League was completely triumphant, now made a sudden bound upwards. In the quarter of 1SS0 ending March 31, 2,748 persons had been evicted ; in the second quarter, ending June 30, 3,508 persons ; in the third quarter, ending September 30, 3,447 persons ; and in the fourth quarter, ending December 31, when the strong arm of the Land League stood between the landlord and the tenant, the number of persons evicted had fallen to 954. 1 The first quarter of 1881 showed the effect upon landlords of the promise of coercion, and the number of persons evicted rose to 1,732. When the Coercion Act began to be applied, and the various local defenders of the tenants began to be imprisoned by the Clifford Lloyds and the Traills, the evictions gave a sudden rise from 1,732 to 5,262. So strongly was public opinion, even in Parliament, impressed with these facts, that Mr. Labouchere proposed a clause in the Coercion Act suspend- ing evictions ; but, of course, it was rejected. Mr. Forster himself, lapsing into a moment of sympathy with the oppressed, as in the session of 1880, when he declared that he would resign rather than carry out cruel evictions, confessed that many of the persons about to be evicted were unable to pay their rents. At the same time he stated that many who were able to pay their rents were ordered by the Land League leaders to withhold them. Mr. Parnell at once accepted the implied suggestion, and for two hours the question was discussed in Parliament whether the Government would refuse to lend the aid of military and police in throwing out the distressed on the roadside if the Land League leaders would respond by advising the payment of rent in cases where it could be paid. But the proposed com- promise came to nothing. Evictions, accordingly, proceeded apace ; and the suffering of eviction was aggravated by the gradually increasing severity of the police regime,. Finally, matters reached a climax when the city of Dublin was proclaimed under the new Act, although up to this time not a single political crime had been committed by any one of its three hundred thousand inhabitants. Mr. Forster had to confess that the sole object of proclaiming the city was to bring the meetings of the Land League held there within the provisions of the Coercion Act. A short time afterwards Mr. John Dillon was arrested, and so the work of driving the country into madness went on. The first effect was upon the Parliamentary Party. The arrest of Mr. Dillon was announced immediately before the second reading of the Land Bill. Ths Irish Party were called together to decide upon their plan of action. Again in the conference-room thirty of them met under the presi- dency of Mr. Parnell. A discussion, the full gravity of which was felt by all, occupied the party during three hours. Mr. Parnell himself proposed from the chair a resolution in favour of abstention, and this resolution was carried by 17 votes against 12. This decision produced a feeling of dis- may in many sections in Ireland, was bitterly criticised, and was openly disobeyed by some members of the party. In fact, it may now be admitted that this was one of the very darkest hours through which the Irish Party had passed ; yet there will be few to deny now that the decision to abstain 1 A considerable number of those persons were afterwards admitted as caretakers ; but, as everybody knows, this deprived them of their status as tenants, and left them at the mercy of the landlord*. 232 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. was the only expedient and consistent course which the Irish Party could have adopted. That course left the party complete freedom of action in the future ; it expressed in the most emphatic manner the conviction that the Land Bill was not the final settlement of the Land Question ; and, above all, it helped the chances of the measure with the House of Lords by raising in the background the spectre of a ' No-Rent ' manifesto. This will appear more clearly by-and-by. For the present it will suffice to say here that the Land Bill was objected to on the following grounds : First, that it would establish an impracticable and inconvenient state of relations between landlord and tenant by endeavouring to fix a partnership in the soil between two persons of opposing interests, and that the only solution which would be just, complete, and final would be the solution proposed by the Land League — the transformation of rent-paying tenants into peasant proprietors ; secondly, that the Land Courts would not make such reductions in the rents as were required by the circumstances of the case ; thirdly, that, as a large number of tenants were, owing to bad seasons and by the legacy of the ' hanging gale ' and other arrears from the period of the Great Famine, entirely unable to pay their rent, the new legis- lation could do them no good, and that they would be just as much at the mercy of the landlords as if no legislation at all were passed ; fourthly, that the leaseholders were excluded ; fifthly, that due provision was not made for saving the improvements effected by the tenant from confiscation in the shape of rent ; sixthly, the clause in favour of emigration ; and, seventhly, the absence of provision for the labourers. These objections were met in the same spirit as the objections made by the Irish Parliamentary Party to the Land Bill of 1870 ; and subsequent events have, in the case of the Bill of 1881 as in that of 1870, proved the unwisdom of English statesmen and the wisdom of the Irish representa- tives. There is not one of these objections which has not been proved sound, and most of them will reappear shortly when they pass from the mouths of Irish representatives into measures passed by both Houses of Parliament. The Irish members endeavoured in vain, in the course of the proceedings in Parliament, to introduce amendments which would have the effect of making the Bill a better settlement ; but these amendments were almost invariably rejected. One amendment, however, was carried which was destined to play a most important part in the entire future of v the Land Question. Mr. Healy stuck to his place throughout the discussion of the Bill, and the debates were often wholly carried on by him, Mr. Law, and Mr. Gibson. The present writer was sitting next to Mr. Healy on the night when the famous Healy Clause, declaring that in future no rent should be chargeable on the tenants' improvements, was carried. Mr. Healy made his proposal in mild and almost careless terms, and Mr. Law got up and accepted the principle with scarcely the appearance even of demur. But there was a little confusion about the exact wording, and, in order to give time for collecting thought, Dr. Playfair remembered that he wanted his tea, and adjourned the House for a quarter of an hour. The clause was drafted meantime, and was added to the Bill. Apparently nothing very particular had occurred, the whole business had passed off in unbroken tranquillity and overflowing amicability ; but the prime mover in the busi- ness knew well what he had done. With a face of sphinx-like severity Mr. Healy whispered to the friend by his side : 1 These words will put millions in the pockets of the tenants.' The Land Bill received the royal assent on August 22. The Iriah THE COERCION STRUGGLE. 233 leaders were now face to face with the gravest problem they had yet to encounter. This was in regard to the attitude they should assume towards the new Act. There were many things in the state of Ireland at that period to tempt to extreme resolves. The Land League had gone on daily increasing in power ; coercion, instead of diminishing, seemed to add to its influence and its prestige. Though Parliament was engaged in the passage of a measure in many respects as stupendous as the Land Act of 1881, the centre of political gravity and political interest was in the opera- tions of the Land League in Ireland rather than in the debates and pro- ceedings at St. Stephen's. The Irish farmer could not be blamed if he observed with exultation the absolutely revolutionary change which had come over his prospects. In this hour he recalled with bitter satisfaction that long list of modest proposals for his relief which the Imperial Parlia- ment had ever rejected, and the gloom, unbroken by one word of sympathy or one statesmanlike proposal, from the passage of the Union till the Land Bill of 1870. The reader has had set forth in previous pages the history of all these futile appeals to the Legislature for relief, and also a picture of the awful evils for which relief was sought. He will not have forgotten the dread regime of famine and fever, the wholesale clearances, the merci- less rack-renting, the tyranny omnipotent, mean, and ubiquitous, the whole* sale emigration, which formed the one side of the picture, and the ignorance, the insolence, the light-hearted neglect, or the mocking insult of Eng lish Ministers and Parliaments, which formed the other ; and is the hope vain that, whatever be his nationality, he will feel some sympathy with the reversal of the two parts at this moment — the Legislature eager with gifts, the farmer turning away in the scorn of self-dependence ? In any case, the Irish farmers understood the change. They saw that the success of a Bill proposing changes against which all the statesmen, the whole press, and the entire landlord party of England and Ireland would have risen in revolt a few years before, was longed for with far greater eagerness by their hereditary and hitherto omnipotent oppressors than it was by themselves. In short, the slave had become the master ; the suppliant was transformed into the victor dictating terms. On the other hand, Mr. Parnell had placed before himself, as a central point of policy, by no word or act of his to abate one jot of the victory which the people might be able to wring from their enemies. At this moment the situation, as it presented itself to his mind, was this : the Land Courts had practically the entire settlement of the rental of Ireland in their hands ; the changes required in that rental, according to the views of Mr. Parnell, were not small, nor narrow, nor sporadic, but revolutionary, wholesale, and thorough. But what were the chances of a revolutionary reduction of rents ? The whole character of the Land Court forbade any such expectation. Judge O'Hagan, the chief of the court, was well known to be a man of pliant and. timid character. Of his two colleagues, Mr. Litton was a lawyer who had never got beyond the peddling proposals of Ulster Tenant Leagues, and a man utterly devoid of any boldness or initiative ; while Mr. Vernon, the third member of the commission, was agent for several large landed pro- prietors, was himself a landed proprietor, and had besides the reputation of being much stronger willed than either of his colleagues. Apart from their own weakness of character, the two legal members of the chief commission were men who had grown old in all the ideas and traditions of the ancient laws with regard to the tenure of land in Ireland. To the generation to which the youth of Mr. Justice O'Hagan and Mr. Litton belonged, the *34 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. jroprietorship of the tenant in the soil was the code only of the Ribbon Lodge, and had its only statutable sanction in the blunderbuss. Again, when Mr. Parnell and the other leaders of the Land League sought for the probable effects of the rent -fixing clauses of the Land Act, they naturally turned to the prophecies of the men by whom the Land Act nad been framed and had been carried through both Houses of Parlia- ment. ' If (said Lord Selborne) you compare the state of things under the Bill with that which would exist if nothing of the kind were done, the Bill may be expected to restore, and, moreover, not diminish, the value of the land- lords' property.' 1 ' I deny (he said again) that it will diminish, in any degree whatever, the rights of the landlord or the value of the interest he possesses.' 2 Lord Carlingford was still more explicit : ' My lords (he said), I maintain that the provisions of this Bill will cause the landlords no money loss whatever.' 3 These prophecies Mr. Parnell and his colleagues were certainly bound to take as sincere. Furthermore, every care had been taken that the decisions of the Land Courts should be subject to Parliamentary criticism. The courts were bound to present to Parliament almost every detail of every single one of the cases brought before them. A considerable number of the sub- commissioners held but temporary appointments, and, as a matter of fact, some were removed under a continual hailstorm of Parliamentary criticism ; and the Parliamentary criticism that they had to dread was not that of the small minority who defended the interests of the tenant in Parliament, but that of the overwhelming majority of the two parties in both Houses of the Legislature — the majority which represented the interests of the land- lords. If the Land Court were subject to the pressure of the landlords of the House of Commons and of the House of Lords, and bound by the declaration of the Ministf ?s en the one side, it was necessary to procure counterbalancing pressure on the side of the tenants ; in other words, to make the court fair to the tenants by making the tenants to some extent independent of the court. These were the steps of reasoning by which the Irish leaders arrived at the conviction that by organization and unity alone could the farmer maintain the ground he had gained ; that without this organization and unity the Land Courts would become but a new machinerj for perpetuating the yoke of impossible rents, and the Land Act turn out, like so many other previous statutes, but Dead Sea fruit that turned to ashes at the touch. At the same time there were the Land Courts with their doors open. The extreme section of the Land Leaguers were so convinced of the omnipotence of the League, and of the futility and treachery of the Land Act, that they strongly urged the policy of keeping the tenants out of the courts altogether. But it was perceived by Mr. Parnell that such a policy was impracticable : and, therefore, his policy was, not to prevent, but to regulate, the appeal tt these courts. To him the best plan of doing this appeared to be to place in the counts a certain number of typical cases. The cases were not to bfc. those which exhibited the most flagrant instances of rack-renting. This proviso in the selection of cases was fiercely denounced, but the justice of the proviso requires very little defence. Obviously an extravagantly rack- « Hansard, vol. cclxiv., p. 534. a Ibid., p. 532, 3 Ibid., p. 252. THE COERCION STRUGGLE. rented property would not supply to the court a fair and average case. A large reduction might be made in such a case, and at the same time the general scale of rent in Ireland might remain too high. There was the danger of the tenants being deceived, by the reduction in such a case, into a, false estimate of what the general attitude of the Land Courts would be. A reduction of fifty per cent, on a hopelessly rack-rented estate might well dazzle the farmers into the belief that a reduction of fifty per cent, would be made all round. They would, of course, have discovered their mistake in time, but they would not have discovered it until, by their appeal to the Land Court, they had disintegrated the organization which ought still to remain their main safeguard and buttress. In this way what was known as the 4 Test- Case ' policy came to be adopted. A second great convention was held in the Rotunda on September 15 and the two following days. Upwards of a thousand branches were repre- sented, the tone of the speeches was triumphant, and the whole assembly breathed a spirit of exultation. The members of the extreme section formed no inconsiderable portion of the delegates. To this section enormous strength had been added by the use to which Mr. Forster had put his Coercion Acts. By this time a large number of the men who had been most active in building up the mighty organization were in gaol. From their cells these men appealed to their colleagues not to give up the fruits of the victory for which they had consented to struggle and to suffer, and the advocates of extreme courses found the most telling argument in favour of their policy in the sufferings of Mr. Davitt and Father Sheehy. The pro- posal of this section was, that the tenantry should have nothing whatever to do with the Act ; that they should continue the organization and the agitation, and go on to the bitter end, until landlordism was completely crushed, and the Government could have no choice but to accept the pro- gramme of the Land League and purchase peace by the expropriation of the landlords and the creation of a peasant proprietary. The weapon which this section held to be the means of bringing about this final con- summation was a 4 No-Rent ' manifesto ; but to this course Mr. Parnell and the greater number of his colleagues were at this moment opposed. They were in favour of the middle course which I have described. They - thought it possible at the same time to maintain the organization and to test the Land Court. Their policy was well summed up by Mr. Parnell himself, as that of ' testing and not using the Land 4ct.' The influence of Mr. Parnell and his culleagues prevailed, and the 4 Test- Case ' policy waa sanctioned by the convention. It was often suggested, immediately after- wards, that this policy was never really believed in by Mr. Parnell. I can bear personal testimony to the fact that he proceeded at once to take the means necessary for carrying the policy into practical effect. I sat by his side for nights in succession, as he extracted from the books of the Land League cases which appeared to him to be such as would fairly test the disposition of the court, and Mr. Healy went down to the South of Ireland to visit the homes and to investigate the farms of some whose cases had thus been selected. On the day on which the forms for application to the new Land Court were issued, Mr. Parnell was so eager to be among the first applicants that he visited the house of the Land Commission no less than three times. In fact, he had resolved to give the fair 4 Test-Case ' policy a bond-fide trial. But this was not to be. Mr. Gladstone spoke at Leeds on October 7. He made an attack on tho THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Irish )eader, which was certainly strong ; but was, at the same time, not too strong if the central position of Mr. Gladstone were correct. It was Mr. Gladstone's case that Mr. Parnell represented not the majority, but a minority, of the Irish people ; and that the majority were being terrorised by the minority. In short, Mr. Gladstone thought at this period that the Irish people and Mr. Parnell, instead of being at one, were at variance. This opinion he has since found out to be mistaken ; but that it was honestly his opinion at this time the following extract from the speech will prove : *The people of Ireland, we believe (said Mr. Gladstone), desire, in con- formity with the advice of the old patriots, and their bishops and their best friends ... to make a full trial of the Land Act ; and if they do make a full trial of that Act, you may rely upon it, it is as certain as human con- tingencies can be to give peace to the country. We shall rely on the good sense of the people, because we are determined that no force, or fear of ruin through force, shall as far as we are concerned, and as it is in our power to decide the question, prevent the Irish people having the full and free benefit of the Land Act.' 1 A good deal of hopeless nonsense has been spoken about this and further passages in the same speech. The real and candid explanation of the difference in the attitude of Mr. Gladstone then and now is not merely the difference — and that is great — in the tactics of Mr. Parnell and the condi- tion of Ireland, but in the difference in the Parliamentary position of the Irish Party. Mr. Parnell then had 35 followers out of 103 members ; and Mr. Gladstone might well deny that Mr. Parnell was representative of the majority of the Irish people. Such a denial became impossible as soon as Mr. Parnell's followers numbered 85 out of 103 of a total representation. Finally, Mr. Gladstone wound up with this ominous passage : ' When we have that short further experience to which I have referred, if it should then appear that there is still to be fought a final conflict in Ireland between law on the one side and sheer lawlessness on the other — if the law, still purged from defects, is still to be rejected and refused, the first condition of political society remains unfulfilled, and then, I say without hesitation, the resources of civilization against its enemies are not yet exhausted.' 2 To that speech on Sunday, October 9, Mr. Parnell replied at Wexford. The reception given to Mr. Parnell at this Wexford meeting is described by those who saw it as perhaps the most enthusiastic of the many recep- tions of almost frenzied enthusiasm which he received during this momen- tous year. Triumphal arches spanned the streets, evergreens and flowers covered the windows and doorways and lamp-posts. Bands came from several parts of the country, and special trains brought thousands from the surrounding districts. The speech of Mr. Parnell was in the same passion- ate tones as that to which it was a reply. Mr. Gladstone, in the course of his speech, had complained of the want of all support to the efforts of Government by the landlords and other classes threatened, and then had dropped into the astonishing confession that the 'Government are ex- pected to keep the peace with no moral force behind them.' 1 The Government (said Mr. Parnell, taking up this point) have no moral force behind them in Ireland. The whole Irish people are against them. * Freeman'a Journal, October 10, 1881. 8 Ibid. THE COERCION STRUGGLE. 237 They have to depend for their support upon the interest of a very small minority of the people of this country, and, therefore, they have no mora) force behind them, and Mr. Gladstone, in these few short words, admit* that English government has failed in Ireland. ... I say it is not in his power to trample on the aspirations and the rights of the Irish nation with no moral force behind him.' On the Monday following his speech Mr. Parnell was entertained at a banquet, and in his speech he used some words which showed he had some presentiment of what was coming. * I am frequently disposed to think,' he said, ' that Ireland has not yet got through the troubled waters of affliction to be crossed before we reach the promised land of prosperity to Ireland. . . . There may be — probably there will be — more stringent coercion before us than we have yet experi- enced.' The next day he went to his home in Avondale, and he reached Dublin by the last train on Wednesday night, having promised to attend the Kildare County Convention, which was to be held at Naas on the following day. He was to have left Kingsbridge Station by the 10.15 a.m. train. On that same Wednesday a Cabinet Council had been held in England, and in the evening Mr. Eorster had crossed over, authorized to arrest his chief opponent. Here is Mr. Parnell's own account of what actually occurred : ' Intending to proceed to Naas this morning, I ordered, before retiring to bed on Wednesday night, that I should be called at half-past eight o'clock. When the man came to my bedroom to awaken me, he told me that two gentlemen were waiting below who wanted to see me. I told him to ask their names and business. Having gone out, he came back in a few moments, and said that one was the superintendent of police and the other was a policeman. I told him to say that I would be dressed in halt an hour, and would see them then. He went away, but came back again to tell me that he had been downstairs to see the gentlemen, and had told them I was not stopping at that hotel. He then said that I should get out through the back part of the house, and not allow them to catch me. I told him that I would not do that, even if it were possible, because the police authorities would be sure to have every way most closely watched. He again went down, and this time showed the detectives up to my bed- room.' The Freeman's Journal, 1 from which this is quoted, continues : ' In Foster Place there was a force of one hundred policemen held in readiness in case of any emergency. Mr. Mallon, when he entered the bedroom, found Mr. C. S. Parnell in the act of dressing, and immediately presented him with two warrants. He did not state their purport, but Mr. Parnell understood the situation without any intimation. It is not true to state that he exhibited surprise, or that he looked puzzled. The documents were presented to him with gentlemanly courtesy by Mr. Mallon, and the hon. gentleman who was about to be arrested received them with perfect calmness and deliberation. He had had private advices from England regarding the Cabinet Council, and was well aware that the Government meditated some coup d'etat. 'Two copies of the warrants had also been sent to the Kingsbridge Terminus, to be served on Mr. Parnell in case he should go to Sailing 1 October 14, 1881. 238 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. by an early train. Superintendent Mallon expressed some anxiety lest a crowd should collect and interfere with the arrest, and he requested Mi. Parnell to come away as quickly as possible. Mr. Parnell responded to his anxiety. A cab was called, and the two detectives with the honour- able prisoner drove away. When the party reached the Bank of Ireland, at which but a fortnight previously Mr. Parnell had directed the atten- tion of many thousands to its former memories and future prospects, five or six metropolitan police, evidently by preconcerted arrangement, jumped upon two outside cars and drove in front of the party. On reaching the quays at the foot of Parliament Street, a number of horse police joined the procession at the rear. In this order the four vehicles drove to Kilmainham. This strange procession passed along the thoroughfares without creating any remarkable notice. A few people did stop to look at it on part of the route, and then pursued the vehicles. But their curiosity was probably aroused by the presence of ' the force ' rather than by any knowledge that, after a short lull, the Coercion Act was again being applied to the elite, of the League. They stopped their chase after going a few perches, and at half -past nine o'clock Mr. Parnell appeared in front of the dark portals of Kilmainham.' A few hours afterwards he was interviewed by a reporter of the Freeman's Journal. The interview closed with one of those mots by which Mr. Parnell has marked important epochs in his career. ' As I rose to leave,' says the reporter, ' Mr. Parnell stated, " I shall take it as an evidence that the people did not do their duty if I am speedily released." In Ireland the arrest of Mr. Parnell was mourned throughout the country as a national calamity. Indignation meetings were held, unless they were dispersed by the police or the soldiery, in every town and village in the country, and in most cases the shutters were put on the windows as in times of death and funerals. The country was swept by a passion of anger and grief, the more bitter because it had to be sup- pressed. Troops were poured into the country, and, by way of striking wholesome terror, Dublin was given over for two days to the police ; and then occurred scenes of brutality the records of which it is not possible to read even at this distance without bitter anger. Under the pretext that there was danger of a riot in O'Connell — then Sackville — Street, it was taken possession of by large bodies of police, and when a crowd of boys, attracted by this curious spectacle, began to jeer and groan, the police made charges, struck the people with their bdtons and clenched fists, and kicked those whom they felled. ' Their conduct,' writes the Weekly Irish Times, 1 a Conservative organ in Dublin, ' was such as to appear almost incredible to all who had not been to witness it. . . . After every charge they made, men, amongst them respectable citizens, were left lying in the streets, blood pouring from the wounds they received on the head from the batons of the police, while others were covered with severe bruises from the kicks and blows of clenched fists, delivered with all the strength that powerful men could exert.' This was before ten o'clock. Later on, another and perhaps even worse scene was enacted : ' The police drew their batons, and the scene which followed beggarB iescription. Charging headlong into the people, the constables struck 1 October 22, 1881. THE COERCION STRUGGLE. right and left, and men and women fell under their blows. No quarter was given. The roadway was strewn with the bodies of the people. From the Ballast Office to the Bridge, and from the Bridge to Sackville Street, the charge was continued with fury. Women fled shrieking, and their cries rendered even more painful the scene of barbarity which was being enacted. All was confusion, and nought could be seen but the police mercilessly batoning the people. Some few of the people threw stones, of which fact the broken gas-lamps bear testimony ; but, with this ex- ception, no resistance was offered. Gentlemen and respectable working men, returning homewards from theatres or the houses of friends, fell victims to the attack ; and as an incident of the conduct of the police it may be mentioned that, besides numerous others, more than a dozen students of Trinity College and a militia officer — unoffending passers-by — were knocked down and kicked, and two postal telegraph messengers, engaged in carrying telegrams, were barbarously assailed. When the people were felled, they were kicked on the ground ; and when they again rose, they were again knocked down by any constable who met them. 1 Nor is it on newspaper accounts only that we have to rely for a record of the brutality of the police on this occasion. 'I have seen,' said Mr. Dwyer Gray, M.P., at a meeting of the Dublin Corporation, at which the question was discussed — ' I have seen the conduct of the police. . . . I saw them beating children, and acting in the most wanton and shame- ful way : attacking respectable men, beating them, striking them on the face, when going on their way quietly and peaceably as they had a per- fect right to do.' 2 4 1 can speak from personal observation,' declared Alderman Harris, ' ... as to the gravity of the result produced by whoever had the command of the police making that immense display of force last Saturday. . . . The police were running after and beating re- spectable men.' 3 When these facts were brought before the Chief Secretary by a deputation from the Corporation of Dublin, his calm reply was, ' It cannot be altogether a milk-and-water business, clearing streets.' 4 Is it possible that J oe Brady or some other of the 4 Invincibles ' was in the crowd, and thus saw the Metropolis of Ireland given over to this savagery ? It was assuredly a strange proof of the idea that the Irish longed to be liberated from the tyranny of Mr. Parnell that the population had to be dragooned by overwhelming military and police forces into the tame acceptance of Mr. Parnell's imprisonment. The two nations, in fact, stood opposite each other — both unanimous. Not a voice in England was raised in defence of Mr. Parnell ; not a voice in Lreland was raised in favour of Mr. Forster. Ireland and England .confronted one another in universal and undisguised hatred. This was the strange pass to which Mr. Forster's statesmanship had brought the two countries. The arrest of Mr. Parnell was followed by that of Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Kelly. Mr. Sexton was lying ill in bed when the warrant came for his arrest also, and he rose immediately and accompanied the police to Kilmainham. Warrants were also issued for the arrest of Mr. Healy, Mr. Arthur O'Connor, and Mr. Biggar. Mr. Healy was on his way to Ireland to give himself up, when he was met at Holyhead by an official of 1 Weekly Irish Times, October 22, 1881. * Freeman's Journal. October 18, 1S8" 1 3 /^j. 4 jbid. 240 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, the League and ordered to remain in England. Mr. Arthur 0'Connot wan also ordered by Mr. Parnell to escape arrest if he could, and so was Mr. Biggar. The realistic leader of the Irish movement was anxious that as many of his followers as possible should remain outside the gaols, so as to carry on the war against the enemy ; and his followers, though reluctantly, accepted his mandate. In Dublin and throughout the country every person in any way connected with the League was arrested. It was evidently the resolve of the Government to destroy the organization by the removal of its most active members. Finally, the Land League was suppressed. At last the extremists, whom Mr. Parnell had successfully opposed, were victorious. When Mr. Forster became their ally they were for the first time irresistible. The Land League leaders, now inside gaol, were brought face to face with a situation in which moderation was no longer possible. Eesort was had to the final weapon, and, after various consults tions, the 1 No-Rent ' manifesto was issued. CHAPTER XIL THE FKUITS OF COERCION. To appreciate properly the effect of the coercion regime, whicn now followed, it is necessary to recall to the reader the state of Ireland as it was when Parliament met in January, 1881, with Ireland as it became during the six months that followed the arrest of Mr. Parnell. It will be remembered that Mr. Forster himself had to acknowledge that the country at that period was comparatively quiet ; that the Returns, when dissected, proved that the real amount of crime was much less than the gross total led one to believe ; and that it was repeated so often, and by so many different speakers, as to become a platitude of debate, that the number of murders, instead of having increased, had actually been less during the days of the Land League supremacy than at any previous period of great political excitement and impending social changes. The time had come, when the Government resolved to apply coercion in earnest, when every restraint of decency or prudence was cast aside, and Ireland was ruled with a rod of iron indeed. It is hard even now to write of the acts perpetrated at this period under the direction of Mr. Forster without some display of temper or some heat of language. The pretences on which the Coercion Acts had been originally obtained from Parliament were completely forgotten. The Acts, as I have shown by extract after extract from the Ministerial speeches, were obtained for the purpose of putting down crime or the incitement to crime, and for that alone. They were employed— openly and avowedly employed — for the purpose of compelling the payment of rent. The warrants of arrest contained the confession of this entire, change of purpose and breach of faith. Thus in one of the warrants against Mr. Parnell, the charge was that he had intimidated divers persons to compel them to abstain from doing what they had a legal right to do — namely, to pay rents lawfully due by them. The non-payment of rent may be a moral offence, but assuredly it was not the kind of crime and outrage for the perpetration or abetting nf which Mr. Gladstone declared the Coercion Act was required. Mr. ± i\ster had declared that the Acts were required not against any large section of the population, but against the tnauvaia sujets, the village tyrants, and a few scattered miscreants through- THE FRUITS OF COERCION. ont the country ; and writs were issued against men in almost every class of society ! The proceedings taken against women did perhaps more than anything else to expose the savage character of the regime now established, and to create the fiercest popular passion. A number of ladies had taken up the work of the organization as it fell from the hands of the men whom Mr. Forster had sent to gaol. What that work was will presently appear. Against several of these ladies the Chief Secretary ordered legal proceedings. The method of these proceedings was characteristic of a nature at once coarse, clumsy, and savage. In the reign of Edward III. a statute was passed against prostitutes and tramps. It was under a statute like this that young ladies, brought up tenderly and delicately, were tried, and such of them as were convicted were condemned in sentences which cannot be described as lenient. Mr. Clifford Lloyd was now able to enjoy himself to the top of his bent. He pranced around the country with as large an escort as could have been required by the Czar passing through a Polish city ; he arrested wholesale ; he trampled on the laws of the country, and carried out laws of his own suiting ; he employed boldly and shamelessly every weapon of coercion for the purpose of extracting the rent. Thus the Coercion Act became simply one of the additional agencies of the rent - office ; and the non-payment of rent was raised to the dignity of a criminal offence. One well-authenticated case of this kind will sufficiently exem- plify the state of things that existed in Ireland at this horrible period. A Mrs. Moroney was engaged in a fierce struggle with her tenantry in Miltown-Malbay, County Clare. One of her tenants was summoned by Mr. Clifford Lloyd, and was told that unless he paid his rent he would be put in gaol. He refused to pay his rent ; Mr. Lloyd kept his word : the man was arrested at daybreak on the following day under one of Mr. Forster's warrants ; he was sent to a prison in Ulster, as far removed as possible from his business and his family ; and while he was away his wife died, and it was to a desolate home he returned after his release. Huts were erected by the Ladies' Land League for the purpose of shelter- ing the evicted, who, as will be presently seen, were reaching at this point jumbers that startled and shocked and terrified the whole country. Mr. Lloyd insisted that the huts were for the purpose of intimidation and not for shelter, and arrested and sent every person to gaol who was engaged in their erection. Against women he was at last allowed to have plenary powers. He sent Miss McCormack to gaol for six months ; he sent Miss Reynolds to gaol for six months ; he sent Miss Kirk to gaol for three months. Of course he always denied that he imprisoned these women at alL All he did was to ask them to promise to keep the peace ; and he sent them to gaol in consequence of the refusal. But he knew, and everybody knew, that no man or woman could, with a particle of self-respect, or with an} hope of retaining the respect of any of his or her people, submit to any compromise with the brutal tyranny that was then desolating their country. Other magistrates, fired with noble envy of Mr. Lloyd's exploits, also made war upon women. Mrs. Moore was sent to gaol for six months ; and Mr. Becket sentenced Miss Mary O'Connor to six months' imprison- ment. Two extracts from the reports of Hansard will complete this part of the picture. "When Mr. Forster's attention was called to any of the brutalities of Mr. Clifford Lloyd, this was how he answered : 16 242 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. ' When an action is taken up by a magistrate, it is done on Ms own responsibility ; and it would be a most serious matter to suppose that I, as representing the Executive, have power to interfere with the action of the magistrates.' 1 It is scarcely necessary to remind the historical student that this answer of Mr. Forster is the repetition of a trick venerable in the history of despotisms. The magistx-ate, who is the tool and the creature of the Government, who carries out its wishes and behests, is represented as a perfectly independent judicial functionary, with whom the Executive would not, and even dare not, interfere. Mr. Clifford Lloyd and the other magistrates who were carrying out this work throughout Ireland, were as much the servants and creatures of Mr. Forster as the smallest messenger in his office or the chambermaid in his house. They were appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant ; they could be dismissed by the Lord- Lieutenant. Most of them held appointments that were distinctly temporary, and renewable at short periods — from quarter to quarter — and with large emoluments dependent on the continuance of the agitation, of which they were among the most unholy brood. And these were the gentlemen from interference with whom Mr. Forster shrank with the delicate respect for constitutional forms which he was displaying in so many ways at that moment. A second extract from Hansard will describe the treatment to which the ladies were subjected who were sentenced to be imprisoned by Mr. Clifford Lloyd and the other magistrates : ' Mr. Labouchere asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant oi Ireland whether it is true that Mrs. Moore, Miss Kirk, and Miss O'Connor, who have been sentenced to various terms of imprisonment under an ancient Act for alleged intimidation, by different stipendiary magistrates, are kept in solitude for about twenty-three hours out of twenty-four ; and whether the time has arrived when, in the interests of the peace and tranquillity of Ireland, these ladies should be restored to their friends? ' Mr. Trevelyan : Sir, the ladies named in this question have been com- mitted to prison in default of finding bail, and are treated in exact conformity with the prison rules ; and, according to the rules for " bailed prisoners," they are allowed two hours for exercise daily, and are therefore in their cells for twenty-two out of twenty-four hours. They can at once return to their friends on tendering the requisite sureties.' 2 Thus it will be seen that these women were suffering far more severely than the men arrested under the Coercion Act. The prisoners under the Coercion Act were allowed to have communication with each other for six hours out of every day. The young ladies sentenced by Mr. Clifford Lloyd were in solitude throughout the entire day. In the prisons in which they #ere placed there were none but the degraded of their own sex ; and some- times the young ladies attended their devotions in close proximity to the prostitutes and thieves of their district. Up and down the country, meantime, the police authorities were pur suing the other methods which are associated with unchecked authority and the efforts to override a people. The same war was made on lads and boys as on women. A lad named Lee was brought before the magistrates 1 Hansard, vol. cclxviii., p. 1071 9 Ibid. t vol. cclxix., p. 1404- THE FRUITS OF COERCION. 243 for whistling. 1 Thomas Wall, another lad, was accused by another con- stable for the same offence, and in addition was charged with abusive language. The abusive language was whistling ' Harvey Duff,' a song which spoke in satirical terms of the police. 'Do you consider,' the accusing constable was asked, ' that whistling " Harvey Duff " is using abusive language ?' ' Yes,' answered the friend of Mr. Forster, 'I do ; and I swear it is.' 2 On April 16, 1882, a policeman in Waterford rushed into a shop where a woman was engaged in reading United Ireland, threw her down, and, kneeling on her stomach, searched her in an indecent manner. 3 In Cappamore, County Limerick, a sub-constable attacked a girl named Burke, twelve years of age, because she was singing ' Harvey Duff.' He drew his bayonet, and inflicted a wound. 4 Was it true, asked Mr. Healy with his characteristically grim humour, that Daniel O'Sullivan, aged nine or ten years, ' who appeared before the magistrates crying,' had been prosecuted by the magistrates, under the Whiteboy Act, for having, at two o'clock in the day, by carrying a lighted torch in the public streets at Millstreet, promoted a certain unlawful meeting contrary to the statute made and provided, and against the peace of our Sovereign Lady the Queen, her crown and dignity ? Was it not true that the child's offence really consisted in heading a procession of young fellows who were after tilling the farm of a woman whose husband had died ? Mr. Forster found fault with the levity of the question, and then pro- ceeded to state the serious facts of the case. The youth Daniel O'Sullivan was the leader of a party of boys from twelve to seventeen years of age ; O'Sullivan himself was about twelve. When their procession was stopped the boys dispersed, but they reassembled at the instigation of grown-up persons. 5 . The police made domiciliary visits by day and by night into the rooms alike of women and of men. They broke into meetings ; they stood out- side doors and took the names of all persons entering into even the house of a priest to take steps for relieving the tenantry. 6 They tore down a placard in Tipperary calling upon the people to vote for the popular candi- dates for poor-law guardians ; 7 and at a meeting of the Drogheda Corpora- tion the sub-inspector of police interposed in the proceedings with the declaration that he would not allow the word 'coercion ' to be used. 8 Meantime Dublin Castle exhausted the resources of civil power in helping on the now unchecked savagery of the alien oligarchy against the nation. Troops were supplied in abundance ; horse, foot, and artillery took part in the work of eviction ; and sometimes the blue- jacket and the war-vessel were employed in the unholy task of turning out the starving to die. To make the grotesqueness and horror of the situation complete, it sometimes happened that the vessel which had come to help in evicting had but twelve months before visited the same shore and the same people to distribute among them the food which English charity had bestowed to save them from starvation. It is perhaps only in a system so absurd and unnatural as the Legislative Union between England and Ireland that a contradiction so glaring as generosity in one year and starvation in the next is possible. 1 Hansard, vol. eclviii., p. 8S8. 2 Ibid., vol. cclxv., p. 184. 3 Ibid., yoI. eclxviii., pp. 993, 126G. * Ibid., vol. eclx., p. 1543. 7 Ibid. vol. eclxviii., p. 12. 4 Ibid., vol. eclxvii., p. 25. 6 Ibid., vol. eclxvii., p. 127T. • Ibid., vol. eclxvii., p. 1285. 244 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. With the Government making their cause their own ; with all the resources of the British Exchequer and the British naval and military forces at their back ; with Mr. Forster to imprison every popular journalist and every popular orator ; with Mr. Clifford Lloyd to make non-payment of rent a crime, and the erection of huts for the outcast and the dying an act of intimidation — the landlords acted as they have always done at every period when Fate and the British Government have together delivered the Irish tenantry helpless into their hands. They were, too, in the mood to take full advantage of all these things. For the first time in all their annals of power they had been confronted, defied, and beaten. Under the regime, of the Land League they had been compelled to surrender rights of immemorial date — to lower their rack-rents, to stay eviction, to treat their tenants as fellow-beings, and not as so many ciphers or serfs. The mighty organization which had made this revolutionary change was beaten and dead : they had not only rights to re-conquer, but passion to slake ; not only rents to exact, but vengeance to feed. They went to work with a will that recalled the spirit of the glorious days which followed the Great Famine. The evictions for the first quarter of 1881 were 1,732 persons ; for the second quarter, ending June 30, they had increased to 5,562 persons ; for the quarter ending September 30 the evictions were 6,496 ; and for the quarter ending December 31 they were 3,851. During the entire year of 1881, 17,341 persons had thus been deprived of their rights as tenants, and the greater proportion of them had been absolutely thrown on the roadside, It will be seen that eviction was proceeding for at least six months of the year in geemetrical progression, and that the year 1881, under the influence of Mr. Forster's regime,, was reaching a total of evictions for any approach to which we must go back to the dread years of the Famine. Nor, of course, did those evictions take place without scenes of heart- rending cruelty or desperate encounter. In County Clare a man was killed by a body of police who were protecting a process-server ; in April a police- man and two farmers were killed ; in June a police-charge killed a man ; in October a man was killed at a Land League meeting by a bayonet-thrust from a policeman ; and later on in that month an event occurred which produced widespread and bitter indignation. A body of police were sent to collect poor-rates due by a number of miserable tenants on the estate of a Mr. Blake. Disputes have arisen as to how the struggle between the police and the people began, but the police fired into the people, several were wounded, and two women, Ellen McDonough, a young girl, and Mrs. Deare — a feeble old woman of sixty-five years of age — were wounded, and subsequently died. A verdict of 1 Wilful Murder ' was given in both cases against the police. The reader has now the causes which produced the fit of absolute frenzy which passed over Ireland during the winter of 1881 and the spring of 1882. The country stood at bay, and driven from constitutional and open movement, with speech and writing and organization suppressed, with every day adding a new wrong and a new insult, with wholesale eviction, exile, and starvation once more confronting the nation as in the dread past, the population resorted to the secret organization and the revolting crimes which have been the inevitable and hideous brood of despotic regimes. A wild and horrible wave of crime passed over the country ; the days of 1880 might well have been looked back to as extraordinarily peaceful in com- parison with the period which had now set in, and neither the Queen'* THE FRUITS OF COERCION. 245 Speech nor tha Marquis of Hartington could any longer declare that there were but comparatively few murders. In the year 1880, the number of murders was eight, there was no homi- cide, and there were twenty-five cases of firing at the person. In 1881, there were seventeen cases of murder, there were five homicides, and sixty- six cases of firing at the person ; and in the first six months of 1882 there were fifteen murders, and forty cases of firing at the person. All these crimes, of course, are crimes of an agrarian character. The increase of crime was brought over and over again before Parliament. ' The present measures of coercion,' said Mr. Gorst, on March 28, 1882, ' have entirely failed to restore order in Ireland. The assizes just concluded show that the amount of crime now was more than double what it was in all the various districts last year ; in almost every case the juries failed to convict, and therefore there must be some new departure on the part of the Govern- ment.' 1 And on another occasion Mr. Gorst gave from the charges of the judges ft proof of his statement, and the proof was startlingly damning. At the Longford Assizes there were 98 cases of agrarian outrages, against 75 for the preceding year ; in the County Clare there were 356 cases, as against 254 in the preceding year ; in County Sligo 138 cases, against 97 in the preceding year ; in Queen's County 62 cases, against 21 in the pre- ceding year ; in County Donegal 4,105 cases, against 645 ; in County Tipperary 159 crimes, against 75 in the preceding year, and so on. 2 Curiously enough, crime was more abundant in some of the districts in which coercion had raged in its most active and its most outrageous form. Judge Barry stated at the assizes in the County of Clare that the outrages which had occurred for the two months previous to the assizes were twice as numerous as in the corresponding month of the previous year, 3 and the period of increased crime was the period of Mr. Clifford Lloyd's appearance in County Clare. Meantime the author of this cycle of eviction, imprisonment, and brutal murder persevered in his system with fatuous obstinacy, every day pro- phesying that coercion would be triumphant, and that murder or organiza- tions to murder were all but extinct. At that moment there was, as everybody now knows, right under his feet, within a few yards of his own office, a conspiracy more murderous and more powerful than any that had existed in Ireland for probably half a century. And while the Chief Secretary was grimly congratulating himself, as he passed to the station for England, on the news of complete victory over crime he was bringing to his colleagues, his steps were being dogged by a gang of assassins armed against his life. But the colleagues of Mr. Forster and the public opinion of England read the signs of the times more intelligently. The daily list of arrests and crime proved at last too sickening, and so strong was the revulsion of feeling, even in England, against the horrible state of things in Ireland, that the Conservatives showed some inclination to put a restraint upon the career of Mr. Eorster. Then these various outrages upon the people were brought constantly before the House of Commons by the Irish members, and naturally began in time to tell. An uneasy feeling grew up that after all such a crusade >gainst every form of free speech, and free meeting, and free action, againsl * Hansard, vol. cclxviii.. p. 210. Ibid., voL cclxviii., pp. 680, 687, 3 Ibid., p. 1003. 246 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. women and children, was not entirely creditable to the institutions or the reputation of England. The daily increase, at the same time, in the numbers, character, and atrocity of crimes in Ireland, helped to shake Mr. Forster's system ; the prevarication of which he was frequently guilty spread uneasy doubts in his official pictures of Ireland. The theory that he was warring, not with the Irish people, but with a certain small and criminal section among the population, received its final overthrow in the local elections throughout Ireland, in every one of which the men whom he had sent into gaol as either abettors or perpetrators of crime were raised to the highest positions in the gift of their fellow-citizens. It was when his position was thus already damaged that Mr. Sexton was able to bring before the House of Commons a startling document. This was a circular issued to the constabulary of the County of Clare by the County Inspector. Beginning with a statement that attempts would probably be made on the life of* Mr. Clifford Lloyd, it went on : ' Men proceeding on his (Mr. Clifford Lloyd's) escort should be men ot great determination as well as steadiness ; and even on suspicion of an attempt, should at once use their firearms, to prevent the bare possibility of an attempt on that gentleman's life. If men should accidentally commit an error in shooting any person on suspicion of that person being about to commit murder, I shall exonerate them by coming forward and producing this document.' 1 Mr. Forster saw the spectre of coming ruin in the discovery of a docu- ment like this ; prevaricated, and professed to require time to see whether the document was genuine. The interval he probably hoped to employ in explaining away to his colleagues the damning testimony of the document itself. Bat Mr. Sexton saw through this expedient, and insisted on raising a discussion at once, and when that discussion was over, Mr. Forster was a ruined man. At the same moment he was assailed from another quarter. The Conservatives had seen plainly the rise of a tide of popular disgust with Mr. Forster and his system among the British people — who, to do them justice, are but poor hands at a continuance of the brutal methods of despotic countries — and thought the moment had come when a different method might be proposed for dealing with Ireland. The whole legisla- tion of the Ministry had evidently broken down ; the Coercion Act had not put down crime ; the Land Act had not closed the Land Question ; and against both the one measure and the other, Conservative members proposed hostile motions. Sir John Hay gave notice of the following motion : ' That the detention of large numbers of her Majesty's subjects in solitary confinement, without cause assigned, and without trial, is repugnant to the spirit of the Constitution ; and that, to enable them to be brought to trial, jury trials should for a limited time (in Ireland), and in regard to crimes of a well-defined character, be replaced by some form of trial less liable to abuse. ' 2 And Mr. W. H. Smith gave notice of his intention 1 to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if the Government will take into their consideration the urgent necessity for the introduction of a measure to extend the purchase clauses of the Land Act, and to make effectual provision for facilitating the 1 Hansard, vol. cclxvtii., pp. 991, 1000. 8 Ibid., voL cclxviii., p. 1945. THE FRUITS OF COERCION. 24? transfer of the ownership of the land to tenants who are occupiers on terms which would be just and reasonable to the existing landlords.' 1 If the leaders of the Land League required any justification of their policy, here it was. They had declared all along that coercion would fail, and that peasant proprietary was the only final and practical settlement of the Irish Land Question ; and while they were in prison, and after their country had passed through the agony of a fierce and bloody strife, two English Con- servatives came forward to filch and to adopt their scheme. These are not the only cases, as will be seen by-and-by, in which there existed more than a platonic friendship between the Tories and the Irish Party. J? These were the events which prepared the Government on their side for a reconciliation with the Irish leader. On his side the motives for desiring a peace are apparent, and, in spite of all the absurd mystification with which the transaction was surrounded, can be understood by any reasonable person. Mr. Parnell was alarmed at the vast increase in the evictions ; the greater number of the evicted he knew were absolutely unable to pay their rents, the arrears which had come as a damnosa hcereditas from the Famine years being a burden they were incapable of shaking off ; and he was much too clear-headed a maa to suppose that in the long-run the purse of the Land League could hold out against the Exchequer of England. The Kilmainham treaty, as it was called, was a great victory for Mr. Parnell. All the forces of the empire had been pitted against him, and he had beaten the empire. The terms of the Government are sufficient proof of this. - These terms, summed up briefly, were: First, the failure of coercion was acknowledged frankly and unreservedly. The completeness of the con- 5 fession involved the sacrifice of the men chiefly responsible for coercion ; jind accordingly Mr. Forster and Lord Cowper resigned from the Ministry. Then there w'as to be no renewal of coercion. This is a statement which was much contested during the debates that came soon after ; but no man in his senses believes that coercion would have been pressed forward by the Government which had shed Mr. Forster and released Mr. Parnell. '"Tb is quite possible that the Crimes Bill would have been introduced, but it would have been hung up after a stage or two, and Ireland would have returned to the ordinary law. 2 The first indication of the coming resolves of the Government was the reception given by Mr. Gladstone to the new Land Bill brought in by Mr. J. E. Redmond on behalf of the Irish Party. This Bill proposed an amendment of the Healy and the Purchase clauses of the Land Act, the inclusion of leaseholders, but, above all, the remission of those arrears which shut out so many of the tenants from all possible benefit under the Land Act and from all prospect or hope. Mr. Gladstone received the proposals of the Bill with great favour, practically held out that the larger and more remote questions of Land Reform would be favourably con- sidered : and, with regard to the question of the Arrears, made statements amounting to a promise that the Government shared the convictions of the 1 Times, March 11, 1882. 2 The plan of the Government was to give the Rules of Procedure priority over the renewed coercion, and it was one of Mr. Forster's most bitter charges against the Government, both during that Session and the Session following, when the question was again raised, that Mr. Gladstone did give this priority to the Procedure Rules over coercion. Nobody at all experienced in Parliamentary affairs need be told that if the Procedure Rules had got the priority there would be no more mention of the Crimes Act during the Session. It certainly would have taken from May, tha fete of Mr. Forster's fall, to the end of the Session to pass the Procedure Rides alone THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Irish members, and would be prepared to deal with the question immedi- ately. Such, then, were the terms of the so-called Kilmainham treaty : abandon- ment of coercion, the retirement of the coercion Minister, and the accep- tance, on the other hand, of the chief demands of Mr. Parnell for amendment of the Land Act in less than a year after it had become law, and the immediate settlement of the burning question of Arrears. The House of Commons certainly fully appreciated the greatness and complete- ness of Mr. Parnell's victory. The first few days after his release from prison were days of veritable triumph. He received every recognition, public and private, of being master of the situation. Doubtful friends or bitter enemies rushed up to shake his hand and worship the rising sun. He was recognised to be — as beyond all question at that moment he was — the most potent political force in the British Empire. From no man did Mr. Parnell receive a recognition so eloquent, though probably so grudging, of the supremacy of his power and the completeness of his triumph at this moment as from his baffled and beaten opponent. By a singularly dramatic appropriateness, it was during the speech in which Mr. Forster was explaining his resignation that Mr. Parnell entered. 1 There are two warrants,' Mr. Forster was saying, ' which I signed in regard to the hon. member for the city of Cork also for intimidation. I have often asserted that these arrests for intimidation were ' 'At this point,' goes on Hansard, 'the entrance of Mr. Parnell into the House, and the cheers with which he was greeted by the Home Rule members, drowned the voice of the right hon. gentleman and prevented the conclusion of the sentence from being heard.' 1 And then Mr. Forster went on to use the following words, which clearly prove the omnipotence of Mr. Parnell at this moment : ' A surrender (said the Chief Secretary a few moments later) is bad, but a compromise or arrangement is worse. I think we may remember what a Tudor king said to a great Irishman in former times : " If all Ireland can- not govern the Earl of Kildare, then let the Earl of Kildare govern Ireland." The king thought it was better that the Earl of Kildare should govern Ireland than that there should be an arrangement between the Earl of Kildare and his representative. In like manner if all England cannot govern the hon. member for Cork, then let us acknowledge that he is the greatest power in Ireland to-day.' 2 The prospect of the Irish people was equally bright. With the close of the Land struggle, with the abandonment of coercion and the destruction of the hated coercion Minister, tranquillity promised to immediately return. On this point two authorities as antagonistic as Mr. Forster and Mr. William O'Brien were completely agreed. Finally, in the pages of the Times, which so often have been defaced with articles brutally unfair to Ireland, there was this startling confession : ' The recurrence of St. Patrick's Day, with its traditional celebration, its old toasts and its old memories, reminds us that the Irishman of history and of tale is nowhere to be found. . . . The Irishman is becoming like the Englishman, that is, the Englishman of the dull, morose, self-satisfied eort — the man who sees everything and everybody from his own point of view, and pursues his object with a dogged indifference to all reasons, interests, feelings, and beliefs. The Irishman, like the Englishman, is now 1 Hansard, vol. cclxix,, p. 108, 3 Wd., p. 111. THE FRUITS OF COERCION. 249 righteous in his own eyes, and his righteousness is to hold money and land, and have the use of it as long as he can. . . . He has actually become a citizen of the world, and a very 'cute fellow. He has played his cards well, and is making a golden harvest. He has beaten a legion of landlords, dowagers, and encumbrances of all sorts, out of the field, and driven them into workhouses. He has baffled the greatest of legislatures, and out- flanked the largest British armies in getting what he thinks his due. Had all this wonderful advance been made at the cost of some other country, England would have been the first to offer chaplets, testimonials, and ovations, to the band of patriots who had achieved it. As the sufferers in the material sense are chiefly of English extraction, we cannot help a little soreness. Yet reason compels us to admit that the Irish have dared and done as they never did before. They are welcome to that praise. But they have lost, and it is a loss we all feeL Paddy has got his wish — he is changed into a landowner.' 1 Everybody knows how in an hour Mr. Parnell was reduced from this eminence of omnipotence to a position of absolute and apparently irre- trievable disaster. On May 6 Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke were assassinated in Phcenix Park. This tragedy produced a tempest of passion that swept away for the moment the power of Mr. Gladstone and of Mr. Parnell for good to Ireland. Those who remember the fatal Sunday when the news reached London, and saw the Irish leader and his colleagues that day, can find consolation in the reflection that their fortunes can never see a darker or gloomier hour. One of the victims of the knives of the Invincibles was known to and popular with the Irish members, as he was with all sections of the House of Commons, and the kindly feeling was recognised, which impelled him to offer himself as the bearer of a new message of peace to Ireland. Wherever the Irish race lived, the depth and the pitifulness of the tragedy, and the magnitude of the disaster, were felt and appreciated ; and in cities as distant as St. Louis, or San Erancisco, or Melbourne, or Wellington, the fatal day filled Irish households with mourning. The Government found themselves unable to resist the tide of passion that passed over the country ; there was a hoarse cry for Coercion ; and the Ministers felt that, unless Coercion were dealt out with a liberal hand, they could not hold office for twenty-four hours. It must, at the same time, be acknowledged that the English nation, as a body, behaved on this terrible occasion with self-restraint and dignity. The newspapers, it is true, did their best in one or two instances to fan popular excitement into fury. The Times — true to its immemorial traditions — suggested that the Irish population of England, unarmed and innocent, should be massacred for a crime which they abhorred, and that the Irish political leaders should be made responsible for a catastrophe which had dashed all their hopes. But these shameful incitements to violence remained innocuous before the good sense of the English people. The most peculiar result of the Phcenix Park assassinations was the change it made in the position of Mr. Eorster. The dread tragedy which was the outcome of the frenzy that his policy had generated was taken to be the vindication of that policy, and the un- doubted growth of a large and potent murderous conspiracy was held to be the proof of the utility of coercive measures against the preparation and the perpetration of crime. If the Phoenix Park assassination preached 1 Times, March 17, 188?. THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. with its bloody tongue one doctrine more loudly than another, it was the futility and the wickedness and disaster of the policy for which Mr. Forster was responsible. In the debates which ensued nothing could be more unanimous than the condemnation of the policy of Mr. Forster himself. It was one of his own colleagues who pronounced the most damning condemnation of himself and his Coercion Act. 1 It was assumed (said Sir William Harcourt) . . . that the Protection of Person and Property Bill was an appropriate remedy, and that if we only had the summary power of arrest, it would be sufficient to put down crime. My right honourable friend, who had charge of that measure, said : " We can discover the persons who commit these crimes — these village ruffians ; we know them ; we can put them in prison ; we can put down crime." That turned out not to be so. The men were shut up ; more men were shut up time after time ; yet crime went on increasing. It was never suggested — nor did it occur to anybody — that that measure would have failed so completely as it did in suppressing crime. The conse- quence was, that the shutting up of these people did not sensibly diminish crime. On the contrary, the more people were shut up the more crime increased.' 1 But, in the heat and fury of party conflict, logic is silent. The Conserva- tives believed, or professed to believe, that Mr. Forster and his policy had been vindicated by the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke. Mr. Forster was doubly interested in turning the outburst of popular anger and sorrow over the Phoenix Park assassinations to his own justification, and proceeded to make as much capital as he could out of the tragedy. He attacked his former colleagues, he made questionable use of Cabinet communications, he did everything he could, while professing friendship for Mr. Gladstone and the other members of the Ministry, to deal them as many and as deadly stabs as it was in his power to do. The Crimes Bill, which followed the Phoenix Park murders, was fought by the Irish members doggedly, and was marked by the same scenes as were enacted in the Session of 1881. The progress of the Bill was terribly slow ; amendments followed amendments. There came the system of relays, and then an all-night sittings Once more tempestuous passion was aroused on both sides, and finally on the morning of Saturday, July 1, the following Irish members were declared guilty of obstruction, and suspended en masse : Mr. Biggar, Mr. Callan, Dr. Commins, Mr. Dillon, Mr. Healy, Mr. Leamy, Mr. Marum, Mr. Metge, Mr. McCarthy, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr. O'Donnell, Mr. Parnell, Mr. P. Power, Mr. Redmond, Mr. Sullivan, and Mr. Sexton. And later in the day the following members were also suspended : Mr. Byrne, Mr. Corbet, Mr. Gray, Mr. Lalor, Mr. Leahy, Mr. A. O'Connor, Mr. O'Kelly, Mr. W. H. O'Sullivan, and Mr. Sheil. This had the most extraordinary consequences. Thus Mr. John Dillon had been entirely absent during the night, and when he arrived in the morning to enter the House, he was refused admission, and, for the first time, learnt of his suspension. Similarly, Dr. Commins, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, and Mr. Biggar had been absent during the night. Mr. Richard Power had actually not spoken even once during the debates in Committee * Hansard. voL cclxxvi., pp, 429, 430. THE FRUITS OF COERCION. on the Bill, a-nd Mr. Marum had taken so little part that Sir John Hay, a Conservative member, got up and protested against his suspension. A word is required for another Bill of the Session of 1882. In the latter portion of this session Mr. Gladstone introduced, and, after a short struggle with the Marquis of Salisbury, succeeded in passing, the Arrears Act. If Englishmen were teachable on their Irish mistakes, assuredly the introduction and carriage of this Bill ought to have taught them a great lesson. For it was the Arrears Bill that ought to have brought before the minds of Englishmen the real meaning of the crisis through which Ireland had been passing. The testimony as to the circumstances which necessi- tated the Arrears Bill comes from many different sources. Mr. Gladstone spoke in favour of the Bill, Mr. Forster spoke in favour of the Bill. It was the great anxiety of Mr. Parnell in Kilmainham, and afterwards of Mr. Trevelyan in Dublin Castle. ' Never mind the " suspects," ' said Mr. Parnell to Captain O'Shea in Kilmainham ; 4 we can well afford to see the Coercion Act out. If you have any influence, do not fritter it away upon us ; use it to get the arrears practically adjusted. The great object of my life (added the hon. member) is to settle the Land Question. Now that the Tories have adopted my view as to peasant proprietary, the extension of the Purchase clauses is safe. You have always supported the leaseholders as strongly as myself ; but the great object now is to stay eviction by the introduction of an Arrears Bill. 1 1 He had felt (Mr. Parnell said in the same debate) with reference to the question of Arrears in Ireland, as relating to the situation of the smaller tenants, the very gravest anxiety and responsibility for many months ; and he was rejoiced that the hon. member had found some way of placing the views of himself and those with him before the Government. They had been aware from what they had seen in the newspapers, and from the information of prisoners who came in from time to time, and who received letters from different parts of the country, that evictions in large and very much greater numbers than had occurred up to the present were imminent unless some such proposal as the Prime Minister had announced were made in regard to arrears. They had anticipated that there would be three times as many evictions in the present quarter of the year as there were in the first quarter, when 7,000 persons were turned out of their homes. They had also every reason to believe that, owing to the fact that the smaller tenantry in Mayo, Galway, Sligo, and part3 of Roscommon, Donegal, Leitrim, and Kerry were sunk in arrears to the extent of three or four years — in many cases four or five or six years, and in some cases Gen or twelve years — the year's or half-year's rent, by the payment of which the tenants had obtained a temporary respite from eviction, would be but a temporary respite, and that the coming winter would see evictions resumed against the smaller tenants to an extent never witnessed in the country since 1848. They feared also that the outrages which had been so numerous during the last six months would increase as the winter came on ; and that a state of affairs in Ireland would follow, owing to the non-settlement of this question, the end of which they could not possibly foresee.' 3 Equally emphatic is the testimony of Mr. Trevelyan : ' I think those hon. members have left out of sight what is perhaps the governing consideration of this question, why ... a very large number of 1 Hansard, vol. cclxix., p. 783. ■ Ibid., pp. 792, 793. THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. members think .b necessary to assist the tenants in Ireland. It is because the times have been most exceptional. ... So far as I can remember, no instance of this sort in which money has been asked to assist the tenants of Ireland can be quoted since the Famine of 1846. The reasons why we have come forward now are the bad years of 1878 and 1879. I only put into other words what wa% said by the right hon. member for Bradford, when I say that the sudden rise in Irish agrarian crime which took place in 1879-80 was connected with the discontent which was fostered in an atmosphere of misery. There were some parts of the country where the people could not pay their rents. They could not keep body and soul together without charitable assistance, and the helplessness and despair of these people gave the first material thirst for agitation.' 1 Again : Every day (went on the Chief Secretary) the Government gets reports of evictions, and whenever these evictions are of tenants who can pay their rents and will not, the Government is very carefully informed by their officers. That is not the case with all evictions, and at this moment in one part of the country men are being turned out of their houses, actually by battalions, who are no more able to pay the arrears of these bad years than they are able to pay the National Debt. I have seen a private account from a very trustworthy source — from a source anyone would allow to be trustworthy — of what is going on in Connemara. In three days 150 families were turned out, numbering 750 persons. At the headquarters of the Union, though only one member of each family attended to ask for assistance, there was absolutely a crowd at the door of the workhouse. It was not the case that these poor people belonged to the class of extravagant tenants. They were not whisky-drinkers ; they were not in terror of the Land League. One man who owed £8 borrowed it on the promise of repayment in six months with £4 of addition — a rate of interest which hon. members could easily calculate — that he might sit in his home. The cost of the process of eviction amounted to £3 17s. 6cL I am told that in this district there are thousands in this position — people who have been beggared for years, people who have been utterly unable to hold up their heads since those bad years, and whose only resource from expulsion from their homes is the village money-lender.' 2 And it was the tenantry whose miserable condition is described so eloquently and sympathetically that the landlord? of Ireland were evicting during 1881 and 1882, at the time of the suppression of the Land League. It was tenants of this kind, 17,341 of whom were cast from their homes in the year 1881. It was to evict tenants of this kind Mr. Forster was filling the gaols, was arming the landlords with soldiers and police. It was to evict miserable and despairing wretches like these that the mighty forces of the British Empire were pitted against Ireland and Mr. Parnell. Assuredly it is not too much to ask, when these were the issues on both sides, that the sympathies of all real haters of wrong and suffering should rejoice that the final victory remained with Mr. Parnell and the tenantry, instead of with Mr. Forster, coercion, and the evicting landlords. On the Arrears Bill Mr. Gladstone staked the existence of his Govern ment, and even risked a collision with the House of Lords ; but that Bill ivas the grant in 1882 of a demand contemptuously rejected in 1881. The 1 Hansard, vol. cclxlx., pp. 1327, 1328. » Ibid., pp. 1&28, 182©. THE FRUITS OF COERCION. 253 Bill itself was an adaptation of one brought in by Mr. Redmond, and again the Bill brought in by Mr. Redmond had been drafted, every clause and every line of it, within the walls of Kilmainham by Mr. Parnell. This is another of the many proofs that it is only through the suffering of Irish leaders that the dull, cold ear of Parliamentary ignorance can be pene- trated. Mr. Parnell was quite content, of course, that his scheme should be taken up by the Government and passed into law ; but it seemed a little hard that he should have had to go through six months' imprisonment in order to educate the mind of the Ministry. It were bootless here to enter into the fierce controversies that arose between Lord Spencer and the Irish Party in reference to the administra- tion of the Arrears Act. That particular struggle happily belongs to the past, with acts done and words spoken on both sides that each willingly consigns to oblivion. Suffice it here to introduce one of the men whom this struggle brought into fierce prominence. "William O'Brien comes from a good stock, and was brought up from his earliest years in those principles of which he has become so prominent and so vigorous an advocate. On the day his elder brother was born, in 1848, the sub-inspector of police in Mallow had a warrant to search the house for firearms, but desisted from using it because of Mrs. O'Brien's illness, and on Mr. O'Brien giving his word that there were no arms in the house. O'Brien's father was one of the fiercest and most resolute spirits of the Young Ireland Party, but afterwards, like so many of the men who sur- vived the terrible abortiveness of that time, was by no means friendly to physical force movements. In time he had to remonstrate with some of his own offspring for their adhesion to Fenianism ; but his mouth was closed, whenever his remonstrances became too vehement, by an allusion to this episode in the days of his own haughty youth. William 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. This was a mixed school, attended by both Catholic and Protestant children. There was not the slightest sectarian animosity between the children of the different creeds, but there was plenty of political argument and differences. The Catholic Nationalists in the school formed a sort of small Irish Party, and held their own ; William O'Brien being successful in carrying off the class- prizes, while his brothers and others carried off the honours in cricket, football, and the like. William from his earliest years had the same prin- ciples as he professes to-day. Apart from the example of his father, he had in his brother a strong apostle of the epistle of national rights. To this brother, his senior by some years, he looked up with that mixture of affection and awe which an elder brother often inspires in a younger. This brother was indeed of a type to captivate the imagination of such a nature as that of his younger brother. He was a man of inflexible resolution, great daring, and boundless enthusiasm. 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 took part with Captain Mackay, who was one of the boldest of the Fenian leaders, in many of the raids for arms on police barracks and other places in the County of Cork. He was arrested, of course, when the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and underwent the misery and tortures which, as has already been described, were inflicted on untried prisoners under the best of possible Constitutions and the freest of possible Governments. With 254 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. 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. In the O'Brien household there were at the one moment three members of the family dying. The father of the family had died before, and now two of his sons and his daughter were lying on their death-beds at the same time. The two brothers died on the one day, and a fortnight afterwards the sister died also. The shock to a nature so fiercely and intensely affectionate as that of William O'Brien can well be imagined. The death of his father and the illness of his brothers had thrown, to a large extent, the support of the entire family on his hands, and to them he was not merely a brother, but to a certain extent a helpful parent. It seemed for a time as if he were to be swept away by the same disease which had proved fatal to so many of his kin. He was only saved from death by a journey to Egypt, but he has never really recovered from the shock to his mind and heart which this family tragedy caused, and he is, and will be for ever, haunted by its memory. The first thing which William O'Brien ever wrote was a sketch of the trial ot Captain Mackay. This attracted the attention of Alderman Nagle, the proprietor of the Cork Daily Herald, and he was offered an engagement upon that paper. There he remained until somewhere towards 1876, when he became a member of the reporting staff of the Freeman's Journal. He had become, meantime, and remains, an expert shorthand writer. He did the ordinary work cf the reporter for several years, with occasional dashes into more congenial occupation in special descriptions of particular pic- turesque incidents. Whenever his work had any connection with the politics, condition, or prospects of his country, he devoted himself to it with a special fervour. It was his descriptions of the County of Mayo in the great distress of 1879 which first concentrated the attention of the Irish people on the calamity impending over the country. While he was working with an energy as great as that of any other journalist in Dublin at his own profession, his heart was in the cause of his people. When the Coercion Act was parsed in 1880, he thought the moment had come for him to offer his services to maintain the fight in face of threats of danger, and he proposed through Mr. Davitt and Mr. Egan that he should take up some of the work of the League. 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 con- _ stitution, and he was dissuaded 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. At once the thoughts of several people turned to the able and brilliant writer on the Freeman's Journal, and he was invited by Mr. Parnell to found United Ireland and to become its editor. It was then for the first time that the higher powers of O'Brien were discovered. Great as was his reputation as a writer of nervous and pic- turesque English, he had hitherto been unknown as the author of editorial and purely political articles, and few were prepared for the political grasp and feverish and bewildering force of the editorials he contributed to the new journal. He had now been placed in the position for which his whole character and gifts especially fitted him. O'Brien is the very embodiment of the militant journalist. In some respects, indeed, his character resembles hat of the French, rather than of the Irish, litterateur. Though he has THE FRUITS OF COERCION. 255 Keen literary im&incts and a fine soul, his work is important to him mainly because of its p litical result. Fragile in frame and weak in health, he is yet above all things a combatant, ready and almost eager to meet danger. If he had been born in Paris, he would probably have been found at the top of a barricade, or, like Armand Carrel, might have perished in a poli- tical duel. A long, 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, fierce, and enthusiastic character. The times were such as to bring out to the full all his qualities of mind and character. As has been said, the foundation of Un ited I reland came in the agony of the struggle against coercion. Its tone was a trumpet-call to further and fiercer advance instead of an appeal to retreat, and naturally, before long, Mr. Forster knew that either United Ireland should be crushed or the spirit of revolt would grow daily fiercer and more unbending. Mr. O'Brien was accordingly arrested the day after Mr. Parnell, under an Act which was obtained for imprisoning mauvais sujets and village tyrants, the perpetrators and participators in crime ! It was a part of the sadness that has followed his whole life that at the very moment of his arrest his mother was seriously ill, a woman whose nobility of character deserved the affec- tion she received from her son. During his imprisonment the authorities were gracious enough to allow him out under escort to pay a visit to her, and he was released the day before her death. After various attempts to have the paper published in different places, sometimes in England and sometimes in France, United Ireland was finally suppressed by Mr. Forster. With the overthrow of Mr. Forster, the paper was again revived. Then began a long and lonely duel between Mr. O'Brien and the Administration, which lasted with scarce an interruption for three of the fiercest years in Irish history. While Mr. O'Brien was being tried for a 'seditious libel,' a vacancy arose in the representation of Mallow, through the promotion of Mr. Johnston, the Attorney-General, to a judgeship. It had been arranged before, that whenever the General Election came Mr. O'Brien, as a Mallow man, should appeal to the town to throw off its servitude to Whiggery and join the rest of the country in the new demand for the restoration of Irish rights. The opportunity for the appeal had come sooner than anybody had anticipated. The prosecution of O'Brien by the Government lent a singular opportuneness to the struggle, and a still further element of significance was added to the contest by the Government sending down Mr. JSaish, their new Attorney-General, as his opponent. Mallow, in some respects, has a history similar to that of Athlone, Sligo, and some other small con- stituencies of Ireland. During the dread interregnum between the betrayal of Keogh and the rise of Butt, it had followed the example of the other small constituencies in sending into Parliament the worthless represen- tatives of Whiggery or Tories. The representatives of Mallow, like the representatives of Galway and Athlone, and of Sligo and Carlow, bought that they might sell. The contest for Mallow, under circumstances like these, attracted an immense amount of attention, and all Ireland looked to the result with feverish eagerness. The reputation of Mallow had been so bad for so many years that there were doubts mixed with hope, and the utmost expectation was that Mr. O'Brien would be returned by a small majority. The full significance of the change that had come over all Ireland was shown when the result was announced, and it was found that O'Brien had been returned by a majority of 72—161 to 89. THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, The Session of 1883 opened in strange gloom. But meantime there had come to Dublin Castle aid from an unexpected quarter. On January 21 a number of men were arrested on a charge of being concerned in the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke, and some days after the trial opened the whole world was startled by the appearance of James Carey, the chief of the gang, in the witness-box. Speakers did not scruple to suggest that while it was Joe Brady that used the knife, the Irish members were the men who had supplied the funds. Under the influence of speeches like this public passion in England once more became fiercely aroused, and the majority of the English people were firmly convinced, in all probability, that before many days Mr. Parnell would take his place beside the murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke. Irish members are sometimes accused of being venomous, violent, and unscrupulous in their attacks upon their political opponents. Their speeches in this respect were once compared by Mr. Chamberlain to the use of explosive bullets in civilized warfare. This charge is conveniently but characteristically forgetful of the things Irish members have had to bear from the tongues of their English opponents and the pens of English journalists. There was one man who was again dragged from the depths to the surface by the new revelations as to the state of Ireland. By the same strange logic which had made the hideous outcome of Mr. Forster's policy in the assassinations its defence and not its most eloquent condemnation, the revelations of the trials became again, amid the fury of English passion, to be the vindication of his wisdom. After his fashion he resolved to take full advantage of the tide of passion that was running so high. Mr. Gorst proposed : ' And we venture to express our earnest hope that the policy which has produced these results will be maintained, and that no further attempts will be made to purchase the support of persons disaffected to her Majesty's rule by concessions to lawless agitation ; and that the existence of dangerous secret societies in Dublin, and other parts of the country, will continue to be met by unremitting energy and vigilance on the part of the Executive.', 1 — On February 22, 1883, Mr. Forster took part in this debate, and at oncje resolved to make it the occasion of having it out with his old and triumphant enemy. He had carefully prepared himself for the occasion. His notes were voluminous ; every sentence in his long indictment had been carefully weighed ; the speech was full of the adroit innuendo and the deeply lajd though apparently casual asides of which the member for Brad- ford was a master. The attack on Mr. Parnell was made the more palatable to the House by its being dexterously sandwiched between attacks on Mr. Forster's former colleagues, against whom at this moment the tide ran almost as high as against Mr. Parnell himself. The indictment was a great, an immense Parliamentary success. The House, swept by its invective, was lashed into fury, and there were loud cries for Mr. Parnell's immediate rise. This demand was a sufficient proof of the fairness of the temper of the House. Mr. Forster had delivered a speech which he had prepared for weeks ; the speech had been extended into the dinner hour ; and it was this famished and impatient assembly that Mr. Parnell was expected to address with an impromptu reply to a most elaborately prepared attack. Mr. Parnell, of course, declined to be bullied into premature speech ; and, indeed, contemptuous of this as he is 1 Hansard, vol. cclxxvi. p. 41' THE FRUITS OF COERCION. of every attack, he for some time was doubtful whether he should take the trouble of replying at all. The English press, meantime, was in exultant delight. ' Mr. Forster's stern interrogatories,' said the Times, * fell on Mr. Parnell like the lash of a whip on a man's face.' It is worth pausing for a moment here to say that the whole cause of the tempest against Mr. Parnell and the Land League, which raged for weeks in England and threatened the liberty if not the life of some of the Irish leaders, was the result of a couple of sentences of an informer. The following are the sentences referred to. Carey is being examined by the Crown prosecutor : ' What was the opinion amongst some of them as to where the money ca.ve from ? — There were different ideas. Some said it came from America ; I said I did not believe that it came from America. ' Where did you say you believed it came from ? — I said I did not think from America. I think I expressed myself, but I know between the whole of us it was repeatedly said, " Perhaps they are getting it from the Land League." ' l From this it will be seen that all Carey ventured to say was that he or some other members of his gang had a suspicion that the money came from the Land League. The subject was never recurred to in his evidence, and, of course, it was never recurred to for the reason that the Crown authori- ties knew that a connection between the Land League and the 1 Invincibles ' Could not be established. Attention would have been more fitly directed t J another portion of the evidence of Carey which spoke in trumpet tones against Mr. Forster. The ' Invincibles ' were the same dread brood that despotism always begets, were as much the children of Mr. Forster's regime as the Nihilists are of the autocracy of Russia, and Carey himself was the strongest witness in proof of this. James Carey aross-examined by Mr. Walsh : 1 When you became a member of the Order of Invincibles, was it for the object of serving your country that you joined ? — Well, yes. 'And at that time when you joined with the object of serving your country, in what state was Ireland ? — In a very bad state. • A famine, I think, was just passing over her ? — Yes. ' The Coercion Bill was in force, and the popular leaders were in prison ? —Yes. . ' And was it because you despaired of any constitutional means of serving Ireland that you*joined the Society of Invincibles ? — I believe so.' 2 It was, of course, assumed that Mr. Parnell would go down under this flood of hatred and calumny. The only effect in Ireland was to attract to him the more passionate affection of his people. The idea had long been familiar to the minds of his admirers that he should be relieved from some of the pecuniary embarrassments which he inherited, and which he had himself largely increased by his generosity to his tenants both during and before the Land League agitation. The attack of Mr. Forster brought this idea to practical shape, and the Parnell Tribute was started with a letter from Archbishop Croke. One thing only was wanted to its success — that was another attack. This came as a result of the sinister counsels of a renegade Nationalist at the Vatican. The tribute went on apace, and 1 UniUd Ireland, February 24, 1883 » Ibid. 17 2 S 3 THE PARNELL MOVEMEm when it was closed it had reached close upon the handsome amount oi £40,000. Another incident of this period must be mentioned, in order to introduce another prominent figure in the struggle of to-day. Mr. Timothy Har- rington was one of the prominent Land Leaguers of County Kerry hi the days of Mr. Forster, and, after some shorter terms of imprisonment, was confined for twelve months in Galway Gaol under the Coercion Act of 1881. In October, 1882, a new political and agrarian organization was established, and Mr. Harrington was appointed as the secretary. Soon after, he had to deliver a speech in Westmeath, and in the course of his observations used this language : ' Now, I ask the tenant farmers to come forward generously and give the labourers a fair day's wages for a fair day's work. If not, the agitation which has been carried on in their behalf will be turned against them if they do not come forward and assist the labourers here in their hour of need.' A couple of those precious resident magistrates, who have become so prominent of late, held this language to be calculated to intimidate the farmers of County Westmeath, and sen- tenced him to two months' imprisonment. Mr. Harrington appealed to the County Court Judge, and his appeal came before Mr. J. Chute Neligan. Mr. Neligan is a Kerry landlord ; Mr. Harrington is the proprietor of the Kerry Sentinel, which has waged fierce war upon the oppression of the landlords of the County Kerry ; and the conviction was confirmed. Mr. Harrington was subjected to the punishment of the plank-bed for a month, and underwent all the other hardships that are meted out to the worst criminals. This sentence, severe enough, was aggravated by the deter- mination of the prison authorities to render his stay in prison as odious as possible. He was asked to perform a duty the description of which is not permissible ; some of the landlords of the county could see their hated and fallen foe thus menially and disgustingly employed from the window of the governor's house, and Mr. Harrington refused to give his enemies the spectacle of his degradation. In consequence, he was condemned by the governor to the loss of the two hours' recreation he was allowed by the prison rules, and for six days he had to remain within his cell, without even once tasting a breath of fresh air or enjoying a moment's exercise. It was while he was thus in the solitude of his cell that he received news which was his vindication. A vacancy had been made in the representa- tion of County Westmeath by the retirement of Mr. Gill. Mullingar, the town in which Mr. Harrington was imprisoned, is the capital town of County Westmeath, and here the nomination of candidates had to take place. The constituency, up to the passage of the Franchise Act, consisted exclusively, or almost exclusively, of farmers ; probably there was not a single labourer on the whole electoral roll. In other words, the constitu- ency consisted exclusively of the class whom Mr. Harrington was convicted of having intimidated, and .excluded every one of the class in whose interest he was accused of having employed intimidation. Yet it came to pass that no less than three nomination-papers were sent in signed by farmers, and Mr. Harrington's popularity was so great that nobody attempted to oppose him. It had been arranged that a signal from the railway embankment, from which the cell of Mr. Harrington was visible, should announce the result of the election. It is thus that Irish leaders learn the difference between the esteem of their own people and the hatred of their oppressors. Since that period Mr. Harrington has worked inde- fatigably as Secretary of the National League. In this great office he has THE FRUITS OF COERCION. 259 as much to do with the popular government of Ireland as the Lord-Lieu- tenant, the Chief Secretary, and all Dublin Castle have with the govern- ment of Ireland against her will. Under his guidance, at once active and Fagacious, the organization has grown to be one of the most powerful in all Irish history. At this moment it numbers close upon fifteen hundred branches. To stimulate popular courage and restrain popular excesses has been the terribly difficult task of Mr. Harrington ; and so well has he per- formed it that he was able to meet and contradict all the statements of Mr. Balfour recently as to illegal conduct on the part of the League. Mr. Harrington is a born organizer. He has much of the iron spirit of the American 1 boss,' dashed with the kindliness of a good-humoured Irishman. His frame^hardy, firm-set, is capable of any amount of physical or mental etfort. He grew fat on the plank-bed, and cheerful in solitary confinement. Throughout his whole life he has never once tasted stimulant, and this perhaps accounts to some extent for his splendid health. He is a curious mixture of the intense pietist and the personal Puritan with the keen, tolerant, and good-humoured man of the world. No man fights so fierce a battle, and no man has fewer enduring enmities. At one time we think of him as a latter-day Vincent de Paul ; at another, as of the most modern of machine politicians and ward-bosses. A more important victory than even that in Westmeath soon came. The promotion of Mr. Givan to a Government situation left a vacancy in the County of Monaghan. It was at once resolved that the seat should be con- tested by Mr. Healy, whose great services in amending the Land Act, and especially in obtaining the clause called after his name, marked him out as the strongest candidate for such a contest. The attempt to gain a seat in one of the Ulster constituencies was regarded as insane impudence. The Whigs demanded that, though representative of a miserable minority of the popular party, they should be allowed their traditional place as the officers of the army of which the rank and file were almost entirely com- posed of Nationalists. 1 These impudent pretensions were for once rejected, and the Nationalists determined to win or lose with their own man. The Tories, on their side, felt the full importance of the contest, and put for- ward one of their ablest representatives in Mr. John Monroe, an eminent Queen's Counsel. The three parties were thus represented — the Nationalists by Mr. Healy, the Liberals by Mr. Pringle, and the Conservatives by Mr. Monroe. The contest was fought with considerable spirit on all sides, and in the end the National candidate won. The Liberal candidate exposed the emptiness of the pretensions on which his party had held the monopoly of political power fbr so long. Mr. Pringle had but 274 votes ; Mr. Monroe received 2,011 votes ; Mr. Healy, with 2,376 votes, had a clear majority over the candidates of the two parties combined. A few weeks afterwards Whiggery received an even more crushing blow. For the vacancy made by Mr. Healy there came forward The O'Conor Don and Mr. W. H. K. Redmond. Mr. Redmond was a young man, scarcely of legal age at the time of the contest, and he was absent in Australia. The O'Conor Don, on the other hand, was a trained and mature politician ; and, though he had joined the ranks of hi3 country's enemies, came from 1 Ulster (said the Northern Whig)is not National and cannot be made National. . . The loyal Ulster electors, Protestant and Catholic, Liberal and Conservative, have only to come to an understanding to divide the representation. Under such an arrangement not one Nationalist candidate could be returned for Ulster. — (Quoted in Pall Mall Gazette, June 27, 1S53.) 11-% 26o THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. an old Irish stock. But in the struggle he was beaten ignoininiously. The numbers were : Redmond, 307 ; O'Conor Don, 126. In the autumn of this year an attempt was made from another of the anti-National forces to arrest the tide of National victory. The province of Ulster has, with a characteristic ignorance of Irish affairs, been always regarded by the English public as forming a solid mass unanimously in favour of the perpetuation of English domination and against the restora- tion of Irish liberties. This absurd misrepresentation of the real state of Ulster obtained even among a portion of the Irish public. To the southern Nationalist the north was chiefly known as the home of the most rabid religious and political intolerance perhaps in the whole Christian world ; it was designated by the comprehensive title of the ' Black North.' But it was not always so. In the days of 1798 the most stubborn resis- tance to the success of the English forces was made in Ulster. It was Ulster Presbyterians who, banished from Ireland by laws that worked oppression without regard to religion, gave to the American Revolution its most steadfast counsellors and some of its best generals and bravest soldiers. It was among Ulster Presbyterians that the foundation was laid of the association known as the United Irishmen, who formed, up to the days of Fenianism, the most formidable conspiracy against English rule. In more modern times Ulster Presbyterians formed one of the strongest elements of the Tenant Right Party. It is true that, in the course of time, the Presbyterians forgot the more robust faith of their ancestors, were in some instances carried away by the tide of religious bigotry, and in a large degree lapsed to the ignoble compromise of Whiggery ; but at all times in the history of Ulster the Catholics formed nearly a half of the entire population. These Catholics were Nationalists to a man ; and, living in the midst of a population which the law permitted to insult, to persecute, and often to murder them with perfect impunity, they held to their faith with a fervour unknown in the almost exclusively Catholic parts of the country. But the landlords belonged to the anti-Nationalist Party ; the boards were all manned by members of the anti-Nationalist Party : the occupants of the Bench were gathered from the ranks of an organization sworn to persecution and hatred of the Catholics ; and, finally, under a restricted franchise, the Parliamentary representatives were taken exclu- sively from the two English parties. Under these circumstances the National Party in Ulster still remained inarticulate, and Ulster continued to present to the outside world a solid front of fierce antagonism to every- thing Irish and National. After the Monaghan election the Ulster Nationalists decided that they should hold meetings in different parts of the country for the purpose of preparing for the General Election by estabMshing registration associations. The object was unquestionably legitimate and even praiseworthy. It was in the highest sense legal, and these meetings were organized and upheld by something like 48 per cent, of the population generally in Ulster, and in gome of the counties where the meetings were to be held, by 70 per cent, of the population. The meetings, which were protested against by Orangemen as an invasion, were summoned, among other places, for the County of Cavan, and Cavan, both in the election of 1880 and in the last two elections, re- turned two National representatives ; in Monaghan, and Monaghan is now represented by two National members ; in Tyrone, and two out of four seats in Tyrone are represented by Nationalists ; in Fermanagh, and the two seats in Fermanagh are represented by two Nationalists ; in Newry, THE FRUITS OF COERCION. and the return of a Nationalist in Newry was not even opposed. The statistics of population show with equal clearness the impudence of the Orange claim. In Strabane, where a meeting was called, out of the total population of 4,196, 2,720 are Catholics, and there are only 693 of the Episcopalian Protestants, from whom Orangeism is largely recruited, and 6S5 Presbyterians. Out of the entire population of 5.231 in Pomeroy, 3,537 are Catholics, 734 Episcopalian Protestants, and 892 Presbyterians. Out of the entire population of Castle Derg, 3,748 are Catholics, 940 Episcopalian Protestants, and 505 Presbyterians. And, finally, out of the entire population of 6,069 in Rosslea, where there was a most violent attempt to break up the Nationalist meeting, 4,394 are Catholics, 1,357 Protestant Episcopalians, and 258 Presbyterians. 1 The landlords resolved to make a last desperate effort for the preserva- tion of their power, and organized a movement perhaps as wicked and as shameful as any known to the modern history of Ireland. They openly proclaimed that they would put down, by force of arms if necessary, these meetings of their fellow-citizens. They organized bodies which had all the appurtenances as well as the spirit of armies. Wherever a Nationalist meeting was arranged they organized a counter -demonstration. Their followers went to these demonstrations as heavily armed as if they were marching to the field of battle, and the orators of the day made speeches openly inciting to wholesale murder. ' With no uncertain sound,' said an Orange placard published in Omagh, ' compel the rebel conspirators to return to their haunts in the south and west, and under a guard of military and police, as in Dungannon on Thurs- day.'- ' It was a great pity,' said Lord Rossmore, ' that the so-called Government of England stopped loyal men from assembling to uphold their institutions here, and had sent down a handful of soldiers whom they could eat up in a second or two if they thought fit.' 3 ' The Orangemen,' said Captain Barton, 4 if they liked, could be the Government themselves. . . . He only wished they were allowed, and they could soon drive the rebels, like Parnell and his followers, out of their sight.' 4 Major Saunder- son wondered ' why those rebels abused the police and soldiers ; only for them, where would they have oeen in Dungannon ? They would have been in the nearest river (cheers), and at Omagh and Aughnacloy they would have been in the same place.' 5 The Eev. Mr. Jagoe 'would conclude by telling them what John Dillon, another rebel, said in a speech in the House of Commons, and which he took from a report in the Freeman's Journal, and which he had in his pocket : " That he would advise the people to shoot down every Protestant in Ireland." (Groans, and cries of " We'll shoot them.")' 6 'Theirs was no aggressive party,' exclaimed Mr. Murray Ker, D.L. . . . 'Let there be no revolver practice.' (Cheers.) 'His advice to them about revolvers was, never use a revolver except they were firing at some one.' (Laughter and cheers.) 7 'If the Government,' said Lord Claud Hamilton, ' fail to prevent Mr. Parnell and Co. from making inroads into Ulster ... if they do not prevent those hordes of ruffians from invading us, we will take the law into our own hands, and we ourselves will.' 8 ' Keep the cartridge in the rifle,' said Colonel King-Harman at Rathmines.' 9 *Keep a firm grip on your sticks,' said Mr. Archdale at Dromore. 10 The 1 ' Loyalty plus Murder,' p. 10. By Mr. T. M. Healy, M.P. * Ibid., p. 7. 3 ibid., p. 18. 4 Ibid., p. 22. * Ibid., p. 23. 6 Rid. 7 Ibid., p. 41. * Ibid., p. 42. 9 Ibid,, title-na^e. u Ibid. 262 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Daily Express, the organ of law and order and of the landlords, whose editor is the well-known Dr. Patton, Dublin correspondent of the Times, filled its columns with direct incitements to murder which would have landed, and justly landed, a Nationalist editor in penal servitude. 1 This new attempt (it wrote of the Nationalist meetings in Ulster) . . . will be repelled, and the hireling disturbers of the peace of Ulster hurled back ignominiously from the frontier by the loyal men of Fermanagh. . . . They have at length aroused a spirit in the north which will no longer submit to insult. The alarm is sounded, and the determination of the Loyalists of the country expressed in another column. It is a warning which they will do well to respect. Let them call it a threat if they choose. There it is to be read and pondered. It is no time to quibble about words. The meaning is clear and plain, and the men to whom it is addressed do not shrink from the avowal of their final determination. They plainly tell the disturbers of the peace . . . that they are determined to take effectual measures to put a stop to every attempt to disseminate pernicious doctrines in their midst.' 1 Commenting on the death of an unfortunate creature named Giffen, who was killed by the police at Dromore, the same organ wrote : 1 As it was, the fact that a couple of men on the Loyalist -side were wounded with lances or bayonets is most unlucky. The men may have misbehaved, they may have deserved what they got, but it is very painful to the feelings of all people to find the Queen's troops charging and cutting down even rioters who are urged on to riot by loyalty.' 2 When at last he found that these outrages could no longer be permitted, Lord Spencer took active measures. Police shorthand writers were sent to some of the Orange, as previously they had been sent to all of the Nation- alist meetings, and the peers and the deputy lieutenants and the magistrates at once abandoned the tone of murderous incitement. A body of police was ordered to prevent the breaking up of a meeting by Orange rowdies, and the rowdies, of course, flew pell-mell before the first charge of the police. There never was a movement so blustering and so cruel that vanished with such rapidity before the first show of determination on the part of the Government. Under a National Government such a move- ment would be almost unimaginable. 3 1 ' Loyalty plus Murder,' pp. 32, 33. 2 Ibid., p. 53. 3 It is well to quote Sir George Trevelyan's description of the character and purpose of the Orange counter-demonstrations : 1 Unfortunately, however, the counter- demonstrations of the Orangemen were, to a great extent, demonstrations of bodies of armed men. At their last meeting at Dromore sackfuls of revolvers were left behind close to the place of meeting. The reason that they were so left was that a shrewd and energetic officer who was present was seen to search the Orangemen as they came along. The Orange meetings, therefore, were bodies of armed men, many of whom came prepared to use their arms ; some of them prepared to make a murderous attack upon the Nationalists.' ('No! No!') 'So far as the Government knew, it was not the custom of the Nationalists to go armed to their meetings until the bad example was set by the Orangemen.' (Hansard, vol.'cclxxxiv., p. 383.) And here is his description of the state to which the Orange firebrands had brought Ulster : ' In [spite of the fact that Ulster was full of armed men, who were excited to an extreme degree by the violent speeches of their leaders ; that every hand brandished a cudgel ; that tens of thousands of revolvers were being carried about ; and that the leaders of the men were telling them to take a firm grip of their sticks, and not to fire their pistols except when they were certain of hitting somebody, the winter had f*r cassed with Bo great or striking disaster.' (Jbid., p. 3S4.) THE FRUITS OF COERCION. 263 This was the last effort of ascendency in Ireland. In the next Session of Parliament the Irish masses were offered for the first time in all their history an opportunity of being truly represented in an Imperial Parlia- ment. To the acquisition of their rights by their countrymen the Irish Tory Party offered a frantic resistance, but Sir Stafford Northcote and several other leaders of the party refused to join in the demand for ex- cluding Ireland. Mr. Chaplin proposed an amendment the object of which was to exclude Ireland from the franchise. He was able to quote in favour of his proposition the words of the Marquis of Hartington— not more than twelve months old — which described this very measure — the measure which the Liberal Government, with the Marquis of Hartington as one of its members, were now bringing in — as an act little short of madness. But his arguments fell, as he knew, upon deaf ears ; and after the House had listened for nearly half an hour to his speech, he ran away from his own amendment. 1 Mr. Brodrick, who, though sitting for an English consti- tuency, is the son of an Irish landlord, rushed in where English Tories feared to tread, proposed a similar amendment, was backed again by all the forces of the Irish landlord party, and, having foolishly given a pledge at the beginning of his speech that he would go to a division, was com- pelled to test the opinion of the House. The attempt to deprive Ireland of her rights was rejected by 332 to 137 — probably the largest majority ever recorded in favour of an extension of popular liberties. The next attack upon the rights of Ireland was upon the question as to whether she should retain her 103_ seats. Mr. Eorster brought forward the reduction in her population — a reduction caused by evil land laws and the Act of Union — as a reason why she should be less potent in the future for protecting her rights against the more powerful nation. He set down the aumber of representatives to which Ireland was entitled as eighty-one. 3 In this crusade against Ireland Mr. Forster found a willing ally in Mr. G-oschen. When the second reading of the Franchise Bill was proposed, Mr. Goschen asked whether the number of Irish seats was to be reduced, and emphatically declared that if no guarantee were given by the Ministry on this point he would be compelled to vote against the measure. But neither the Irish landlords, nor Mr. Forster, nor Mr. Goschen could prevail against the forces which had now been arrayed on the side of Ireland, and amid the practically universal assent of the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone announced, on introducing the Redistribution Bill, that Ireland was to retain the full measure of her seats. In Ireland itself, meantime, other victories had followed. The nominal Home Rulers, at the time of their secession, were loaded with the praises of English Ministers, and were described by the English press as the real representatives of Irish feeling, ' and upright, outspoken, and reasonable men. They belonged, as everybody in Ireland knew, and the people of England were taught to ignore, to the class of office-seekers, the analysis of whose mischievous influence forms so large a portion of this volume. In due time they sought for the rewards of their treason ; the result in every case was their replacement by men pledged to the National principles, to the leadership of Mr. Parnell, and to entire co-operation with the Irish Party. Mr. O'Shaughnessy, promoted to the Registrarship of Petty Sessions Clerks, was succeeded by Mr. MacMahon. Mr. P. J. Smyth, made Secretary of the Loan Fund, was succeeded by Mr. John O'Connor. Two other constituencies, whose names occur in the shameful and painful record of the days when Rabagas wag 1 Hansard, voL ccliii., p. 1080. 8 fimts, March J, 1884, 264 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. supreme, joined as heartily as the other constituencies of the country in returning National representatives. Mr. Kenny, opposed by a Conservative in Ennis, a town which formerly had the shame of having elected Lord Fitzgerald, had been returned by an overwhelming majority. Athlone, which must be irrevocably associated with the name and the treason of Judge Keogh, returned Mr. Justin Huntly McCarthy without a contest. Thus Ireland proved its solid unity. CHAPTER XIII. THE TORY -PARNELL COMBINATION. Throughout the whole Parliament of 1880 to 1885, the Tories and the Irish Party acted in close combination, except when the Government was proposing coercion. On coercion the Tories and the Parnellites parted company, for when a Liberal Government proposed coercion, it was filching a Tory policy, and naturally found Tory support. But even on coercion there was some joint action. Lord Randolph Churchill, it is known, began making his political career in the Parliament of 1880, as leader of a small band of Tory obstructionists who came to be known as the Fourth Party. The Irish members were, doubtless, in orthodox Conservative eyes, a disreputable lot ; but to a young ambitious aspirant, they might be made useful, and for five years it was the central note of Lord Randolph Churchill's whole political action to maintain the most close and the most friendly relations with the Irish members. He gave the first indication of this policy on the Coercion Bill of Mr. Forster. He did not dare to openly oppose it, but he threw cold water upon it, and when it was about to pass its third reading, after the fierce conflict which has already been described, he made a speech which he himself described as giving the Bill ' a parting kick.' This attitude he maintained throughout the whole Parliament, and afterwards, as will be seen. The Irish Party, on the other hand, were quite ready to accept this alliance. The Liberal Government had proposed coercion, and had carried it out with vigour. Coercion is the negation of the equality of Irish citizenhood ; and therefore the Irish Party were bound to resist, and, if possible, destroy any and every Government which carried coercion. It was quite true that between the Liberals and the Irish Party there was absolute agreement on nine questions out of ten outside the Irish Question, and it was with no feeling of satisfaction, but in obedience to the sternest sense of duty, that the Irish members took up an attitude of hostility to the Liberal leaders. In fact, the position of the two parties was in many respects similar. Coercion to the Liberal leaders — or at least to some of them — was ' an odious and a hateful incident,' but they felt bound to propose it. To the Irish Party hostility to the democratic forces of this country was an odious and a hateful, but also a necessary, incident in the work of eman- cipating their country. Whether wise or unwise, however, the fact remains that the Irish Party acted in strict combination with the Tory Party throughout the whole Parliament of 1880. In every great division the two parties voted solidly together, and every victory which stirred Tory hearts and menaced the Liberal Ministry was won by the help of the Irish vote, and would have been impossible without that help. Let us run rapidly through the chief THE TORY-PARNELL COMBINATION. 265 divisions of the Parliament. According to a Liberal organ, 1 the strength of the fMfferpnt parties at the beginning of the Parliament of 1880 was : Liberals, -j50 ; Conservatives, 238 ; Home Rulers, 64. There must be one slight correction made in this ; the number of Home Rulers was but 63. The mistake of the Daily Neics probably arose from the fact that it classed Mr. Whitworth as a Home Ruler, because Mr. Whitworth had made promises so studiously ambiguous as to leave him free to be regarded either as an orthodox English Liberal or a sound Irish Nationalist. Under the circumstances let Mr. Whitworth pass into the Liberal camp. The figures then should stand : Liberals, 351 ; Conservatives, 238 ; Home Rulers, 63. Thus the Liberals had a majority over the Conservatives of 113, counting 226 on a division, and the Liberals had over the Conservatives and Home Rulers combined a majority of 50, counting 100 on a division. But, as everybody knows, the Home Rulers did not remain a united party. From almost the start of the Parliament of 1880 they divided into two bodies — ■ those who sat with the Liberal Ministers and generally supported them, and those who, following the example of Mr. Parnell, sat on the Opposition benches and generally acted as a portion of the regular Opposition to the Ministry. Dividing the Irish representation according to these different sections, it stood thus : Irish Liberals, 14 ; Irish Conservatives, 25 ; Home •Rulers, 37 ; Nominal Home Rulers, 26. 2 This makes a total of 102 ; the remaining member, "'the Rev. Isaac Nelson, could not be counted as a supporter of any section ; after a few appearances in the House he disap- peared to Belfast, and neither entreaty, nor threat, nor duty could ever attract him therefrom again during the entire Parliament. Of the 26 Nominal Home Rulers, the Liberal Party could count in every political division on the support of at least 23 (exclusive of Mr. Bellingham and Sir J. Ennis, who usually voted with the Conservatives, and Captain O'Shea, who in Irish divisions usually voted with the Irish Party). These 23, therefore, must be taken from the Home Rule total of 63, and added to the Liberal total of 351 ; and the struggle then was between a Liberal Party with a nominal strength of 374, and an Opposition consisting of 238 Con- servatives and 37 Home Rulers— 374 against 275, or a majority of 101 over the combined Opposition. Bearing these figures always in mind, let us see how they worked out on a few ^reat political divisions. In 1882 there was a division on the Cloture. The Ministry, with a majority of 101 over all Oppositions combined, escaped by a majority of 39. On May 12, 1884, a vote of want of confidence was proposed in the Egyptian policy of the Ministry. The division took place on May 13 : the Irish members voted in a body against the Government, and the result was that the Ministerial majority sank to 28. In 1885 a Conservative had been replaced by a Home Ruler in Athlone and a Liberal by a Home Ruler in Monaghan. But altogether there had been no very great change in the strength of the different sections. The number added to the Irish Party was altogether seven, raising their strength to forty -four ; and the number lost by the Liberals altogether was but three, and these must be further reduced to two, because they had suc- ceeded in returning Mr. Sinclair in the place of Mr. Chaine for County Antrim. On February 27, 1885, a division took place on a vote of censure 1 Supplement to the Daily Neics, December 24, 1885. 2 The epithet ' nominal ' was first applied to these gentlemen by Mr. Gladstone in bis Leeds speech of October, 1SS1. The phrase was immediately taken up in Ireland, Mid became at once not only an appellation but an epitaph. 266 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. proposed on the conduct of the Government in reference to General Gordon. The Irish members voted in a body against the Government, and the Ministerial majority was reduced to 14. On May 13, 1885, the Prime Minister rose and made the announcement that the Government intended to propose the re enactment of 4 certain valuable and equitable' provisions of the Crimes Act of 1882. Nothing further was done until the night of Friday, June 5, when Mr. Gladstone announced that on the following Thursday the new Coercion Bill would be introduced. But on Monday, June 8, came the division on the second reading of the Budget Bill. The general public probably did not know that on that night the apparently invincible Government were in any danger ; but shrewd on- lookers had smelt the danger from afar, and knew that the night would probably seal the fate of the Ministry. The Irish members had little doubt as to the course they should take ; but if they had any doubt, the Tories had taken care to remove it. Lord Randolph Churchill was again prominent in forecasting the necessity of an alliance between his party and the party of Mr. Parnell. Before Mr. Gladstone finally agreed to propose the renewal of some of the clauses of the Crimes Act, there was, as everybody knows, a struggle inside the Cabinet, Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre leading the hostility to coercion. In the very midst of thi3 struggle Lord Randolph Churchill made a speech in the St. Stephen's Club, strongly denouncing the idea of renewing coercion. He began by the statement that he was ' shocked ' that the announcement of a renewal of coercion had been 'received very much as a matter of course.' * I lay this down,' he went on, ' without any hesitation, as an absolute and unimpeachable constitu- tional doctrine, that while any British Government may reasonably, and with perfect confidence, apply to Parliament in times of great popular disorder for exceptional and unconstitutional powers, at the same time, when that popular disorder has passed away, the Government is bound by the highest considerations of public policy and of constitutional doctrine to return to and to rely on the ordinary law.' Then he proceeded to explain the state of circumstances which ought to exist to justify the announcement of the Government. ' It means,' he said, ' that her Majesty's Government have terrible facts, terrible evidence to adduce to Parliament in support of their demand as to the real condition of Ireland. It means that the Government will tell you that the hearts of the Irish people are full of treason, that everywhere in Ireland there are bands of assassins and mid- night marauders, and of desperate men who may be controlled by no ordinary law, lying in wait ready to burst forth into malignant life and malevolent activity. It means that these desperadoes will enjoy to a great extent the sympathy of the Irish people.' But no such state of things existed in the opinion of Lord Randolph Churchill. ' The published returns presented to Parliament,' he declared, ' showed no abnormal amount of crime.' And thus he wound up his assault on the policy of the Government. 4 This demand for peculiar penal laws for Ireland at the present moment would be an act in the highest degree impolitic unless supported by overwhelming and overpowering evidence which no one could resist. Because what has been the attitude of Parliament in the last year ? Parliament has just enfranchised considerably over half a million of the Irish people, and has declared them capable citizens fit to take part in the Government of this empire. In a few months these new voters will exercise their rights for the first time. Now, I ask you, would it not hav^ THE TOR Y-PARNELL COMBINATION. 267 been well, would it not have been hopeful, would it not have been cheering, if you could have tried to put some kind thoughts towards England into their minds by using the last days of this unlucky Parliament to abrogate all that harsh legislation which is so odious to Englishmen, and which undoubtedly abridges the freedom and insults the dignity of a sensitive and an imaginative race ? Ho v do you suppose all these 700,000 new electors wiil go to the poll ? What thoughts will they have in their minds ? Will they not go to the poll with the knowledge that the Parliament of England in its last dying days, in a moment when they were unrepresented who had been declared to be capable citizens, had given them what they will think a parting kick. ' 1 Such a speech pretty plainly indicated that Lord Randolph Churchill would oppose the coercive proposals of the existing Government, and that if he had any voice in the policy of the next Tory Government — and everybody knew that he was bound to have a potent voice — there would be no coercion from the Tory Government either. But with even so strong an assumption, the cautious and realistic leader of the Irish Party was not satisfied ; and the Irish members did not go into the lobby to vote against a Liberal ]NIinistry about to propose coercion until there was an assurance, definite, distinct, unmistakable, that there would be no coercion from their successors. It was under these circumstances that the momentous division of June 8, 1885, was taken. ' It was only,' I wrote in a description of the historic scene immediately after its occurrence, ' as the division was approaching its end that some suspicion of the truth began to dawn upon the Tories. At once a state of unusual and fierce excitement supervened. Lord Randolph Churchill was particularly vehement. It was seen that the stream from the Government lobby was getting thinner, while that from the Opposition was still flowing in full tide ; and each successive Tory, as he got into the House, was almost torn to pieces as he was asked what wa3 hi3 number. There were hoarse whispers, and eager demands, and a slight and tremulous cheer. But it was too soon as yet to give way to a joy that might be premature. At last certainty began to come in thickening signs. Lord Kensington walked to the table from the Government lobby and stated the numbers to the clerk. This was almost decisive, as it showed the exhaustion of the numbers of the Government ; and here were the Conservatives still coming in. The number of the Government was now known to be 252, and the great question was whether the Conservatives had beaten this. It was soon known that 252 had been beaten, and then the floodgates were opened. Lord Randolph Churchill was the leader of the uproar ; and Gavroche celebrating a victory at the barricades, or an old Eton boy triumphing over success at football, could not have been more juvenile in the extravagance of his joy. He took up his hat and began to move it madly, and soon he had actually got up and was standing on hi3 seat, and from this point of vantage kept waving his hat. Some younger Tories sitting beside him imitated this mad example and waved their hats.' 3 Here we have the Tories rejoicing over a victory which was obtained for them by the Irish vote ; and in a very few days afterwards they were enjoying the spoils of office which the same Irish vote had bestowed upon them. Lord Salisbury succeeded to Mr. Gladstone. Lord Randolph Churchill was Secretary for India, and Sir William Dyke was sent as Chief Secretary to Ireland. The new Tory Cabinet honourably and promptly fulfilled their 1 Times, May 21, 1885. * 'Gladstone's House of Commons.' pp. 553, 554. THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. engagements to the allies who had brought them into office. Coercion waa at once dropped. A still more difficult demand was soon after made. There was a strong feeling in Ireland that Myles Joyce — one of the men hanged for participation in the hideous Maamtrasna massacre — was inno- cent, and also some others who were still in penal servitude. Several times during the existence of the Ministry of Mr. Gladstone an attempt had been made to have the question reopened ; but the Government had always steadily refused. The attempt was renewed when there came the change of Administration. The position of the new Government was very difficult. The acceptance of the Irish demand meant the throwing over of Lord Spencer ; and Lord Spencer had carried out the policy of coercion in Ireland with an energy and courage that had won him the admiration of all Englishmen. But the Government had no choice ; they promised an inquiry. It was not for the Irish Party to condemn the Tory Administra tion for doing their work ; but Englishmen generally joined in the con- demnation of this vile abandonment of principle and this shameful desertion of the brave Englishman who had passed for years through hourly risk of his life, a fierceness of attack, a universality of popular hate, more killing than even the assassin's knife. A burst of indignation came from all sides, and even so tepid a Liberal as Mr. Goschen was provoked into excited comment on the ' Maamtrasna alliance.' Soon after, the new Govern ment gave a further proof of their resolve to please the Irish members. The plan of the Irish Party for the settlement of the Irish Land Question has always been peasant proprietary. At the first conference of the Land League — that much-abused body — peasant proprietary, and peasant pro- prietary by purchase, was set forth as the proper solution. It is worth while reproducing here the programme of a body that has been represented as proposing nothing but confiscation and plunder. This was the programme of the Land League : 'To carry out the permanent reform of land tenure, 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 execute the necessary conveyance to the tenant, and advance him the whole or part of the purchase-money ; and upon such advance being made by the Department, such holding would be deemed to be charged with an annuity of £5 for every £100 of such advance, and so in proportion for any less sum, such annuity to be limited in favour of the Department, and to be declared to be repayable 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 repayment of which would be secured as set forth in the case of voluntary sales. ' (3) The Department would be empowered to acquire the ownership of any estate upon tendering to the owner thereof a sum equal to twenty years of the Poor Law valuation of such estate, and to let said estate to the tenants at a rent equal to 3£ per cent, of the purchase -money thereof. * (4) The Department of the Court having jurisdiction in fchis mattei THE TORY-PARNELL COMBINATION. 2tg would be empowered to determine the rights and priorities of the several persons entitled to, or having charges upon, or otherwise interested in, any holding conveyed as above mentioned, and would distribute the purchase- money in accordance with such rights and priorities ; and when any moneys arising from a sale were not immediately distributed, the Depart- ment would have a right to invest the said moneys for the benefit of the parties entitled thereto. Provision would be made whereby the Treasury would from time to time advance to the Department such sums of money as would be required for the purchases above mentioned.' These proposals were made as far back as 1880. It is scarcely necessary to say that they encountered fierce opposition and denunciation from the British press. ' They were,' said the Times, 1 ' clearly confiscation, pure and undisguised.' These also were the proposals which were put forward by the Irish Party when the Land Question wa3 taken up by Mr. Glad- stone. They were rejected at that time, with the result that they were taken up by all parties at a later period. It has been seen that Mr. W. H. Smith, in 1882, proposed a resolution which demanded exactly the same settlement for the Land Question as had been demanded by the Land League in 1880. In the excitement caused by the assassination in Phcenix Park, coupled with the Crimes Act, the question was then dropped ; but on June 12 of the following year it was once more taken up, and on this occasion the sponsor of the Land League settlement of the Irish Land Question was no less a person than Lord George Hamilton, a leader among the Conservatives, and the son of an Irish landlord. One English journal at least appreciated the significance of this appropriation of Land League doctrines by Conservative leaders and by Parliament generally ; for the motion of Lord George practically commanded universal assent. In 1884 Mr. Trevelyan brought forward a Bill the principle of which was the principle of the Land League ; but the measure proposed was so impracticable that the Bill was still-born. In 1885 the Government showed no signs of touching the question, and Irish members had despaired of seeing any attempt to make even the beginning of its settlement. But the change of Adm i nistration produced on the Land Question, as well as on the question of coercion, a surprising transformation of the political prospect. The Conservatives had scarceh got into office when Lord Ash- bourne — as Mr. Gibson had become — brought in a Bill of a more practical character, and in a comparatively short time the Bill passed into law, and the programme of the Land League, five years after its publication, and with all the savage and dread incidents crowded into the dreary interval, was embodied in the statute-book of England. It was in Ireland, however, that the Government gave the most eloquent proofs of its changing spirit. Lord Carnarvon, a Conservative of kindly temper and Liberal views, was sent as Viceroy. Owing to the change in the policy of the Goveraient, he was ^ble to dispense with the dragoons and foot-soldiers and police, and to go unattended through the country and among the people. His reception everywhere, if not cordial, was at least not hostile. In the loneliest parts of the country he found himself perfectly safe from blow or from insult ; and, to make the transformation which the change of Government had produced in Ireland dramatically complete, on one occasion he was driven through the country by Bryan Kilmartin, a man who, having been sentenced to penal servitude for life, had been re- leased on bis innocence being clearly proved. Crime at the same time sank 2JQ THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. to almost infinitesimal proportions. The sympathy which it was able to command when innocent and guilty were alike oppressed and harried, was denied now that the country was once more free. The severity of the agrarian crisis was mitigated by the reductions which good landlords made voluntarily and bad landlords made in obedience to pressure from the Government and to organization as firmly knit as the trades' unions which extort fair wages and honourable treatment for English workmen ; and the bitterness which had sprung up between the peoples of England and Ireland became in some degree at least softened. In this mood the Irish people approached the great turning-point in their history, and entered upon the general election of 1885. The incidents of the election were but too well calculated to maintain the confidence which the Irish Party had in the good intentions of the Tory Ministers and the Tory Party. There could not be the smallest mistake as to the demands of the Irish Party ; and, indeed, if the consistent pursuit of the same policy for years had not been sufficient to teach the Tories what the Irishmen really wanted, there was a distinct and out- spoken utterance at the very beginning of the electoral campaign. At a banquet given in his honour in Dublin, Mr. Parnell declared that the time had come when the Irish Party should put forward one plank, and one only, in its platform ; and that that plank was Home Rule. This was a challenge to English statesmen ; and so it was interpreted by more than one of them. Mr. Chamberlain met Mr. Parnell's demand with a negative which surprised very much all those who had made themselves acquainted with his antecedents and his previous utterances upon the question of Irish self-government. His attitude, however, whether inconsistent or not with previous utterances, was clear, and, moreover, invited clearness on the part of others. To Lord Randolph Churchill he issued a challenge over and over again to declare whether he agreed with or accepted the views of Mr. Parnell, but Lord Randolph Churchill held his peace. Mr. Parnell's views might mean, as Mr. Chamberlain asserted, separation, dismemberment, the oppression of Ulster : Lord Randolph Churchill refused to utter one word against them. It was evident that the Tory leaders desired to keep them- selves entirely free on the question of Home Rule, so as to be able, when the elections were over, to take the course which the fortunes of the ballot- box might dictate. The Irish leaders were not alone in placing this interpretation upon the attitude of Lord Randolph Churchill and the other Tory leaders. The Tory candidates throughout the country took the hint, and acted accord- ingly. In a large number of cases either the scruples of conscience or the determination to avoid any form of inconvenient pledge, induced the Tory candidate not to say one word on the Irish Question. Indeed, an examina- tion of the Tory addresses at the election of will reveal the astonishing fact that in, if not the majority, at least almost the majority of Lhem, there was no mention whatever of the burning question of Home Rule. This was especially the case in constituencies where, there being an Irish vote, the Tory candidate was anxious, while leaving himself unpledged, at the same time not to say anything which would estrange an Irish elector. The Houghton-le-Spring division of Durham contains a large number of Irish voters. The Irish voters had resolved to support the Tory candidate, and Colonel Nicholas Wood accordingly did not say a word about Ireland. In the West Toxteth Division of Liverpool there is a considerable Irish vote, and the Irish voters had resolved to support the Tory candidate, and Mr. THE TORY-PARNELL COMBINATION. in Koyden in return left them to draw their own conclusions as to his Irish policy by not even mentioning the name of Ireland. In other districts bolder spirits not only mentioned Ireland, but came forward with a pro- gramme which might be developed into an adoption of Home Rule. Can- didate after candidate pledged himself to the support of an extension of local self-government, and an extension of local self-government is a vague term which might dwindle down to a mere extension of county govern- ment, or might be enlarged to such a scheme of Home Rule as that pro- posed by Mr. Gladstone. But this same class of candidates were still more outspoken in their denunciation of coercion ; and, indeed, it was largely on the cry of coercion or no coercion that the Tories fought the General Elec- tion of 1885. 'I would give,' said Sir Frederick Milner, the Conservative candidate for York, ' to the Irish every privilege which is extended to the other inhabitants of Great Britain. I am in favour of a measure for the extension of local self-government, and am of opinion that we ought to do our utmost to encourage and develop Irish industries, and to promote the welfare and happiness of her people.' 'I cordially approve,' said Major Dixon, the Conservative candidate for Middlesboro', ' of the con- duct of the present Government in not renewing the Crimes Act in Ireland, and hope to see other coercive measures also abandoned ; and I shall be prepared to support any well-devised scheme for giving to Ireland a large amount of self-government.' ' At home, what do we find !' ex- claimed Mr. Hammond, the Conservative candidate for Newcastle-on- Tyne. 1 Our sister kingdom — Ireland — ruled with the iron rod of coercion.' 4 To Ireland,' said Mr. Cumming Macdonald, the Conservative candidate for the Chesterfield Division of Derbyshire, ' I would continue to hold out, with the Conservative Party, the olive-branch of peace, conscious that in times past she has suffered many wrongs.' In Hyde, Manchester, the Irish electors were asked to ' vote for Flattely ; no Coercion similar placards were posted over Leeds in the interest of Mr. Dawson, the Tory candidate. ' I have declared myself,' said Mr. Jen- nings, the Tory member for Stockport, when tasked in Parliament with his attitude at the November election of 1885, ' in favour of a Liberal measure of local self-government for Ireland. I have expressed myself as being opposed to Coercion Bills, and such Bills I have said I never would vote for ; and I never will.' The name of Mr. Jennings has since appeared in the divisions on the Coercion Bill of the present Government ; but that does not alter his own statement as to his attitude during the election of 1885. In one of the Metropolitan constituencies Mr. Wilfrid Blunt stood as an avowed and advanced Home Ruler, and at the same time as a member of the Tory Party. The relation between the two parties, the Irish Nationalists and the Tories, were even more intimate in private than in public. The Tory candidates paid all the expense of printing all the documents of the National League in Bolton, and the money appears in the official return of the election expenses of the two Tory members. At the Flint Burghs I heard the Tory candidate speak to a meeting of Irish Nationalists after I had concluded my own speech. In North Kensington, Sir Roper Lethbridge followed his return as Tory member by paying a visit to a branch of the National League in his constituency and thanking them for his return ; in Kenningtori, Mr. Gent Davis, the Tory member, declared to one of his Irish electors that if he were ever to vote for coercion the Irishmen would be at liberty to break his windows. There had, however, been more important evidences of the prevalent 27$ THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. opinion of the Tory Party at this crisis. Before finally making up hit mind as to what direction the Irish vote ought to go in England, Mr. Parnell had held an interview with Lord Carnarvon. At thisinter- view Mr. Parnell was given by Lord Carnarvon to understand ' that the Conservative Party, if they should be successful at the polls, would offer Ireland a statutory Legislature, with a right to protect her own indus- tries, and that this would be coupled with the settlement of the Irish Land Question on the basis of purchase on a larger scale than that now proposed by the Prime Minister.' 1 Under all these circumstances it was the conviction of the Irish leaders, and it is their conviction still, that if the Tories had been returned with a small majority, in such numbers as to enable them with the support of the Irish Party to seriously defeat the Liberals, they would have intro- duced a good measure of Home Rule. And the introduction of such a measure by a Tory Government would have had many advantages over its introduction by a Liberal Ministry, even with so potent a leader as Mr. Gladstone. It is the universal moral of English history that the Tories can pass large and almost revolutionary measures of reform with less difficulty than can Liberals the most modest measures of reform. The reasons are simple and open to every eye. The Tory Government pro- posing reform is free from obstacles in both Houses of Parliament. In the House of Commons, instead of finding hostility and obstruction to reform from the Liberal Opposition, it receives encouragement and support ; and the House of Lords, which would not pass the smallest measure of reform proposed by a Liberal Minister, unless he be backed by revolutionary excite- ment, swallows any reform, however large, which is backed by a Tory Premier. It is therefore certain, if the Tories had proposed Home Rule after the General Election of 1885, that Ireland would be at the present moment self -governed, and England be spared all the tumult, unrest, delay of urgently needed reform, and all the thousand and one other inconveni- ences that accompany the present disastrous struggle. Under the influence of these views the Irish leaders recommended the Irish electors to vote for the Tory candidates, and with considerable effect. In nearly every one of the constituencies where the Irish formed a strong voting power, the Tory candidates were returned. In Ireland meantime the Irish Party had carried all before it, even beyond the expectation of its most sanguine friends. A fund had been collected — mostly, it may be assumed, by Englishmen whose venom was greater than their intelligence — for the purpose of supporting so-called Loyalist candidates for the different Irish constituencies. The story is told that Mr. Forster was one of the gentlemen engaged in bringing this statesmanlike enterprise to fruition. The story ought to be true, for the reason that it would crown all his preceding success in bring- ing about in Ireland the very exact opposite to that which he desired, and by his expedients strengthening and rendering omnipotent the forces he most detested. For these were some of the results of the starting of Loyalist candidates : In South Cork, the Loyalist candidate polled 195 votes ; the Nationalist 4,820. In Mid Cork the Loyalist polled 106, the Nationalist 5,033. In North Kilkenny the Loyalist polled 174, the 1 Speech of Mr. Parnell on the second reading of the Government of Ireland Bill, Times, June 8. Lord Carnarvon denied some points in this statement in the House of Lords next day. Anybody who reads tke denial carefully will see it is in reality * confirmation. THE TORY-PARNELL COMBINATION. Nationalist 4,084. In West Mayo the Loyalist polled 131, the Nationalist 4,790. In South Mayo the Loyalist polled 75, the Nationalist 4,900. In East Kerry the Loyalist polled 30 votes, the Nationalist 3,169. In the North of Ireland alone did any contest take place in which the National Party did not win by overwhelming odds. In Derry City Sir C. E. Lewis defeated Mr. Justin McCarthy out of a poll of 3,619, by 29 votes. In West Belfast Mr. Sexton was beaten with a small majority of 35 on a poll of 7,523. In North Tyrone an energetic fight was made by Mr. John Dillon, but he was defeated by a majority of 423. Mr. Healy won South Derry, though the Catholics are in a minority of some thousands in the population and in a minority of some hundreds on the electorate. In South Tyrone, likewise, Protestant farmers enabled Mr. William O'Brien to beat the candidate of the landlords. This gave the Irish Nationalists 17 out of 33 seats in Ulster, thus bringing the 1 Black North,' as it used to be called, into line with the rest of the country in demanding self-govern- ment. The final result was that theTrish Party fought eighty-nine conte&ts in Ireland and were successful in eighty-five. They had besides won one seat in England, the Scotland Division of Liverpool, and their entire strength then at the end of the election was eighty-six men. Eour of these had been elected for two constituencies. Of the eighty-two elected twenty-two were put in gaol by Mr. Porster, warrants were issued against four others, and there were in the number a '48 convict, a '67 convict, and a '67 suspect. Meantime, everybody in England acknowledged the important aid which the Irish Party had given to the Tory candidates. 'Fair Trade may have deluded a- few,' said Mr. Gladstone, commenting on the borough elections while speaking in Flintshire on behalf of Lord Richard Grosvenor, ' as Free Trade has blessed the many, but that has not been the main cause. . . . The main cause is the Irish vote.' 1 'They' (meaning the Tories), 2 he wrote to the Midlothian electors, ' know that but for the imperative orders, issued on their behalf by Mr. Parnell and his friends, whom they were never tired of denouncing as disloyal men, the Liberal majority of forty-eight would at this moment have been near a hundred,' ' Lancashire,' he said, in the Flintshire speech, 1 has returned her voice. She has spoken, but if you listen to her accents you will find that they are tinged strongly with the Irish brogue.' 3 4 We have had,' said Mr. Chamberlain, 'a most unusual and extraordinary combination against us, and I am inclined to describe it as the combination of the five P's, and I shall tell you what the five P's are in the order of their impor- tance, beginning with the least important. They are Priests, Publicans, Parsons, Parnellites, and Protectionists.' 4 'Whatever else,' wrote the Birmingham Daily Post, ' may be the issue of the elections, or however they may benefit by the Parnelhte vote, Great Britain has most unquestion- ably rejected the Tory Party. But for the aid of the Irish allies, their position on the present polls would have been as bad as it was in 1880, if not worse. ' ' But for the Nationalist vote in English and Scotch con- stituencies,' said the Manchester Examiner, ' the Liberals would have gone back to Parliament with more than their old numbers.' 5 But the Irish vote had not succeeded in bringing the Tories to a position in which they would be of any service to Ireland. When the General Election was over, the numbers were : Liberals, 333 ; Conservatives 1 Standard, December 1, 1885. 2 Ibid., Decembers 3 Ibid., December 1. 4 Ibid., December 4, 1S85. 5 Quoted in Pall Mall Gazette, December 7, 1885, 18 274 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. (including 2 Independents), 251 ; Nationalists, 86. The Liberals were thus in a majority over the Conservatives of 82. If the Tories got the Irish vote and were able to poll the full strength of their own party, they would have had a majority of but four over the Liberals ; and four is not a working majority. Besides, it was more than doubtful if they would have cai ried the whole of their own party with them on a policy of Home Rule. All or nearly all their supporters from Ireland belonged to that terrible Orange faction which has obstinately opposed every concession to the majority of the Irish nation. A certain number of the same unholy gang had been returned for English constituencies. There can be little doubt under these circumstances that the proposal of Home Rule by the Tory Ministers would have led to a Tory cave which would have placed the Government in a hopeless minority, and have given them the discredit of having proposed Home Rule without the merit of having carried it. The Tory and the Irish leaders had little difficulty in recognising that the stroke of 1885 had not succeeded. A Tory statesman who had acted throughout in a frank and manly spirit gave the word to a prominent Irish member that there was nothing more to be expected from the Tory leaders, and that the Irish Nationalists had better fix their hopes elsewhere. The situation was more frankly put to the same member by Lord Randolph Churchill ' I have done my best for you,' he said, ' and failed ; and now, of course I'll do my best against you.' So ended the Tory-Parnell combination. CHAPTER XIV. THE HOME RULE STRUGGLE. The Tory-Parnell combination was at an end ; but the Parnellites did not yet recognise that the Tories could be guilty of the deliberate policy o immediately abandoning all the principles which had been preached during the General Election. Above all, they were not prepared for the action oi Lord Randolph Churchill. It might be true, they thought, that the Government could not propose Home Rule, because they had no chance of carrying it ; it might be true that they would oppose any scheme of Home Rule brought forward by Mr. Gladstone. These things are part of the game of political life. That did not mean that by-and-by they would not take up Home Rule again, and propose a scheme of their own superior to that of Mr. Gladstone. Theories founded on the maintenance of the ordinary decencies and the common honesty of political life may now appear very childish ; but the Irish Party had not yet learned all they have since been taught of the vile want of principle and the viler want of shame which characterize the present leaders of the Tory Party. The Tory Government, which had been raised to power on condition of not renewing coercion, and which had pledged itself, through its candidates, against coercion at the election, began its career by announcing its intention of proposing the suppression of the National League. Irish Nationalists heard with a smile of incredu- lity the report that Lord Randolph Churchill intended to make an attempt to rouse the Orangemen to fury in order to embarrass the movement for Home Rule ; but in a few weeks their doubts were set at nought. Lord Randolph Churchill went to Belfast, accompanied by those very Orangemen whom his lieutenants and hiw^elf had so heartily despised in the days of THE HOME RULE STRUGGLE. 275 the Tory-Parnell combination, preached a religious war, and so far suc- ceeded as to bring about, a few months afterwards, one of the most brutal, savage, and cruel riots that have ever disgraced even Belfast. When the Tories proposed coercion, the Liberal leaders resolved at once to throw them out of office. An amendment to the Queen's Speech of 1886, pro- posed by Mr. Jesse Collings, was carried in spite of the violent hostility of the Marquis of Hartington and Mr. Goschen ; and the Marquis o Salisbury gave way to Mr. Gladstone. Prime Minister for the third time, Mr. Gladstone now found himself face to face with the greatest task of his great life ; and the obstacles were greater, and not smaller, than those he had ever before encountered. The Marquis of Hartington refused from the start to have anything to do with a Ministry which proposed Home Rule in any shape. Mr. Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan had pledged themselves beforehand against certain forms of Home Rule ; but they entered the Cabinet, and it was yet to be seen whether Mr. Gladstone could produce a plan which they could accept. For weeks there were contradictory rumours every hour as to how the struggle in the Cabinet was going on ; but all doubts were set at rest by Mr. Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan taking their seats one evening below the gangway, and so announcing to the world that they had been unable to agree with the plan of Mr. Gladstone. But Mr. Gladstone was not to be turned back from his great purpose by the desertion of any colleagues, however eminent, and went on with the preparation of his Bills. The Tories meantime kept pestering him with questions every day, apparently expecting that such a mighty problem as the constitution of a country could be fixed in a few hours. It was known that Mr. Gladstone intended to deal simultaneously with the National and the Land Question, and the first intention was to bring in the Land Bill first, and then the Home Rule Bill. This plan was changed ; and at last, on April 8, the Home Rule Bill was introduced. The scene was as thrilling as any ever beheld in the House of Commons, and never have there been more abundant signs of absorbing public interest. In order to secure seats, the Irish members began to arrive from six o'clock in the morning, and by eight or nine o'clock every seat in the House was seized. The result was that members spent all the day within the walls of Westminster Palace — breakfasting, lunching, and dining there. When the sitting commenced, a number of members who had remained without seats brought in chairs, and placed them on the floor of the House — a sight un- precedented, I believe, in the history of the Assembly. Mr. Gladstone's entrance was marked by a striking incident. As he sat, pale, panting, and still under the excitement of the great reception he had received from the crowds outside, the whole Liberal Party (with four exceptions) and all the Irish members, sprang to their feet and cheered him enthusiastically. The four exceptions to this general mark of reverence and esteem were the four Dissentient leaders. Lord Hartington, Sir Henry James, Sir George Tre- velyan, and Mr. Chamberlain remained sitting, and in a group by them- selves they presented a curious look of isolation amid these surroundings. It took Mr. Gladstone upwards of three hours to set forth all the details of his great measure. His voice lasted well to the end, and the attention of the House never relaxed for a moment. The speech was calm in language, and the Tories were decent enough to abstain from any outbursts of im- patience. Indeed, the general desire to catch every word of a speech ir which every sentence was fateful, produced a reticence from both friend anc 18 — % 276 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. foe. The main provisions of the Bill are well described in an excellent summary of the measure published by Mr. Sydney Buxton : ' The Bill provides for the constitution of an Irish Parliament sitting in Dublin, with the Queen as its head. 'The Parliameut —which is to be quinquennial — is to consist of 309 members, divided into two "orders," 103 members in the "first order," and 206 in the " second order." 1 The " first order" is to consist of such or all of the 28 Irish representa- tive peers as choose to serve ; the remaining members to be "elective." At the end of 30 years the rights of peerage members will lapse, and the whole of the " first order " will be elective. ' The elective members will sit for 10 years ; every five years one-half their number will retire, but are eligible for re-election. They do not vacate their seats on a dissolution. ' They will be elected by constituencies subsequently to be formed. The elective member himself must possess a property qualification equivalent to an income of £200 a year. The franchise is a restricted one, the elector having to possess or occupy land of a net annual value of £25. ' The " second order " is to be elected on the existing franchise, and by the existing constituencies, the representation of each being doubled. For the first Parliament, the Irish members now sitting in the House of Commons will, except such as may resign, constitute one-half the members of the " second order " of the new House. The two orders shall sit and deliberate together, and, under ordinary circumstances, shall vote together, the majority deciding. 1 If, however, on any question (other than a Bill) relating to legislation, or to the regulations and rules of the House, the majority of either order demand a separate vote, a separate vote of each order shall be taken. If the decision of the two orders be different, the matter shall be decided in the negative. 1 The Lord-Lieutenant has power given him to arrange for the procedure at the first sitting, the election of Speaker, and other minor matters for carrying the Act into effect. 'If a Bill, or any part of a Bill, is lost by the disagreement of the two srders voting separately, the matter in dispute shall be considered as vetoed, or lost, for a period of three years, or until the next dissolution of the Legislative Body, if longer than three years. After that time, if the question be again raised, and the Bill or provision be adopted by the second order and negatived by the first, it shall be submitted to the Legis- lative Body as a whole, both orders shall vote together, and the question shall be decided by the simple majority. The Bill then, if within the statutory power of the Parliament, and unless vetoed by the Crown, passes into law. ' The Lord-Lieutenant — who, as Lord -Lieutenant, will not be the repre- sentative of any party, and will not quit office with the outgoing English Government, and who in future need not necessarily be a Protestant — is appointed by the Crown, and will represent the Crown in Ireland. Neither his office nor his functions can be altered by the Irish Parliament. ' The responsible Executive in Ireland will be constituted in the same manner a3 that in England. The leader of the majority will be called upon by the Lord-Lieutenant, as representing the Queen, to form a Govern- THE HOME RULE STRUGGLE. 277 ment responsible to the Irish Parliament. It will stand and fall by votes of that Parliament. ' The Queen, just as in the case of the Imperial Parliament, retains the right — to be exercised through the Lord-Lieutenant — of giving or with- holding her assent to Bills, and can dissolve or summon Parliament when she pleases ; she will probably, as in England, exercise the latter function, and as a rule the former, on the advice of the responsible Irish Executive. ' All constitutional questions which may arise, as to whether the Irish Parliament has exceeded its powers, will be referred to, and decided by, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ; their decision will be final, and the Lord-Lieutenant will veto any Bill judged by them to contain provi- sions in excess of the powers of the Irish Legislature, and such a Bill will be void. * The prerogatives of the Crown are untouched. The following matters remain intact in the hands of the Imperial Parliament : The digniy of, and succession to, the Crown ; the making of peace or war ; all foreigei and colonial relations ; the questions of international law, or violation of treaties ; naturalization ; matters relating to trade, navigation, and quarantine, beacons, lighthouses, etc. ; foreign postal and telegraph service ; coinage, weights and measures ; copyright and patents ; questions of treason, alienage ; the creation of titles of honour. The Imperial Parlia- ment is, moreover, to keep in its own hands the army, navy, militia, volun- teers, or other military or naval forces ; is responsible for the defence of the realm ; and may erect all needful buildings or defences for military and naval purposes. ' In addition, the Irish Parliament is not permitted to make laws estab- lishing or endowing any religion, or prohibiting in any way religious freedom, by imposing a disability or conferring any privilege on account of religious belief. Nor may they prejudicially affect the right of any child to avail itself of the " conscience clause " at any school it may attend ; nor of the private right of establishing and maintaining any particular form of denominational education. ' It cannot, without the leave of the Privy Council of England, or the assent of the Corporation itself, in any way impair the rights, property, or privileges of any body created and existing under Koyal Charter or Act of Parliament. 'For a time, at all events, the Customs and Excise duties are to be levied by officers appointed, as now, by the British Treasury. ' With these exceptions, all other matters, legislative and administrative, are left absolutely in the power, and to the discretion, of the Irish Parlia- ment and its executive government. ' It will be responsible for law and order, though the Imperial Parlia- ment, by retaining the military forces, holds the ultimate power. It can raise and pay a police force — as in England, under local control. 1 The responsible Government will have the appointment of the Judges (to be life appointments, as in England), and of all the other officials throughout the kingdom. The Parliament can make or vary courts of law, legal powers, or authorities, etc. ' On the recommendation of the responsible Government, the Parliament can levy such internal taxes as they please (with the exception of Customs and Excise), and can apply the proceeds to such purposes as they think fit. They can raise loans, and undertake public works of every sort. They 278 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT can manage their own post-offices, telegraphs, and post-ofnce savinga banks. ' They can create such local bodies as they choose. They can regulate education : in a word, they will have the power of legislating on all local Irish matters. 1 After the first election, they can alter any matter affecting the constitu- tion or election of the " second order ;" the franchise, the constituencies, the mode of election, the system of registration, the laws relating to corrupt and illegal practices, the privileges and immunities of the legislative body and of its members, etc. ' To prevent any breach of continuity, existing laws will remain in force until altered or repealed by the new Parliament. ' All existing rights of civil servants and other officials at present in the employ of the Irish Government are carefully guarded. In order to pre- serve the continuity of Civil Government, they will continue to hold office at the same salary they now receive, and to perform the same or analogous duties, unless, from incompatibility of temper, or from motives of economy, the Irish Government desire their retirement, when they will receive their pension. In any case if, at the end of two years, they wish to retire, they can do so, and will be then entitled to a pension as though their office had been abolished. 1 The judges, and certain permanent officials, can only be retired, oi allowed to retire, by " the Crown," and they will then receive their pension as though they had served their full time. ' The existing rights of the constabulary and police to pay, pension, etc., are preserved. 'All these pensions become a charge on the Irish Treasury, but are further guaranteed by the English Treasury. ' It is not intended that the Irish representative Peers should any longer sit in the House of Lords, nor the Irish members in the House of Commons, but that Ireland (with the assent of her present representatives) should be practically unrepresented at Westminster. 'The Act constituting the Irish Parliament cannot be altered in any way, except by an Act passed by the Imperial Parliament, and assented to by the Irish Parliament ; or by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, passed after there have been summoned back to it, for that especial purpose, 28 Irish representative Peers, and 103 "second order" members.' * The Financial arrangements are as follow : ' The imposition and collection of Custom duties and of Excise duties, so far as these are immediately connected with Customs duties, will remain in the hands of the British Treasury. All other taxes will be imposed and collected under the authority of the Irish Parliament. The proceeds of these latter taxes will be paid into the Irish Treasury ; the proceeds of the Customs and Excise to a special account of the British Treasury. ' From these receipts, certain deductions are first to be made for the Irish contribution to Imperial Expenditure, etc., and the balance is then to be paid over to the Irish Treasury. ; Ireland is to pay one-fifteenth as her portion of the whole existing Imperial charge for debt (£22,000,000 a year), representing a capital sum of £48,000,000, and in addition a small sinking fund ; and one-fifteenth of the normal charge for Army and Navy (£25,000,000), and for Imperial Civil charges (£1,050,000). In addition, until she supersedes the preset* THE HOME RULE STRUGGLE. 279 police force, she Is to pay £1,000,000 a year (or less if the cost be less) towards the cost of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin police. 1 Thus the Irish proportion of Imperial expenditure will be as follows Debt Sinking fund Army and Navy Civil expenditure Constabulary and police ... £1,466.000 360,000 - £1,826,000 1,666,000 110,000 £3.602,000 1,000,000 £4,602,000 * This is the maximum amount payable, and it cannot be increased for thirty years, when the question of contribution can be again considered. ' On the other hand, the amount can be reduced. (1) If in any year the charge for the army and navy, or for the Imperial Civil Service, is less than fifteen times the amount of the Irish contribution, then the Irish charge will be reduced proportionately. (2) If the cost of the constabulary or police fall below £1,000,000 a year, then the difference will be saved by the Irish Exchequer. 1 The estimated revenue from Irish Customs and Excise Customs, duties, amounts to £6,180,000 annually. From this is to be deducted, by the English Treasury, a sum not exceeding four per cent, for cost of collection, leaving a net amount of £5,933,000. ' The debtor and creditor account, as between England and Ireland, will then stand thus : Expenditure. £ For Imperial purposes ... 3,602,000 Constabulary, etc. ...1,000,000 Collection of Customs and Excise, maximum 4 per cent. .~ ... 247,000 £4,849,000 Customs and Excise £ 6,180,000 £6,180,000 Leaving a balance of £1,331,000 to be handed over by England to the Irish Exchequer. 'The Irish Government will take over all loans due to the British Treasury and advanced for Irish purposes, and shall pay the British Treasury an annual sum equivalent to three per cent, interest on the amount with repayment in thirty years. The total amount outstanding is some six millions, and the receipts and disbursements of the Irish Govern- ment under this head will about balance. The balance of the Irish Church surplus fund — about £20,000 a year — is to be handed over to the Irish Government. 1 The following will show the further receipts and expenditure of the Irish Government, as estimated by !Mr. Gladstone on the basis of existing expenditure and taxation, and may be put in the form of a balance-sheet : lS9 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, £ Irish Civil charges ...2,510,000 Collection of revenue, etc « 587,000 Balance, surplus _ 404,000 £3,501,000 Revenue. £ Repaid by England .„ 1,331,000 Stamps 600,000 Income-tax, at 8dJ ... 550,000 Other sources of revenue —Post Office, etc. ... 1,020,000 £3,501,000 4 This gives a surplus of £404,000 to start with. But, in addition, great savings of expenditure can be, and ought to be, made in the Irish Civil charges and collection of revenue. Per head of the population, they are now double what they are in England, and at least £300,000 or £400,000 should be saved. In addition, after a time, the cost of the police ought to fall at least £200,000 or £300,000 below the million allotted to that purpose. ' Thus, with reasonable economy, the surplus at the disposal of the Irish Government ought to amount to some £1,000,000 a year — a sum which will enable it readily to borrow money for public wants and for public improvements.' 1 On April 16 Mr. Gladstone brought in the second of his great measures : the Bill for the buying out of the Irish landlords. I borrow again from Mr. Buxton an analysis of this measure : ' The object of the Bill is to give to all Irish landlords the option of selling their rented agricultural lands on certain terms. The tenants have no power to force the sale ; or to prevent it if the landlord elects to sell, and is willing to accept the price fixed by the Land Court. Only " immediate landlords " have the power of option ; encumbrancers cannot, by foreclosing, obtain any right of sale under the Bill. ' The normal price is to be, under ordinary circumstances, " on a fairly well-conditioned estate," 20 years' purchase of the net rental of the estate — equal to about 16 years' purchase of the nominal rental. If, however, the land be especially good, or the estate in an exceptionally good condi- tion, the number of years' purchase can be increased by the Land Com- mission to 22. On the other hand, where, in the opinion of the Commission, the land is not worth 20 years' purchase, they can fix a lower price ; or, if the land be so valueless as to make it inequitable for the State Authority to purchase, they can refuse the offer altogether. ' The net rental of the estate is to be fixed by the Land Commission, who, in order to find it, are to deduct from the gross rental — chief rent, tithe rent charge, the average percentage (over the last ten years) of outgoings for bad debts, management, repairs, etc., and for rates and taxes paid by the landlord. In fixing the price, the Commission may take into account any circumstances or surroundings they judge right. ' The gross rental of an estate is the gross rent of all the tenanted holdings on the estate, payable in the year ending November, 1885. The gross rent of a holding is the judicial rent, or, if none be fixed, then a fair rent is to be fixed by the Land Commission. 'Arrears of rent becoming due, between November, 1885, and the date of purchase (and which the landlord has endeavoured to obtain) are to be added to the price. 1 * Mr. Gladstone's Irish Bills,' pp. 13, 18. THE HOME RULE STRUGGLE. 281 'In the cases of holdings at or under £4 annual value, if the tenant does not desire to become the freeholder, the State Authority shall become the owner, the tenant remaining liable for rent as before. ' It is provided, moreover, that in certain " congested districts " — to be scheduled afterwards — if the State Authority bays the land, it shall retain the ownership and not vest it in the occupiers. 'The whole of the rented estate, including town parks, houses, and villages, if part of the agricultural estate, but excluding the mansion, demesne land, or home farm, must go together. If, however, the landlord desires, and the State Authority agrees, it can buy the mansion, demesne land, and home farm. No estate, which is within the limits of a town, or is not in the main agricultural and pastoral, comes under the Act. Grazing lands of a value of over £50 a year may be excluded by the landlord from the sale, or the purchase can be refused by the State Authority. 4 The Land Commissioners are to be appointed by name in the Act. Any vacancy is to be filled up by "her Majesty," and the Commissioners hold office " during her pleasure." ' When the price is fixed, the landlord, and the legal encumbrancers — whose position will not be affected in any way by the Act — will receive the money, and the tenant will at once become the freeholder of his holding, subject to the payment of a terminable annuity for 49 years, equal to 4 per cent, per annum on the capitalized value, at 20 years' purchase, of the old rent. 'This annuity, and the rent in the case of small holdings where the occupier remains as tenant, is to be collected by the department of the Irish Government called the State Authority ; and the surplus (equivalent to 4 per cent, per annum on the difference between the capitalized value of the old rent and that of the redemption money) will be applied, after payment of the interest and repayment on the capital advanced by the British Treasury, to the purposes of the Irish Government. 'The State Authority will be enabled to enforce the payment of its annuities in such manner as is afterwards provided by an Act of the Irish Parliament, and until that provision is made, the present laws relating to the enforcement of the payment of rent, etc., in Ireland will remain in force. ' During the time that the holding is subject to the annuity, the occupier may neither subdivide nor let without the consent of the State Authority. If he does, or in case of bankruptcy, the holding can be sold. ' The State Authority is to pay the British Treasury an annual amount equal to 4 per cent, on the capital sum advanced by the latter and received by the landlord. 1 * The total liability under the Bill is limited to £50,000,000. as follows : £10,000,000 in the year ending March- 1887-8 £20,000,000 „ „ „ 1888-9 £20,000,000 „ „ „ 1889-90 ' The applications from the landlords will be considered in priority of time. ' No application can be made after March, 1890. * The money advanced by the British Treasury is to be raised by the 1 Thus, if the whole £50,000,000 be advanced, the State Authority will receive £2,500,000 a year, subject to cost of collection, etc., and have to pay the British Treasury only £2,000,000. It will thus, if tbought necessary or expedient, be §bi§ to grant further remission to the occupier. 282 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. issue to the landlords of 3 per cent, stock at par. This stock is to be redeemed by the repayment of a terminable annuity for 49 years by the State Authority. ' In order to obtain security for the loan, the British Government appoint a Receiver-General, through whose hands the whole of the Irish revenues are to pass, together with the proceeds of Irish Customs and Excise ; but he will have absolutely nothing to do with the levying of the revenue. After deducting from these receipts the amount due from the State Authority for interest and repayment of capital advanced, and after deducting also the Irish contributions to the Imperial charges, the balance of the receipts will be handed over to the Irish Exchequer. ' Assuming that the whole loan is called up, the Irish balance-sheet will then stand as follows : Expenditure. For Imperial purposes ... Constabulary, etc Collection of Customs and Excise Annuity on loan advanced for purchase Irish Civil charges Collection of revenue, etc. Collection of rent charge Surplus £ 3,602,000 1,000,000 247,000 2,000,000 2,510,000 587,000 100,000 804,000 £10,850,000 Revenue. Customs and Excise Stamps Income Tax Other sources revenue Rent -charge .« fc „ £ ... 6,180,000 ... 600,000 ... 550,000 ... 1,020,000 .« 2,500,000 £10,850,000 ' In addition, the Surplus will be increased by the economies made in the Civil Service, Constabulary, etc.' It would be wearisome to go at any length through the story of the intrigues, negotiations, rise and fall of fortune that characterized the interval between the introduction and the second reading of the Home Rule Bill. It became evident from the start that Mr. Gladstone had enormously increased his difficulties in passing the Home Rule Bill by the introduction of the Land Bill. It was quite true that he had guaranteed the British Exchequer absolutely against loss ; but his enemies were either stupid or unscrupulous enough to misrepresent his scheme, and to travesty it into a plan which would lose to the British Exchequer every penny advanced, and ultimately add several millions to the burdens of the British taxpayer. Mr. Gladstone was implored, both then and at a later stage in the struggle, to drop his Land Bill. These appeals might h&ve been addressed with some hope of success to an unscrupulous or y, reckless politician ; but they were hopeless to a statesman who felt the obligations of honour and the necessities of public interest. Some of Mr. Gladstone's chief opponents were quite ready to denounce Land Purchase at one stage of the controversy — as will presently be seen — and to advocate and propose it at another ; but recklessness and indecency of this kind belong to a different order of mind from that of Mr. Gladstone. Another difficulty of Mr. Gladstone was that his opponents brought entirely opposite objections to his plan. The retention of the Irish THE HOME RULE STRUGGLE. members was demanded by Mr. Chamberlain ; their exclusion was, accord- ing to the Marquis of Harrington, the logical necessity of the plan. Mr. Chamberlain objected to the scheme of Land Purchase ; the Marquis of Harrington took very good care to say nothing which might injure the prospects of large- monetary relief to the class of which he is a member. The speech of Mr. Gladstone at the Foreign Office to a meeting of his sup- porters was held to make the second reading of the B~i?l secure ; the same Bpeech on the following day in the House of Commons — Mr. Chamberlain acknowledged that the two speeches were exactly the same — lost the votes of those who the day before, at the Foreign Office, had practically pledged themselves to support the second reading. Among many of the absurd charges brought against Mr. Gladstone for his conduct of the measure is that he sprang the question upon the country. The charge is entirely untrue. He exhausted every means to keep the question within the control of a united Liberal Party, and to prevent its reference to the tumultuous and passionate tribunal of the ballot-boxes. In those clauses which provoked criticism he promised amendment, and the whole Bill he undertook to postpone till an autumn sitting, after the House had affirmed the principle of Home Rule by passing the second reading. It was those who defeated the second reading of the Bill, and so provoked the General Election, that must bear the responsibility of all that nas since happened. If the second reading had been carried, the interval would have been spent in the calm consideration of the various points of difference among those who honestly accepted the principle of an Irish Legislative Assembly, and in all probability a compromise would have been arrived at. There had not arisen at this period any of that fierce bitterness which at present rages between the two sections of the Liberal Party, and so the points of difference could have been debated in calmness and settled by mutual concession. But it was not to be. The enemies of Mr. Gladstone forced on the con- test when they felt sure of victory. A meeting of the Dissentient Liberals was held a few days before the second reading division. A letter was read from Mr. John Bright. The letter has never been produced, though Mr. Chamberlain distinctly undertook to produce it when this fact was com- mented upon by Mr. John Morley in a speech in the House of Commons ; and the world is still ignorant of its character. It was certainly used as an argument in favciar of voting against the Bill, and it served more than anything else to bring about that fateful decision ; but whether that was the advice of Mr. Bright, or whether he advised abstention, is one of the political mysteries that possibly this generation will never penetrate. The decision of the Dissentient Liberals to vote against the Bill sealed its fate, / The division took place on June 7. Mr. Gladstone wound up the debate! with one of the most effective, most powerful, most touching speeches hef has ever delivered. But his eloquence for once was impotent : the Bill wa.3* defeated by a majority of 30. A few days afterwards Mr. Gladstone announced that the Ministry had resolved to appeal from Parliament to the country ; and thus a General Election came. Never perhaps was a General Election fought under such curious circumstances. The leaders of the different sections of the Liberal Party took up hostile positions. Liberal was opposed by Liberal ; and in many cases the Tory candidate had the full support of the Dissentient Liberal leaders. There had been a bargain — secret and unavowed at first", j but afterwards admitted — between the Tory leaders and the Dissentient \ 284 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Liberals, v^nat no Liberal who voted against the second reading of Mr. Gladstone's Bill should be opposed ; and the bargain was honourably kept by the Tories, except in two cases. Mr. Gladstone acted during the election as he has throughout the struggle. He maintained a strong belief that the Dissentient Liberals, professing to differ from him only on details, would return in time to the party they had deserted. For this reason he did not encourage attacks upon the seats of Dissentient leaders ; and thus Beveral were allowed to get in without any contest at all, or after a contest begun too late or too tamely conducted. The sight of the most eminent men of the Liberal Party differing among themselves naturally bewildered a considerable portion of the country. This fact was bound to have more effect in such a struggle as was then going on than in any other kind of contest. It was a struggle over the Irish Question ; and there is no subject so little known in England — perhaps it might be said there are few subjects so little known even in Ireland — as Irish history. The long centuries of wrong, of foul mis- government, of terrible suffering, which have created the Ireland of to-day, were a sealed book to the English people. The demands of the Irish leaders of to-day they had never before heard spoken of, except with derision or reprobation ; and in such circumstances the differences of their leaders might well excuse differences, and doubts, and hesitations of the rank and file. Unhappily the opponents of Mr. Gladstone made full and most unscrupulous use of this ignorance. Never at any General Election was there a more foul and a more full tide of misrepresentation. The — election might be described briefly as won by lies addressed to ignorance.-. The Irish leaders were accused of desiring to destroy the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, and of working for separation in face of their distinct pledges that they recognised the Legislative Assembly bestowed by Mr. Gladstone's Bill as a subordinate assembly, 1 and in face of the 1 In his speech on the second reading of the Government of Ireland Bill, Mr. Parnell said : ' Now, sir, the right hon. member for East Edinburgh spoke about the sovereignty of Parliament. I entirely agree upon this point. 1 entirely accept the definitions given by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the other day. We have always known, since the introduction of this Bill, the difference between a co- ordinate and a subordinate Parliament, and we have recognised that the Legislaturt which the Prime Minister proposes to constitute is a subordinate Parliament, that it is not the same as Grattan's Parliament, which was co-equal with the Imperial Parlia- ment.' In the same speech the Irish leader again said : ' I say that, as far as it ia possible for a nation to accept a measure cheerfully, freely, gladly, and without reserva. tion as a final settlement— I say that the Irish people have shown that they have accepted this measure in that sense.' Again he said : ' This settlement I believe will be a final settlement.' (Reported in Times, June 8, 1S86.) The Chicago Convention, of which so much has been heard, accepted the Bill of Mr. Gladstone with equal emphasis, and by a majority of 971 delegates against one dissentient. In the resolu- tion adopted at the Convention, it spoke of the right of a people ' to frame their own laws,' and it went on to define that right in these significant words : ' 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.' 01 course, the Home Rule which is given to the colonial possessions of Great Britain is not separation, but such limited Home Rule as would be given by Mr. Gladstone's Bill to Ireland. The Convention still further certified its feelings by expressing hearty approval of the ' course pursued by Charles Stewart Parnell and his associates in the English House of Commons.' As has been seen, the course taken by Mr. Parnell and his colleagues was the acceptance of Mr. Gladstone's Bill. And finally, the sense of the Convention was further expressed by the following resolution : ' That we extend oui heartfelt thanks to Mr. Gladstone for his great efforts in behalf of Irish self-govern- ment, and we express our gratitude to the English, Scotch, and Welsh democracy, for the support given to the great Liberal leader and his Irish policy during the recent General Elections.' This is the Convention which is represented as consisting of dynamitards. THE HOME RULE STRUGGLE. 2S5 ample safeguards in Mr. Gladstone's measure for maintaining the control of all the military and naval forces. Lying appeals were made to religious prejudice ; and a party led by a Protestant, and manned largely by Protestants, was accused of desiring to persecute the Protestant religion. But these appeals, powerful as they were, had little effect beside two other factors brought into the election. The first of these was the Land Purchase Bill of Sir. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone's Bill, in his opinion — ■ and he is generally regarded as some authority on finance — and in the opinion, I think, of every impartial critic, would have taken ample security for every single penny of money advanced to the Irish State for the buying out of the Irish landlords. But his enemies represented that the money thus lent would be a gift to the Irish landlords out of the pockets of the English taxpayers. Astound- ing calculations were made as to the additions that would thus be thrown upon the English taxpayer. ' The Land Bill,' said Mr. Alfred Barnes, the Liberal Unionist candidate for Chesterfield Division of Derbyshire, 1 which Mr. Gladstone has stated to be inseparable from the Irish Government Bill, would add £150,000,000 to £200,000,000 to the National Debt, and thereby impose, a heavy liability and large increase of taxation upon our already overburdened population.' 'I ask you,' said Mr. H. M. Jackson, a Liberal Unionist candidate for the Flint Boroughs, ' to remember that in supporting my opponent you are supporting a measure (declared by the Government to be an inseparable part of their Irish scheme) which if passed will impose upon the National Debt of the country an addition of nearly £200,000,000 (two hundred million pounds), of which each one of you will have to contribute his share.' The credit of having reached perhaps the highest flight in these astonishing calculations belongs to Mr. Baumann, the Tory member for Peckham. 'The Home Rule Bill is only half of Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy. The Prime Minister has also laid before Parliament a Land Purchase Bill which he describes as inseparably con- nected with the Home Rule Bill, to buy out the Irish landlords by the issue of new British Consols. The precise amount of this addition to the National Debt it is impossible to get at, . . . but it is interesting to note that three years ago Mr. Gladstone put the cost of buying out the Irish landlords at between three and four hundred million pounds.'' The same idea was put, perhaps in a more grotesque shape, by Mr. Tollemache, the Tory candidate for the Eddisbury Division of Chester. That gentleman made an elaborate calculation as to the number of lurries that would be filled by all the golden sovereigns which Mr. Gladstone's Bill would take out of the pockets of the English taxpayer ! This was dishonest enough in all conscience ; but the dishonesty was in implication as well as in open lie. For while the opponents of Mr. Gladstone were thus attacking his Land Bill, they never breathed a hint that they were favourable themselves to Land Purchase in any shape. On the contrary, the whole tendency ana the unmistakable suggestion of all their speeches was that to any money in any form for the buying out of the Irish landlords they were irreconcilably opposed. The contest thus changed its character in the course of the struggle. It was no longer mainly a fight against the Home Rule, but against the Land Bill of Mr. Gladstone. It was whether the British taxpayer should guarantee any money whatever for the buying out of the Irish landlord or not. This is a point to which I direct the especial attention of the reader ; he will the more keenly appreciate the grim irony of what immediately followed. 28G THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. Thus the first great factor in producing the defeat of Mr. Gladstone was the false representation of the issue on the Land Question ; the second great factor was an equally false representation of the issue on Home Rule. Mjv Gladstone laid down as the real issue before the country the question whether Ireland was to be governed through herself or by coercion. Between those two courses he declared that there was no halting-ground. His opponents were shrewd enough to perceive that if this issue were allowed to go before the country in its plainness and nakedness, there could be little doubt as to what would be the result. Between enslaving and liberating a sister-country a nation of freemen could only give one answer ; and above all other free nations the people of England have been dis- tinguished by the readiness and the abundance of sympathy they have extended to other peoples struggling for their rights. Under these circum- stances it was felt that if the issue were not obscured, the cause of wrong was lost ; and the main efforts of Mr. Gladstone's opponents were devoted to showing that the issue was not as he put it — was not the clear, blank, naked issue between Home Rule on the one side and coercion on the other. It was between Home Rule as Mr. Gladstone proposed, and another and different kind of Home Rule. It was not even an issue between the extreme Home Rule of Mr. Gladstone and the more moderate Home Rule of his opponents. Some of his critics maintained that they were ready to give a wider Home Rule than Mr. Gladstone. Indeed, it was one of the charges against Mr. Gladstone's Bill, which some of his opponents were able to make without laughing, that his Bill gave Ireland too little instead of too much. First, the Liberal Unionists pledged themselves.strongly against coercion. Mr. Chamberlain, as is known, began to declare that coercion was impos- sible for the entire future long before the election of 1886. It is notorious that in 1881 he for some time seriously debated with himself and his Radical colleagues in the Cabinet whether he should resign rather than consent to the Coercion Bill then proposed by his colleague, Mr. Forster. On every occasion afterwards, he took an opportunity of suggesting his dislike of the policy which he had thus very unwillingly adopted. ' Coercion,' he said, in Birmingham, on 4th June, 1885, 'may be necessary at times . . . but coercion is for an emergency. It is nonsense to talk of a constitutional system and constitutional government if the constitution is always being suspended.' ' Lord Randolph Churchill does not believe,' he said in Holloway, 17th June, 1885, 'and neither do I believe, in a policy of perpetual repression ; and he favours, as I favour, the concession of local government to Ireland, and a system under which Irishmen shall have some effective control over their own affairs. But that is not Lord Salisbury's policy . . . The pacification of Ireland at this moment depends, I believe, on the concession to Ireland of the right to govern itself in the matter of its purely domestic business. What is the alternative ? Are you content, after nearly eight years of failure, to renew once more the dreary experience of repressive legislation ?' Referring to the dropping of the Coercion Act by the Tory Government after their accession to office in 1S85 — a step which provoked against them the charge of political inconsistency, dishonesty, and immorality — Mr. Chamberlain said, speaking at Hackney, on 24th July, 1885, ' For my part, in this question of 'coercion I approve of the'decision of the Government. I approve of the arguments by which they justify it.' These quotations I take from an excellent little pamphlet entitled THE HOME RULE STRUGGLE. 2S7 * Dissentient Liberalism, tested by its Professions and its Votes,' issued by the Liberal Publication Department (page 10.) From the same source (pp. 10 and 11), I give the following additional pledges of the Liberal Unionists against coercion : Mb. H. D. Coghill. — 1 1 desire to treat Ireland exactly as any other part of the United Kingdom is treated.' (Address, June 26th, 1886.) Mb. Jesse Collings. — 1. ' He had recorded his protest against coercion, and he should never give a more righteous vote as long as he lived. "Were coercion to be proposed to-morrow, he should vote against it.' (Speech at Birmingham, January 27th, 18S1.)— 2. '"We shall never see another Coercion Bilr for Ireland. The Liberal Party will never touch it, and the Tories will never be permitted to do so.' {Suffolk Chronicle, April 2nd, 1881.) — 3. 'Doubtless the Bill was aimed against crime, but that ■n as not the question. The question was whom would it strike ? In his opinion it would strike against the Irish people, who were the most law-abiding people in Europe, except as regards agrarian offences.' (Hansard, 1882, vol. 269, p. 1,657.) Sib W. Ckossman. — ' He objected to the statement that coercion was the sole alternative to Home Rule, and he maintained that the ordinary law, if persistently carried out, would bring Ireland to a state of peace and contentment.' (Speech at the Amphitheatre, Portsmouth, June 26th, 1886.) Mb. L. Couetnet. — 'He believed that Lord Salisbury had positively declared that he had no such policy as twenty years of coercion. The policy he would support was, as he explained, the development of local liberties, insisting at the same time upon the operation of all the (existing ?) laws against crime.' (Torpoint, July 9th, 1886.) Mb. G. Dixon. — ' We are told that the only alternative to this policy is one of twenty years of coercion. But this is not the alternate policy that I shall advocate.' (Address, June 22nd, 1886.) Me. H. Hobhouse. — ' There is no objection to my mind to coercion if you like to rail it so — that is, compulsion by law — provided it is equitable and permanent in its character, and is applied, equally and justly to all parts of the United Kingdom. Let us not shrink f rom applying to Ireland any law for the maintenance of law and order which we would apply equally to ourselves.'' (Speech at Glastonbury, April 27th, 1886.) Me. Pitt-Lewis. — 1. ' Coercion for Ireland is not the policy of an English party. If any party made it their policy, I should resist it, just as Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain long have done.' (Address, July 3rd, 1886.) — 2. The Liberal Unionist policy was, ' That which is crime in any one part of the United Kingdom shall be crime in all parts.' — {The same.) Language not quite so strong, but almost as strong, was used by the Tory candidates, especially in those constituencies in which they had obtained their seats by the assistance of the Irish vote at the previous eLection. Here are a few specimens of the pledges of the Tories on this subject of coercion : — Colonel Nicholas Wood (Houghton-le-Spring, Durham). — ' To coercion I object.' Sib EpPEB Lethbbidge (North Kensington). — 'I indignantly repudiate *4ae imputation, that the only alternative policy is one of coercion.' 288 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. ' It is suggested,' said Mr. Boord, Tory member for Greenwich, ' that coercion is the only alternative to Mr. Gladstone's scheme, and that it is the policy of Lord Salisbury. The suggestion is false. Coercion, if it means anything in this connection, implies the forcible curtail- ment of the rights and liberties of the Irish people. Lord Salisbury, on the contrary, recommends a firm and constitutional government, such as Ireland has been unused to of late, which, by the suppression of crime, would secure the exercise of their rights and the enjoyment of their liberties to all alike.' 'All desire it' (justice to Ireland), said Major Banes. 'I admit it is due. ... I shall ever oppose all who seek by mere force and tyranny to override the conscience.' 'Ireland,' exclaimed Baron de Worms, 'cannot ... be governed by a policy violently oscillating between coercion and concession, any more than by a permanent system of exceptional severity, framed to meet an abnormal condition of outrage and crime.' • I am desirous, ' said Mr. Shaw Stewart, the Tory member for Renfrew* shire, ' that Ireland should have equal rights and liberties with Scot- land and England.' ' I maintain, ' said Mr. Wrightson, the Tory candidate for Stockton, ' that every privilege enjoyed by the inhabitants of Great Britain should be equally enjoyed by the inhabitants of Ireland.' 'It was said,' said Sir James Ferguson, in a speech on June 20th, 1886, ' there was no alternative but coercion. He denied it. He would give to Ireland the same laws we have ourselves.' ' His remedy,' said the same gentleman on June 28th, ' for Ireland was to govern it like England and Scotland — neither better nor worse.' ' I am heartily in favour of justice to Ireland,' wrote Mr. E. Hardcastle, the Tory candidate for North Salford. ' I would give them the same laws we have ourselves.' Some of the Tory candidates, not satisfied with these general declara- tions against coercion, actually summed up their principles in placards which asked the electors to ' vote for the Tory candidate and no coercion.' Perhaps the worst among these offenders was Captain (now Sir John) Colomb, who placarded the walls of Bow and Bromley with ' Vote for Colomb, who has always been against coercion.' And now for the declaration with regard to the right of Ireland of self-government. As to the Liberal Unionists, I quote again from Mr. Goadby's excellent pamphlet (pp. 17-19) : Viscount Baring (N. Bedfordshire). — ' I am ready and anxious to relieve any real grievance which may exist in Ireland, and to confer upon Ireland powers of self government similar to those which will probably be soon given to other parts of the United Kingdom.' (Address, June 22nd, 1886.) Mr. A. Barnes (Chesterfield). — 1. ' I am in favour of Home Rule being granted to Ireland in the shape of such a measure of local self-govern- ment as could be extended to England, Scotland, and Wales. (Address, June 21st, 1886.) — 2. ' He was prepared to give to Ireland everything that we in England had.' (Speech at Ashover, Derbyshire Times, July 3rd, 1886.) Mk. Hamar Bass (Stafford). — 1 1 wa* *nd still am prepared to support a THE HOME RULE STRUGGLE. 259 very liberal measure of local self-government for Ireland, but I fail to see why such a measure should not be equally applicable to England, Scotland, and Wales.' (Address of 1886.) Mr. A. H. Brown (Wellington, Salop). — ' I am a strenuous advocate for giving to Ireland as well as to Great Britain a large measure of local self-government.' (Address, June, 1886.) Lobd E. Cavendish (West Derbyshire). — ' I will gladly support any Government which is prepared to enforce the law and at the same time to confer upon the Irish people rights and privileges equal to those claimed by the inhabitants of England and Scotland.' (Address, June, 1886.) Me. D. H. Coghill (ZSTewcastle-under-Lyme). — 1. ' He was willing to give Ireland every possible form of local self-government. 5 — 2. ' I agree with those who wish to decentralise the management of Irish affairs, and to remove their control from Dublin Castle.' (Address, June 26th, 1886.) Mr. Courtney (Bodmin). — 1 The policy he would support was the policy of developing local liberties.' (July 9th, 1886.) Sir W. Crossman (Portsmouth). — 1. 'I am prepared to vote for giving such local self-government to Ireland as could be given to other parts of the United Kingdom.' (June 26th, 1SS6. ) — 2. ' I go to Parliament with the fullest intention of voting for any measures which will give to Ireland the same rights and privileges as to any other part of the United King- dom.' [The same.) Mr. George Dixon (Edgbaston). — 'I shall advocate processes of devolution which would greatly divest the Imperial Parliament of much of its present legislative and executive functions, throwing them on to local bodies to be constituted, not in Ireland alone, but in other portions of the United Kingdom.' (Address, June 22nd, 1886.) Me. A. R. D. Elliot (Roxburgh). — ' I hold myself at liberty to consider upon the merits any new measure of local government which may be laid before Parliament.' (Address, June 21st, 1886.) Me. R. Flnlay (Inverness District). — ' I am in favour of a large measure of Home Rule, in the true sense of the term, for the whole United Kingdom. But any such measure ought to be applicable in its main principles to the whole of the United Kingdom.' (Address, June 24th, 1S86.) Me. W. J. W. Fitzwilliam (Peterborough). — 'Ishould be quite prepared to grant to Ireland an equal measure of local self-government to that which I should wish extended to England, Scotland, and Wales. Ireland is, in my opinion, entitled to equal treatment with ourselves, but no more.' (Address, June, 1886.) Me. L. Eey (Bristol). — ' I am ready to support the largest extension of self- government to Ireland.' (Address, June 26th, 1886.) Me. Henry Hobhouse (Somerset, East). — ' I desire to give to Ireland extensive powers of managing their (sic) own local affairs.' (Address, June 21st, 1886.) Mr. F. W. Maclean (Woodstock). — ' I am only too anxious to redress any grievances under which Ireland may surfer.' (Address, June, 1886.) Me. Waltee Morrison (Skipton). — 1 1 have for many years advocated the extension of local, self-government for which the country is now ripe. I would give to Irish representative bodies the power of managing strictly local affairs, but I would grant similar powers to England and Scotland.' (Address, June 21st, 18S6.) 19 2yO THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Me. Pitt-Lewis (N.W. Devon). — 'The Liberal Unionist policy is that there should be no more exceptional laws for Ireland, but that the same laws should apply to that country as are made for the rest of the United Kingdom.' (July 3rd, 1886.) Mr. W. C. Quilter (Sudbury). — 'I quite believe that some scheme is necessary which would enable Ireland, under well-considered conditions, to transact her own affairs.' (Address, June 30th, 1886.) Me. W. P. Sinclair (Falkirk). — 1 As a Liberal, I am in favour of self- government to Ireland, but I desire that all parts of the United King- dom should be placed on an equal footing.' (Address, June 23rd, 1886.) Mr. F. Taylor (Peebles). — 'I am in favour, as Mr. Gladstone says, of Ireland transacting her own affairs, under well-considered conditions.' (Address, June 23rd, 1886.) The Tories were equally emphatic, as will be seen from the following examples : — Colonel Nicholas Wood (Houghton-le-Spring). — 'My firm and hearty support will be given to a considerable extension and improvement of local government alike to the people of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, delegated by and under the supreme control of an Imperial Parliament, in which they are fully represented.' 'The people in every part of the Queen's dominions,' said Sir J. E. Gorst, now a member of the Government, ' should have liberty to manage their own affairs in their own way. . . . Local self-government should be conferred on Ireland to the same, but not to a greavr, extent than on England, Scotland, and Wales.' * I shall support,' exclaimed Major Banes, ' any measure giving the fullest local self-government to Ireland, as well as England, Scotland, and Wales.' Lord Newark, the Tory candidate for Newark, describes himself as ' a firm believer in the benefits of local self-government.' ; I am anxious,' said Mr. Godson, the Tory member for Kidderminster, ' that Ireland should be treated in all respects ... on the same basis as England and Scotland, especially in the matter of local government.' 'I am in favour of the extension of local government to Ireland,' said General Sir Francis Fitzwtgraji, Tory member for Fareham. ' I am greatly in favour of the extension of local self-government, which will . . . facilitate the solution of many burning local questions,' said Mr. Charles V. Mills, Tory member for the Sevenoaks Division. ' I will support any measure,' wrote Sir William Pearce, the late Tory member for Govan, ' . . . whereby the local affairs of Ireland shall be placed under the control of the Irish people themselves, provided the measure . . . recognises the Imperial Parliament.' * Unionists,' exclaimed Me. J. M. McLean, the Tory member for Oldham, * would not deprive Irishmen of any privilege, civil, religious, or com- mercial. . . . Within the limits of the Union the Irish nationalists can have everything they are justly entitled to.' ' I am,' said Me. R. G. O. Mowbray, the Tory member for Prestwich, •in favour of dealing with the local government of Ireland on the same principles as in England.' THE HOME RULE STRUGGLE. 291 * As soon * said Mr. Sidebottom, the Tory member for the Hyde Division, 4 as we are ready to give local self-government to England, Scotland, and Wales, we shall extend the same measure to Ireland.' 'Let the Irish,' boldly declared Mr. Sydney Gedge, the Tory member for Stockport, 4 by all means have local government the same as we shall have. We want the Irish to have the same privilege as our- selves.' Although I am strongly opposed to Mr. Gladstone's Home Eule Bill,' said Mr. Shaw Stewart, ' I am desirous that Ireland should have equal rights and liberties with Scotland and England, and I am in favour of extending the principle of local government to all parts of the United Kingdom, and relieving Parliament of some of the pressure of business which now overweighs it.' We are heartily in favour,' said Sir J. H. Puleston and Captain Pbyce, the two Tory candidates for Devonport, 4 of giving to Ireland a large measure of local self-government.' So the election was fought. The results were much better than might have been expected. In spite of all opposition, and division, and lies, Mr. Gladstone was able to carry with him the parts of the country where political intelligence is most keen. Scotland gave him 42 supporters to 30 opponents ; Wales gave him 24 out of 30 seats ; in the North of England the preponderance of his supporters was equally great. Northumberland gave him all the county seats, and three out of the four borough seats ; Durham elected 8 Gladstonians to 3 opponents ; and of the county seats in Yorkshire the Gladstonians won 18, and the joint opponents, in the shape of Liberal Unionists and Tories, won but 10. It was in Lancashire, and in London and in the South of England, that the elections went mainly against Mr. Gladstone. In Lancashire there is a certain amount of that Orangeism which hates an Irishman more because of his religion than even his nationality. In London there was at the election complete disorganiza- tion ; and ohe absurd system of registration which deprives a man of a vote if, by crossing the street, he gets into a different constituency, had largely reduced the Liberal strength ; for the necessities of their lives make the working class more migratory than other classes. In the South of England the terrorism of the squire and the parson still largely prevail. In spite of all these things, the results even in these districts of disaster were hopeful. The general result of the election is shown in the following figures: The aggregate Liberal vote was 1,238,342, while the aggregate Unionist vote was 1,316,327, or a difference of but 77,985 in a grand total of 2,554,669 votes. To put it roughly, out of two millions and a half of voters, the Unionists had a majority of less than eighty thousand. This was, considering the circumstances, an extraordinarily close fight, and an extraordinarily narrow majority. A look at the election returns, too, will show a great f ailing- off in the number of votes polled, especially by the Liberal candidates. This means that the election was lost, not by the number of Tory votes or Liberal votes cast against the policy of Mr. Glad- stone — it was lost by the number of Liberals who did not vote at all. In other words, it was lost through the number of Liberals who, through want of knowledge or of boldness of mind, or through the distraction caused by the sight of division among their leaders, the frantic appeals to save their pockets from wholesale plunder, their nation from dismemberment, their co-religionists from annihilation, found themselves unable to make up their 292 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. minds. In this respect the election amid all its disaster told a hopeful lesson. Ne7er before did a great and almost revolutionary reform come for decision before the great tribunal of the people after discussion so brief, and never \ efore in the history of England did a great reform receive so much support in the first shock of battle. CHAPTER XV. THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. But the various forces brought into such strange alliance against Mr. Gladstone prevailed, and when he saw that the tide of battle had un- questionably gone against him, he resigned office without calling Parlia- ment together, and the Tories came into power. Some curiosity was at first felt as to what would be the composition of the new Ministry. Would the Government consist solely of Tories, or would the Liberal Unionists, who had helped to win the victory, consent to take their share of the responsi- bility of governing Ireland? Lord Hartington was offered the Premiership by the Marquis of Salisbury, who even consented to serve as Foreign Secretary under the Unionist leadership. Lord Hartington, however, found it much more convenient to fight the cause of Toryism from within the citadel of the Liberal Party. As time has gone on, instead of approaching, he has receded farther from his former colleagues, not merely on the Irish Ques- tion, but with regard to the general Liberal programme for the Empire. The farther, however, he has receded from the Liberal leaders, the more fondly he has clung to the name and position of Liberal. It is known that the front Opposition bench is occupied by the leaders of the Opposition. Under the standing orders of the House a Member of the Privy Council is entitled to a seat there, and acting upon the strict letter of this rule, and against every dictate of reason, convenience and good manners, Lord Hartington, Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Henry James insist on sitting beside Mr. Gladstone. Appeals have been made several times to these gentlemen to go over to the side of which they are the main supporters, but they have steadily refused, conscious that it is better for the interests of the Tories that they should fight from behind the mask of Liberalism. A startling change took place in the personnel of the Tory Party. Sir M. Hicks-Beach had been Leader of the House under the previous Tory Administration, and Lord Randolph Churchill had been Secretary for India. In the new administration Lord Randolph Churchill insisted on becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House, and when the session started, he occupied this position. This was a startlingly eminent position for a man to have attained who had not yet reached his fortieth year, and who, though he could claim twelve years of Parlia- mentary life, had really but six years of anything like even Parliamentary prominence. Some doubts existed as to whether he would be equal to the elevated position to which he had attained, but it is only just to say that while he held the office he carried out its duties with conspicuous ability. The Parliament with which we have now to deal will probably be known in history above all its predecessors or successors as the Parliament of Broken Pledges. The reader has had abundant opportunity of acquainting himself with the pledges on which this Parliament was elected, and b^ which the Uniouiat majority was brought into existence. THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. 293 The first pledge which the Tories and the Unionists combined pro- ceeded to break was their pledge against Land Purchase with the assist- ance of British credit. The two Houses had scarcely met, when the leaders of the Ministry announced the prospect of a large scheme, if not a , universal scheme, of Land Purchase, and, of course, with the assistance of British credit. ' I do not believe,' said the Marquis of Salisbury, 1 that any tinkering of the land system will have the slightest effect until we can get rid of the duality of ownership which the Land Act of 1881 introduced.' And in the House of Commons Lord Pandolph Churchill used language of a similar import. 'The system of single ownership of land in Ireland,' he eaid, 1 we believe may be the ultimate solution of the difficulties of the Land Question.' Mr. Gladstone had been defeated in order to prevent Land Purchase, and here were his conquerors proposing Land Purchase the moment they appeared before Parliament. But this was not all. The main argument, as has been seen, against Mr. Gladstone's proposal, was that it would impose taxation on the British taxpayer. Mr. Glad- stone entirely denied this, and agreed with his opponents in thinking that any burden on the British taxpayer for the payment of the Irish landlord would be monstrously inequitable. But the turn of his conquerors had come, and the chief among them laid down that not only would the British taxpayer have to pay for the Irish landlord, but that he ought. Lord Salisbury was dealing with the judicial rents fixed by the Land Courts, and with the demand that these rents should once again be revised. Such a general demand he described the Government as resolved to reject. 'But,' he went on, 'if it should come out that the Courts have made blunders, and that thare is that impossibility in any case of paying rent, I think it is not the landlords who should bear the loss. I think this would be one of the cases for the application of the principle of purchase by the State, and that the State, and not the landlords, must suffer for the errors that have been made.' Let me pause for just a moment to examine this astonishing proposition. The assumption is that the rent of the landlord has been fixed too high ' through blunders.' What would be the natural and equitable solution ? That as the landlord has been receiving too much, he should be compelled to charge less for the future, if not to restore to the tenant the balance be- tween a fair rent and his rack-rent in the past. The plan of the Marquis of Salisbury is different. Because the landlord is deprived of the excess over a fair rent which he has been taking from his unhappy tenant, he is to be rewarded by the assistance of the British taxpayer. In other words, somebody must be robbed for the landlord ; if not his tenant, why, then, the English taxpayer. This was the pretty pass to which Liberal Unionists had brought things by rejecting the Land proposals of Mr. Gladstone. Before their first session had concluded, the Unionist allies were once more brought face to face with a crisis in the Irish Land Question. One of the many prophecies of that Cassandra of politics — the Irish Party — was that the land judges appointed under the Land Act of 1881 would produce in the fulness of time a new agrarian crisis by the inadequacy of their reduc- tions of rent. It was to prevent this crisis that the Irish Party adopted the policy of reserve with regard to the Land Act of 1881, for which they were so vehemently criticised, and for which Mr. Parnell and so many others of their number were put in prison. In 1SSG — that is, five years after — their prophecies were realized. It was found that the rents became 294 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. impossible of payment owing to the great decrease in both the yield and the price of agricultural produce. As has been the case almost in smy year since the Union, the Irish members, acquainted with the real circumstances of their country, repre- sented the true state of facts, and brought forward a proposal for dealing with it ; and as has also happened in almost any year since the Union, their statements were positively denied, and their proposals ignominiously rejected. When Mr. Parnell asked for a day to discuss the state of affairs in Ireland, he was granted it after some demur, and he came forward with a Bill to meet the emergency. This Bill marks an important turning-point in many controversies that have since arisen. It has been much criticised and much misrepresented; and as it is very short, it will be the best plan to give the exact words of its most important clause : ' In the case of any holding subject to statutory conditions within the meaning of the Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881, where the statutory term was fixed prior to the thirty-first December, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-four, if, on the application of the tenant of such holding, it is proved to the satisfaction of the Irish Land Commission, hereinafter called the Court, — ' (a) That half the rent ordinarily payable in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-six in respect of such holding, and half of any antecedent arrears have been paid ; and ' (b) That the tenant is unable to discharge the remainder of such rent or arrears without loss of his holding or deprivation of the means necessary for the cultivation and stocking thereof ; the Court may make an order for such an abatement of the rent of such holding as may seem to them just and expedient. Such abatement shall apply to the rent ordinarily payable in the year one thousand eight hun- dred and eighty-six, to the antecedent arrears thereto, if any, and to the rent which would have been payable in the following year.' There were clauses, besides, dealing with the admission of the lease- holders to the benefits of the Land Act of 1881 — a proposal made every year in succession by the Irish Party — and with some other defects in the Act. Plain and unmistakable as the language of the measure is, there are few proposals, even among those brought forward by Irish Nationalists, which have been so grossly misunderstood or misrepresented. For instance, in Tory organs and speeches, the Bill was denounced as calmly proposing to confiscate fifty per cent, of the rent of the landlords. As will be seen by the most cursory glance at the Bill, it proposes nothing of the kind. The tenant, when he came to the Court for relief, was required, before even being heard, to deposit fifty per cent, of his rent. This was to be a guarantee and a test of his bona fides; it was also a protection to the landlord, who without such a provision might have been kept indefinitely without his rent, or any portion of his rent, while the Court was waiting to give its decision. But the landlords give little encouragement to Home Rulers to take any trouble to safeguard their interests. They turned the elaborate and generous machinery of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill of 18S6 for their protection — as has been seen— into the most potent weapon for Mr. Glad- stone's defeat : and in the same way they turned this provision of Mr, THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. 295 ifarnell's Bill into a most effective argument against it. The provision of fifty per cent, of their rent in hand did splendid duty as a provision for the confiscation of fifty per cent, of their rent. The proposal of Mr. Parnell was entitled to the support of Mr. Chamber- lain above that of all men. On the claim of the Irish tenant to relief from the judicial rents he had pledged himself more openly and unmis- takably than even Mr. Parnell or any other Irish member. In the course of the debates over Mr. Gladstone's proposals in 1SS6, Mr. Chamberlain brought forward — amid the bewildering multitude of his proposals — one for dealing with the phase through which the Irish Land Question was passing at that moment. He acknowledged that the fall in prices had made it impossible any longer to pay the judicial rents, and suggested that there should be a stay of evictions until the question should be settled, the State guaranteeing the payment of the landlords in the meantime. When Mr. ParneU's Bill came under discussion, Mr. Chamberlain, who had thus pledged himself to its principle a year before — that is to say, when the crisis was not nearly so acute — adopted" the manly course of stopping away : afraid to support the Bill, afraid to oppose the Bill. Very different was the conduct of Mr. Gladstone. He had gone on a trip to Germany to recruit his health after the severe labours and anxieties of the trying time through which he had passed. He was in the mountains of Bavaria, engaged, probably, in daily debate with Dr. Dollinger, the famous theologian, on those profound religious controversies which have attracted so much of his attention throughout his life, and afar from every dis- tracting care. But he left friends, vacation, a fine climate, ease, freedom from all care, behind, that he might rush back in the last days of a dying session, and give a vote and make a speech in favour of a proposal which he thought for the good of Ireland. The Government half confessed that there was a case for the Bill, but emphatically declined to supply the remedy. { It is also admitted,' said Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, who was then the Chief Secretary, ' that there has been of late years, and especially in the last year or eighteen months, a considerable fall in the prices of agricultural produce.' But, then, he merely went on to minimize the importance of this great and — as it was soon found — disastrous change in the position of the tenants. ' Prices,' he said, 1 are distinctly rising at the present moment.' Mr. John (now Mr. Justice) Gibson, gave a rose-coloured view of the state of the country. More land was under cultivation ; the crops had been good in 1885 — were above the average in 1856 ; above all, the price of wool had risen sixty per cent. A moment's pause is required on the last item to give an idea of the kind of argument that goes down with the Imperial Parliament when dealing with an Irish question, and, above all, with an Irish question that has such hideous possibilities of suffering as the Irish Land Question. The gross value of the Irish crops in 1885, as Mr. John Morley pointed out, was £31,773,933. The gross value of the wool was £320,000. The Solicitor-General thought that a rise in the price of wool, worth £320,000, compensated for a loss in products that were worth £31,000,000 ! If the Government had been inclined to show justice to the Irish tenant, the Liberal Unionists were present to prevent them. They joined the Tories in declaring that the Land Act of 1881 must not be tampered with ; and, above all, that the judicial rents should not be touched. On the latter point were the members of the Ministry especially emphatic — with an emphasis that will appear very comic by-and-by. 'The pivot of the Land THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, Act,' exclaimed Mr. Gibson, ' was that the judicial rents should remain untouched for fifteen years ; and if that were removed, the whole fabric of the Act must perish.' 'Justice to the landlord,' said Mr. Matthews, * demands you should observe the Parliamentary pledges, or give him ' — the landlord — ' compensation. It is not just to the landlord to cut down the rent which you said you would not interfere with for fifteen years.' Mr. Parnell's Bill was rejected by 297 to 202 ; and with this portentous event the first session of the Unionist Parliament came to an end. The Irish leaders now found themselves in somewhat the same position as in the recess of 1880. After the rejection of the Disturbance Bill by the House of Lords, there impended over their constituents a great disaster : that fact had been brought before the attention of men who in their ignorance denied its existence, and in their folly refused to provide a remedy ; and the Irish members had to make their choice between allowing the people to undergo universal suffering and widespread ruin, or proposing to them to do for themselves, and by their own methods, the work of rescue which the Government had refused to perform. The general answer of the Unionist Party with regard to such circumstances is that the people have to obey the law, however great its injustice or severe and undeserved the suffering which it may entail. That is not the doctrine which some of these Unionists have themselves preached when the people of England were face to face with the rejection of a political remedy which they thought necessary. When the House of Lords rejected the Franchise Bill in I8a4, Mr. Chamberlain used a language which, if it meant anything, was an appeal to physical force ; and Mr. Jesse Collings U3ed to utter threats which, if spoken in public and not in the safe security of private conversation, might have been open to the charge of incitement to crime. But without going into the general and vexed question as to how far the right divine of submission which was denied to kings must be conceded or refused to democratic government, the fact always remains about Ireland, that its government by the Imperial Parliament is not a government by its own voice — as all legitimate government ought to be — but a government imposed upon its will by brute force. The unquestioning obedience to the law — which might be preached with some degree of justice and reason as to a government which a people has created, and can destroy — does not apply to the relations between a government and a nation in whose despite that Government exists. At all events, some of the Irish leaders, present in Ireland and aware of the awful suffering that confronted the people unless some remedy was provided, started the policy which has since come to be world-famous as the Plan of Campaign. To clearly understand a policy which has been the subject of so much controversy, it will be best to give the policy of the Plan as defined by those by whom it was brought forward. The text of the Plan of Campaign was published in United Ireland of October 23, 1886. This was in preparation for the action of the landlords when the half-year's rents came due in the following month. ' Present rents,' said this document, 'speaking roundly, are impossible. That the landlords will press for them let the rejection of Mr. Parnell's Bill testify. A fight during the coming wdnter is, therefore, inevitable, and it behoves the Irish tenantry to fight with a skill begotten of experience.' Then the writer laid down the course of action which should be adopted. The tenants were to meet by estates. The priest was to be asked to take the THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. 297 chair, or some tenant remarkable for firmness of character. A committee was to be appointed, consisting of the chairman and six other members, to be called the managing committee. This committee was to gather a half- year's rent from the tenants. Every one of the tenants was to pledge him- self : (1) To abide by the decision of the majority ; (2) to hold no com- munication with the landlord or his agents, except in the presence of the body of the tenantry ; and (3) to accept no settlement which was not given to every tenant on the estate. ' On the gale day,' went on the Plan, ' the tenantry should proceed to the rent-office in a body. If the agent refuses to see them in a body, they should on no account confer with him indi- vidually, but depute the chairman to act as their spokesman, and acquaint him of the reduction which they require.' If the agent refused the half- year's rent with the reduction which the tenants thought fair and proper, then the half year's rent was to be handed to the managing committee, and placed at the disposal of this committee absolutely for the purpose of con- ducting the fight. No money was to be spent in law costs. When the landlord agreed to settle, the law costs were to be deducted from the rent. It need scarcely be said that this is not a method which would be admissible or justifiable in a normal state of society. The Plan of Cam- paign had been denounoed as illegal, though an authoritative judgment on the question has not been pronounced yet ; but, granting that it is illegal, that does not settle the question whether, in the peculiar circumstances of Ireland, it was morally justifiable. I have dealt already with the claim of the Unionists, for absolute obedience to every law, and under all possible circum- stances, which is not the gospel of any sane body of men ; though equally no sane body of men thinks that disobedience to any law is not a serious, grave, and exceptional act that requires serious, grave, and exceptional cir- cumstances for its justification. That set of circumstances undoubtedly, in my opinion, existed in Ireland when the Plan of Campaign was inaugurated. This is the general justification for the morality of the Plan. A second question remains behind. Did the Plan work practical injustice ? Was it applied on estates where the tenants had no real grievance, and were the demands of the tenants excessive ? These questions will be presently answered by a description of some of the estates on which the Plan was put in operation, and by some facts and figures drawn from the armoury of the Government themselves, The Plan of Campaign was first suggested on the property of the Marquis of Clanricarde. It will throw an instructive light not only on the Land Question generally, but also on the particular phase through which it is now passing, to give a short sketch of this remarkable landlord and re- markable property. The father of the Marquis of Clanricarde died fourteen years ago. Amongst the mourners who followed to the grave was one whom the by- standers pointed out as the new Marquis. He was silent, and after the funeral he disappeared, nor has he ever been seen again in those parts. When hi3 mother died he never appeared at the funeral. She was laid in her grave without the presence of her son, and the guests who came to do the last honours to the Marchioness enjoyed the hospitality not of the Marquis but of the hotel. No tenant on all the Clanricarde estates has seen his landlord, or has had ocular or aural proof of his existence. 1 The estate consists almost entirely of small farms ; for generations, if not 1 Pall Mall Extra, ' No Reduction, No Rent,' p. 33. 298 THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. for centuries, the Clanricardes were absolute masters of the whole district. They were able to return anybody they liked for the county and also for the town of Galway, and it was at one time said that the Marquis of Clan- ricarde could return his gray mare if he liked. In 1872, for the first time, there was a revolt against this political domination. In that year Captain (now Colonel) Nolan was returned after a bitter contest against Mr. W. Le Poer Trench, the Conservative candidate. The old Marquis of Clanricarde was violently annoyed, and the first thing he did was to raise the rent considerably of some of his tenants who, he knew, had been supporters of the popular candidate. Here are eleven names of tenants whose rents have been raised, which Mr. Stead gives in his 'Extra' (p. 33). Old Rent. New Rent. Annual fine for Independence. £ s. d. £ 8. d. £ 5. d. Mrs. Mary Donnelly 88 112 24 50 10 82 10 32 27 38 10 11 10 32 6 6 36 13 4 6 6 Thomas Kemple 22 10 30 10 6 8 6 Patrick McDermot ... 35 47 8 12 8 10 14 10 4 10 Pat Fahy 24 33 9 12 12 6 14 1 1 8 6 Timothy Clarke 18 25 7 19 8 25 4 5 16 339 7 459 6 6 119 19 6 In 1886 the terrible depression that had come on the agriculture of Ireland generally, affected Galway perhaps even more seriously than anywhere else. The tenants became extremely restless, and on several occasions entered into combinations and demanded reductions of rent. It is to be remarked that they did this without any consultation with the central office of the National League, and in fact they did it to a certain extent against the wishes of the Irish Party. At that moment Mr. Gladstone was bringing in his Home Rule and Land Bills, and as it was expected that these mea- sures would supply a remedy for the whole Land Question, the Irish mem- bers discouraged any local agitation. The tenants, however, of the Marquis were unwilling to follow this advice ; the National League was defied, and the tenants on the Portumna portion of the estate formed a Tenants' Defence Association, and resolved on desperate resistance. Meantime, other landlords had found themselves face to face with similar combinations, and either in obedience to these or in acknowledgment of the undoubted reduc- tion of prices, gave considerable abatements. For instance, Colonel Daly and Lord Dunsandle freely gave reductions, while Sir Henry Burke gave an abatement of fifteen per cent, on the judicial rents after a struggle. The Marquis of Clanricarde's tenants drew up a memorial. The Woodford tenants decided to ask a reduction of fifty per cent.; the Portumna tenants thought that fifty per cent, was unfair, and were content to ask twenty-five per cent. The Woodford men then gave way, and a general demand came THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. 299 from all sides for a reduction of twenty-five per cent. This was not the first time that the tenants had made similar demands for abatements. On a previous occasion they asked for an abatement from Mr. John Blake, who was then the agent of the Marquis of Clanricarde. Mr. Blake, though the tenants did not know it, forwarded the application to the Marquis with a recommendation that it should be complied with, as the tenants were really unable to pay their rents. The application was refused : Mr. Blake was shot dead, and after his death his widow proposed to publish the cor- respondence for the purpose of shifting on to the right shoulders the oppres- sion of the tenants. The Marquis intervened, and obtained an injunction preventing the publication of the correspondence. Mr. Joyce, who had succeeded Mr. Blake, joined the tenants — this also was not known at the time — in declaring that their demand for abatement was justified. The Marquis treated this demand, as he did all others, with absolute contempt. He did not even take the trouble to send any reply. Instead of meeting the views of the tenants, he determined on an eviction campaign. Ever since that time, evictions have been going on, sometimes in rapid succes- sion, sometimes in fierce resistance, sometimes with the rapidity of a coup de main. Nearly all these evictions have been accomplished after intense suffering, enormous expenditure for police and soldiery : and the suffering has been borne by the tenants, the expenditure by the British taxpayer. Meantime the Marquis of Clanricarde has been condemned by the opinion of the whole civilized world. Even the Times has denounced him as a danger to society ; but he, defiant alike of friend and foe, proceeds with these evictions, and Mr. Balfour continues to send to gaol everybody who resists his will. The estate of the Marquis is one of the best known which have been placed under the Plan of Campaign, but there are many others in which the circumstances are almost as bad. For instance, there is the Ponsonby estate. This estate is in the hands of an absentee landlord. The tenants are divided into those holding large farms tinder lease, and small farms on year-to-year tenancy. In both cases the tenants are enor- mously rack-rented. The rent in many cases is almost double the valua- tion. Here, for instance, are four cases : £ 8. d. £ s. d. Patrick Day 70 ... 45 Maurice Broderick ... 58 ... 40 William Cashman ... 56 ... 41 Edward Goggin ... 68 16 ... 52 10 The tenants who held under lease were compelled to accept these leases under the Land Act of 1870 by threat of eviction. Take, for instance, the case of Peter M'Donagh. I give these particulars from an excellent pamphlet by Canon Keller, who was imprisoned in connection with this estate. M'Donagh is a hard-working and industrious man, and his family have held the farm for 200 years. He himself has enormously improved it, built an embankment at the side 7 feet high, 12 to 18 feet thick, 400 yards in length. To this expenditure the landlord did not contribute a penny. Though he was asked to take a lease he refused to do so, but on the day when he returned home from burying his little boy and found a notice to quit in his home, as a result of his refusal, he gave up the struggle and had to sign the lease. Michael Mahony, another of the Ponsonby tenants, was obliged to take a lease in 1886. His rent was raised from £65 to £74, while his valuation was £43 15s. These tenants suffered par- 300 THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. ticularly from the reduction in the price of agricultural produce. Butter, which was largely made on the estate, was in !8S6 fifty per cent, lower in price, and the greater part of it was lost from the wetness of the season. Wheat brought an average of only 7s. 6d. per bushel, a fall of fifteen to six- teen shillings from the price it had been in 1885, and some of it was so bad as to be unsaleable at any price. Barley was also largely produced on the estate. Here is a picture from a newspaper which will give an idea of what these unfortunate tenants had to go through, and will convey to the reader a clear conception of the nature of the struggle. ' Thursday being the first day,' writes the Cork Examiner, 'during the season for purchas- ing malting barley in this district by the Midleton Distillery Company, early on that morning cars laden with barley came from different parts of the county. As far as the chapel, loads of barley were closely arranged on either side of the road, and the poor men, who came a long distance in in- clement weather, could be seen asleep on the bags of barley. There were upwards of 1,000 loads of barley, on an average 8,000 barrels ; a barrel is two hundredweight. Of course the Distillery Company could not buy all this grain, as it would take a week to weigh such a number of loads. The excitement which prevailed during the early part of Friday and during the day, caused a party of constabulary to be called out to keep order and pro- tect the lives of those who had to be out on business. After all, the top price was only 10s. per barrel for malting barley ; a great quantity was purchased at 7s. per barrel, and lots of it was rejected as being unfit for any use but food for cattle and pigs. On Friday the Distillery Company re- fused to buy any more barley. There is no other market convenient, and up to 7,000 barrels of barley will have to be taken back from Midleton.' Canon Keller states further that these tenants would have died of starva- tion in 1879 if it had not been for the relief received from the Mansion House Fund and other sources. ' In those days,' he adds, 1 Ponsonby tenants were glad to work for a pittance, day and night, according as the tides suited, in deepening the Youghal docks. Some of these poor crea- tures were known at the time to pledge the coats off their backs in order to pay the rates due on their miserable holdings.' 1 There was one other estate on which the Plan of Campaign was put into motion. It will be seen afterwards how this particular estate played a remarkable part in one of the many tragic and sorrowful episodes by which the final struggle for Irish liberties has been darkened. This was the Mitchelstown Estate. It will be better, however, to defer detailed account of the transactions on this estate until we come to tell the story of J ohn Mandeville's death. When Sir Michael Hicks-Beach returned to Ireland after the rejection of the Parnell Bill, he found himself face to face with the realities of the situation, as distinct from the phantasms which do duty for Irish utcts in the debates at Westminster. At once he perceived that the case which he had helped to controvert was too well founded in fact. He found that even the landlords no longer attempted to deny the reality of the crisis which had been brought on the farmers by the depreciation in the prices of agricultural produce. A large number, if not the majority of them, were making large abatements of rent. The Land Commissioners continued to give even still more undeniable testimony to the fairness of the claim of the tenants to further abatements of rent. It has been seen that when Mr. Parnell's Bill was introduced in 1886, he was able to show that the * 'The Struggle for Life on the Ponsonby Estate,' p. 9. THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. 361 reductions of 1885 were vastly greater than those of the preceding years. The reductions made by the Land Commissioners in 1886 went on increasing, and were largely above the large average of 1885. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach then proceeded to justify in the most curious manner the policy of the Plan of Campaign. The Plan of Campaign was an extra-legal ^ method of settling difficulties that had been left unsettled by Parliamentary statute. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach proceeded to adopt a Plan of Campaign of his own. A Chief Secretary has many means of influencing the action of the landlords. On most estates, owing to the strong feeling against evictions, the process of eviction cannot now be carried out without the assistance of a large number of soldiers and police. The Chief Secretary is always able to point out that the soldiers and police are not at his disposal, and cannot be given to the evicting landlord. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach himself described the process which he adopted as 'pressure within the law' — a contradiction in terms. Pressure is legal or illegal ; there is no debating ground between the two. What Sir Michael Hicks-Beach really did was to apply to the case of these landlords by the refusal of police and soldiers, and other extra-legal pressure, the principle of the Bill which, but for him and his colleagues, would have been passed into law. In short, he substituted lawless for statutable interference. The views of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach were carried out with even greater zeal than his own by some of his subordinates. When the Tory Govern-, ment came into power, one of their first acts was to appoint Sir Pedvers ' Buller to take charge of Kerry and one or two other districts which at the time were the only disturbed spots in all Ireland. The appointment had been heralded with such a fanfaronade of military trumpets, that the Liberals were seriously alarmed lest this should be the first step towards the establishment of what is called martial law in Ireland, and strongly protested against the appointment. Whatever may have been the purpose, however, for which Sir Pedvers Buller was sent to Ireland, his mission there brought consequences the very opposite to what were anticipated. He was sent to put down the combination of the tenants, and the very first thing he did was to throw himself heartily on the side of the tenants and against the oppression of the landlords. In face of the fierce hostility to evictions and the strong organization of the people, landlords were unable to evict without the assistance of large bodies of soldiery and police. As ha3 been said, the soldiers and police are in the hands of Dublin Castle, and therefore, it is entirely in the power of Dublin Castle to arrest, if not to prevent, evictions altogether, by postponing or refusing military and police assistance. In the good old days the landlord had only to telegraph for such assistance, and he received it immediately ; but under the new regime, of ' pressure within the law' and Sir Pedvers Buller, a very different state of things existed. For instance, on October 23, United Ireland was able to publish the following remarkable documents, the authenticity of which has never been denied : * Cork, 24£A October, 1886. 1 Inspector Crogan, 'Direct four police to meet me below Bally vore Barrack at four o'clock to-morrow morning. •(Signed), Galb.' 302 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. 'Memo. 552 and 1,168. ' Killarney, 14th October. 'When you require protection in future, you must give me ten days' notice, to enable police inquiries to be made. And you must invariably give the names of those who require the protection, and the nature of the legal proceedings. ' The application in connection with your memo, cannot be granted. . 'ThOS. MORIAKITY, O.I., R.I.C.' The first of those documents — a telegram — was a message from the sub- sheriff of Cork County, and in old times it would have been promptly answered by telegram that the required force of police would, of course, be sent ; but under the Buller regime not only was no telegram sent in reply, but the 'memo.' — calmly sent by post — was a refusal of the most unusua. nature, and must have of itself acted as a stern discouragement to evictions. 1 It was proved also afterwards that Sir Redvers Buller personally visited several landlords, and that, as a result of those visits, the landlords imme- diately abandoned their attitude of uncompromising resistance to the tenants, and made reasonable reductions. In some cases General Buller went the length of refusing or taking away altogether the guards of police who were assisting rack-renting landlords. Captain Plunket, one of the most notorious and most merciless agents of coercion in Ireland, followed the lead given him by his chief. He denied afterwards that he had inter- fered in any way between landlord and tenant, but he was unable to deny the letters in his own handwriting which were produced in Court. In one of these letters to a firm of land agents, Captain Plunket said of a tenant who was willing to pay a year's rent minus 20 per cent, abatement : ' I pointed out to him that he ought to pay the year's rent in full, pending any arrangement that might be made as regards the future, and he agreed that it was a fair suggestion, and stated that he would make the offer to you. You will understand that my object in addressing you is not by way of interfering in a matter that does not concern me, but as I am sure you will agree with me that evictions are not at the present time desirable if they can be avoided, and as I much fear that they may possibly lead to outrages and disturb the peace of a district hitherto free from crime, my motive is to avert them and use my humble endeavours to bring about a settlement where practicable.' 2 The landlords resisted the sway of this ' pressure within the law ' by theh loud-voiced complaints in the Times. It was in that journal that the letter of Captain Plunket just given was first published. The correspon- dent of the Times sent at the same time a letter which told the remainder of the story. It declared that the resident magistrate ' had called after- wards and pressed the matter much further, but did it cautiously.' 'He conveyed,' continued the writer, 'that unless the landlady accepted a year's rent, instead of three and a half years', and gave a clear receipt and paid costs (£50), protection would not be afforded to her caretakers. Under these circumstances she is disposed to strike and surrender her rights, and take anything she can get. Her income is very small, not more than is absolutely necessary for her support, and she is coerced. Th« land is some of the best in Ireland, and in the Golden Vale.' 1 ' Mr. Dillon on the Plan of Campaign,' by J. J. Clancy, M.P., pp. 42, 43. » Ibid., p. 44. THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. Colon el Tu rner, who has since become notorious as a supporter of the policy oFMr. Balfour, was at this period a vehement supporter of the Plan of Campaign which Sir Michael Beach, General Buller and Dublin Castle had invented. ' Yesterday,' wrote the Castleisland correspondent of the Cork Examiner, on December 10, ' Colonel Turner, accompanied by Mr. Meldon, R.M., paid a visit to Castleisland. As far as I can learn, it would appear that Colonel Turner's object was solely to inquire into the state of the tenantry in this district, where evictions have been already carried out or are pending. They were met here by Mr. Maurice Murphy, proprietor of the Crown Hotel, with whom they had a lengthened interview, and who subsequently introduced them to the Ven. Archdeacon Irwin, P.P. Colonel Turner interviewed the rev. gentleman at considerable length. Colonel Turner met some of the tenants afterwards, who gave him a list of the produce of their land, and this went to show that at the present price for agricultural produce the receipts in a great many cases would not pay half the rent. The tenantry in this locality feel deeply grateful to General Buller, on whose behalf Colonel Turner is prosecuting his inquiries. Colonel Turner promised to come to Castleisland at an early date, and go more fully into the matter.' 1 And finally the whole case is admitted by the Times, which strongly condemned the proceedings of the Chief Secretary and his subordinates. ' Unfortunately,' it wrote, ' it is too clear, from the evidence of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Sir R-edvers Buller, and Captain Plunket, in the Dublin Police Court, as well as from the charge of Chief Baron Palles at Sligo, that the vigorous enforcement of the law against tenants combining to refuse the payment of rent, is discouraged by the Irish Executive. We have excellent reasons,' it went on, ' for believing that high officials, undoubtedly acting under direct orders from the Chief Secretary, have taken upon them to advise landlords not to proceed in the only effectual manner against tenants who have adopted the Plan of Campaign. Com- bination must be met by decisive action against the whole combined body ; but this is precisely the course discountenanced by the Government, which nevertheless is supposed to be contending against Mr. Dillon's policy.' And in another article it summed up the policy of the Government by the declaration that it had ' capitulated to crime and treason.' Here we have the most ample justification for the Plan of Campaign in the conduct of the Executive Government. It will be seen, as we go on, that this is only one of many testimonies in its favour by those who have shouted themselves hoarse in denunciation of its dishonesty and immorality. While the Plan was in operation, a Commission was sitting which had been appointed by the Government when they came into office in 1886, for inquiring into the condition of the Land Question and also the question of illegal combination and intimidation. The Commission was an even more emphatic justification of the Bill of Mr. Parnell than the action of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. It reported that ' the fall in the price of produce of all kinds and in all parts of the country has much impaired the ability of the farmers to pay the full rent. And,' went on the Commissioners, ' this, following on a previous general restriction of credit by the banks and other lendt : s of money, as well as by the shop-keepers, has very greatly increased their financial diffi- culties.' The Commissioners were equally emphatic in the acknowledg- ment that there had been a failure in the yield of the crops, declaring that 1 ' Mr. Dillon on the Plan of Campaign,' pp. 45, 46. 304 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. there had been for some years past 'a gradual deterioration' 'in the quality and produce of the soil.' And, putting all these things together, they arrived at the conclusion that there was a fall of 18£ per cent, in 1885 and 1886, as compared with the average of the four preceding years, in the value of the agricultural capital. When the Commissioners came to their recommenda- tions for meeting the emergency, the gravity of which they so frankly acknowledged, they gave evidence of the conflict in their minds between their sense of the emergency and their disinclination to interfere with the judicial rents. It was ' most undesirable to disturb an arrangement which was understood to be a permanent settlement ;' but they could not 1 put aside the present necessities of the tillage farmers, many of whom have lost much of their means, and are, besides, much indebted to banks, local merchants, and other creditors.' They braced themselves up, under these circumstances, to recommending that the term of fifteen years, for which the judicial rents had been fixed, should be reduced to five. But even that they were conscious, was not enough, apologetically declaring that the question had been one of ' anxious thought and deliberation,' ' whether we should re- commend an immediate reduction of the earlier fixed prices, or wait further indications of the future range.' They wound up with the statement that should prices ' continue on the present low scale, it will become absolutely necessary that a revision of prices be made on the rents fixed prior to the beginning of 1886.' Here, then, out of the mouths of the Commission appointed by the Government itself, and almost entirely composed of landlords, was an emphatic confirmation of the whole case for Mr. Parnell's Bill, and accord- ingly for the Plan of Campaign, to which the rejection of that Bill gave birth. Thus tYj3 Plan of Campaign has already two great facts in justifi- cation of its existence : 1. The extra-legal action of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and his sub- ordinates. 2. The report of the Tory Commission. But there came a third and equally superficial justification. In the course of the debate on Mr. Parnell's Bill in 1886, Sir Michael Hicks- Beach had to confess that the sub-Commissioners had largely increased the average reductions on the holdings brought before them. The Royal Commission puts this increase on the average at 10 to 14 per cent. ; in reality it was much more — at least, in many cases, it reached an enor- mously higher figure. In the pamphlet published by the Irish Press Agency, with Mr. Dillon's speech on the Plan of Campaign, to which allusion has already been made, a list of cases is given from the County Longford, in which the average reduction is 41 per cent. ; on the estate of Lord Granard the reductions averaged 39 per cent ; on the estate of the late Col. King-Harman, 54 per cent. ; and on the estate of the late Col. Tottenham, 58 per cent. ! The reductions demanded under the Plan averaged from 20 to 30 per cent. ! In other words, the abatements de- manded by the Plan are more moderate than the abatements given by the Land Courts. And thus we have now three, instead of two, justifications of the Plan of Campaign. 1. The extra-legal action of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and his sub- ordinates. 2. The report of the Tory Commission, 3. The enormous increase in the reductions by the Land Courts. Even yet we have not exhausted our list of reasons in favour of the action of the Irish leaders. THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. 305 So the important recess of 1886 passed — the friends of the tenant on the one side adopting the extra-legal pressure of the Plan of Cam- paign and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach the extra-legal pressure of private remonstrances and the refusal of military and police aid to the landlords, with a fairly satisfactory result all round. First, the abatement of rent became almost universal, and the relations of the landlords were strained only in the comparatively few cases in which the Plan of Campaign was vehemently resisted ; and, secondly, there was an extraordinary reduction in the amount of agrarian crime. This was the more rem£fc.*kable because the December quarter, in which the Plan of Campaign was in operation, is precisely the quarter in which agrarian crime has always shown a tendency to rise, for the obvious reason that the shortness of the days and the darkness of the nights give the criminal a better opportunity of safely carrying out his evil deeds. On this reduction of crime, more will have to be said by-and-by. When Parliament met in February, 1 887, it looked as if things would drift thus for some time, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach adopting a middle course which did not exasperate Ireland, and which, at the same time, left the whole question of the future unsettled. But suddenly Sir Michael Hicks-Beach resigned, and a very different kind of man was appointed in his place. Mr. Arthur Balfour, who now became Chief Secretary for Ireland, had not up to this realized in Parliament the high promise of his University career, and the lofty eulogies of his private friends. He had sat in Parlia- ment since 1874 ; but though he was the nephew of the Marquis of Salisbury, he had not up to that moment ever made a speech which produced any impression upon the House of Commons. In the Parliament of 1880 he had joined his fortunes to those of Lord Randolph Churchill. With Mr. Gorst, Sir Henry Wolff, and Lord Randolph, Mr. Balfour had occupied himself night after night in the attempt to break down by constant worry and persistent speech the strength of the great Liberal majority ; and, with Mr. Warton, he shared the labour of obstructing all Mr. Gladstone's proposals. But even in his obstruction there was a faint- heartedness and a want of tenacity that fitted in well with his appearance and repute. Mr. Balfour is a tall and very slight man. The neck is long, narrow, and as thin as that of a delicate girl. On the whole, the impres- sion he would give to a stranger who saw him for the first time and did not know him, would be that he wr.s a more than usually mild member of the mild race of curates. A tendency to seek frequent inspiration in his pocket-handkerchief would confirm the impression. In politics he assumes an air of extreme languor. He does not sit upright in his seat, nor is he content with the loll which is characteristic of most of the members of a body so overworked and so sedentary as the House of Commons. One of the many sayings current about him is that somebody declared he could never come to anything, as he was so fond of sitting on the small of his back. Sitting thus with his rather long legs stretched out before him, he gives an impression of physical and mental lassitude that could never be associated with a vigorous policy or a firm character. Indeed, Mr. Balfour might be described as almost ladylike in his manner and appearance. As to his morale, he is in the habit — I have been told— of talking in private of political affairs with a cynicism that to some brings amusement and to ers disgust ; and that is interpreted by some as the reflection of hig real sentiments, and bv other* as the ^ej^^k^x which is now habitual 20 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. with those who see in languid airs the truest symbol of inward distinc- tion. It may be that he is a mixture of what he appears and what he is supposed to be — he is half in earnest and half in contemptuous doubt as to political struggles, and especially as to his own share in them. I have heard — though I don't know whether the statement is correct — that when he was at college, his leanings were towards Radicalism, and that he raged at the idea of ever being compelled to become a Tory because his uncle happened to be one of the Tory leaders. If this were so, circum- stances proved too strong for him ; and he had to begin life with an act of flagrant apostasy to his own inner convictions and tendencies. A man that has thus to stifle the promptings of his nature, is certain to take his revenge for his own disillusioned and falsified life, by laughing at the sincerities of other men. Such is Mr. Balfour ; physically weak, morally false, effeminate in air and in temper — in short, just the man for a massacre. Louis Napoleon sat shivering over a fire at the Tuileries, and even the heat was unable to keep his knees from knocking and his teeth from chattering ; but all the time, the people in the streets of Paris — with the addition of a child or woman here and there— were being shot down. The most dangerous and the most cruel of men are not the robust and the bold and the brutal tyrants. It is the men of effeminate minds and temper. Their vanity leads them to do things that look strong, and their effeminacy induces a certain tendency to political hysteria that has very cruel and very callous elements. It will be seen by-and-by that Mr. Balfour's acts fully justify this concep- tion of his character. With such a character Mr. Balfour proved the man for the situation which had now grown up in Ireland. It had long ago become evident that the policy with regard to an extension of local self-government, which both the Tories and the Unionists had preached at the General Election, was im- possible. It was impossible, it was plainly seen, to give Ireland a self- government which was not Home Rule and did not lead inevitably and promptly to Home Rule ; and the Tories were thrown back, as Mr. Glad- stone prophesied and as they denied, on the alternative of coercion. Th« Ministry began the session by making a certain number of alterations in the rules of the House which enabled debate to be closed more promptly. This change in the rules was, of course, intended to facilitate the rapid progress of a Coercion Bill, and it need not be added that this purpose was constantly and vehemently denied. The way thu8 cleared, Mr. Balfour introduced a new Coercion Bill. This measure differed from the long list of its predecessors, not merely in the character of its provisions, but in the case by which it was defended. As to its provisions, they were more severe than anything that had been pro- posed, with the exception of the terrible Code of Martial Law which was snacted in the early days after the Union. Some of its provisions, indeed, were so brutal and violent that they had to be dropped. For instance, shere was the provision that cases could be transferred from the Courts of Ireland to the Old Bailey in London. These provisions were ultimately Abandoned, but the measure still remained perhaps the most savage Coer- cion Act of modern times. Any combination of the tenants for any purpose whatever in their conflict with the landlords was made illegal. The words jf the Act were made so wide that any interference whatsoever, and of what- soever character, peaceful as well as violent, persuasion as well as intimidation, with the relations of landlord and tenant, were equally proclaimed illegal There were other provisions equally startling. The Lord -Lieutenant vr* THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. 307 given the power to suppress the National League in any part of the country which he proclaimed. His mere proclamation thereby made membership of the League an offence punishable with six months' imprisonment, and, as will be seen by-and-by, many persons were so punished for this offence. To call a meeting of the League, to attend a meeting of the League, to speak at a meeting of the League, or to give a report of a meeting of the League in the public press, became an offence punishable with six months' imprisonment ! What aggravated these provisions was the tribunal before which the cases were brought. There is little danger to public liberty from even the most tyrannical laws if the citizen has the protection of his fellow-citizens, impartially chosen, in the jury-box. But the Government recognised that the overwhelming majority of the Irish people refused to accept as criminal that which their oppressors pronounced to be crime. Accordingly the Government abolished trial by jury in Ireland, and they substituted there- for as strange a tribunal as ever, perhaps, assumed the mask of constitu- tionalism in a country supposed to be free. The tribunal consisted of two resident magistrates. These resident magistrates are Appointed, Dismissed, Promoted, Degraded, Pensioned, or Refused Pensions, by Mr. Balfour. Furthermore, they are actually chosen to try specific cases by a divisional magistrate, who also, of course, is the nominee of Mr. Balfour. In other words, Mr. Balfour was given the power under the Coercion Act to try, to convict, and to imprison his political opponents by his own personal dependents. Finally, the Coercion Bill was different from all its long list of predeces- sors in being perpetual. Up to this particular Bill, the defence of all such proposals was that there was a temporary derangement of affairs in Ireland which required a temporary remedy. Under the Bill of Mr. Balfour, the right of free combination, free speech, free writing, and free meeting, which are the inalienable right of every man in Great Britain, were left for ever and ever at the absolute disposal of the Executive Authority in Ireland. It remained for the Government and the Parliament, which were pledged above all things to absolute equality of rights and liberties between the two parts of the United Kiiigdom, to propose this perpetual badge of inferiority and inequality for the Irish people. The Coercion Bill of Mr. Balfour was also, it has been said, different from all its predecessors in the case by which it was defended as well in the character of its provisions. In all previous instances Ministers have been able to give as an apology for their proposals whole arrays of statistics as proof of the existence of an epidemic of crime. In the case of the present Bill, the Chief Secretary began by producing no statistics at all, and even made it a merit that he had no statistics. ' I stated before,' he said on the motion for leave to introduce the Bill, ' and I state again, that we do not rest our case upon statistics of agrarian crime in Ireland. ' The reader has an opportunity of comparing the action of Mr. Balfour in this respect wdth that of the late Mr. Forster when he brought forward the Coercion Bill <>f 1881. By-and-by this style of treating the proposals was found too abeussi. 3oS THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. 1 Then the Home Secretary,' said Mr. Morley (speech on going into Com- mittee on the Bill), ' and the Attorney-General say, " Oh, by the way, these are statistics of crime which are of great importance." ' But these statistics, though they were furnished at first with much triumph, did not advance the cause of the Government. What were these statistics ? The Government abandoned at the very beginning of the argument any com- parison between the amount of crime which justified the Coercion Bill of 1887, and the amount of crime that was held to justify the Coercion Bills of 1881 and 1882. And well they might, for this is how the figures stood : Total of agrarian Tear. crimes. 1880 ... .„ ... .„ ... 2,585 1881 ... ... 4,439 1882 ... ... ... ... ... ... 3,433 1886 1,056 The enormous disparity will be at once perceived between the crimes of the years upon which Mr. Forster founded his claim for coercion and the crimes of the year which were held by Mr. Balfour to justify his demand for coercion. The expedient adopted under these circumstances was to confine the comparison to the three years preceding the proposal of coercion. The result of this comparison was that the crimes of 1884 were found to be 762 ; of 1885, 916 ; and of 1886, 1,025. This certainly showed an increase, but it would be the grossest exaggeration to say that it showed that vast increase of crime which alone justifies coercion. The reader has again to be warned against taking these totals as meaning totals of serious, aggra- vated, heinous crime. In these statistics the slightest and smallest offence is classed as a ' crime ' — a petty larceny, an injury to property to the extent of a few shillings, an assault that in a London police-court would entail no higher penalty than a fine of five shillings or forty-eight hours' imprison- ment. This abuse of the word ' crime ' has already been adverted to in dealing with Mr. Forster's case for coercion ; it is a fact which has to be again and again dwelt upon in dealing with pictures of the state of Ireland. It is this abuse of the word 'crime' that has given to one of the most religious, upright, and peaceful people in the world the blackest criminal character perhaps among any of the other nations of the earth. But taking crime in its Ministerial and official, and not in its popular sense, the in- crease of crime in the years 1885 and 1886 over that of 1884 did not justify the demand for coercion. It was his appreciation of the fact that induced the Home Secretary to put forward a discovery which, if well founded, materially assisted the Government. 4 Since October, 1886,' he said, * outrages in Ireland have risen 83 per cent.' (speech on second reading of the Coercion Bill). This statement produced a great effect, and very naturally so; but it involved a suppression of fact that again involved a most flagrant suggestion of what was false. It was quite true that the crimes for the first quarter of 1887 were largely in excess of the crimes of the last quarter of 1886 ; but in the first place, that was no argument in the mouth of the Government. The first quarter of 1887 ends on March 31 ; the Coercion Bill was announced on March 21, and, of course, was contemplated at a much earlier date. In fact, if was resolved and con- sidered upon when the Ministry met Parliament ; and therefore it cannot have been on the crimes of the first quarter of 1887 that the Coercion Bill THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN REEE>GE\ was founded. The Chief Secretary had not these statistics in his hands when he made his speech introducing the Bill, and as has been seen, ex- pressly stated that he did not found his case on statistics of crime. The second answer to the statistics of the Home Secretary is that his basis of comparison is false. He compared the crimes of the first quarter of 1887 with the crimes of the last quarter of 1886 ; the proper method of com- parison is to compare the quarter of one year with the corresponding quarter of the preceding year, where there is something like a similarity of circumstances. The following table show3 the crime — or so-called ' crime ' — for the four quarters of 1886 and the first quarter of 1887 : For the quarter ending March 31, 18S6 ... „ ... 256 For the quarter ending June 30, 1S86 297 For the quarter ending September 30, 1886 306 For the quarter ending December 31, 1886 166 For the quarter ending March 31, 1887 241 This is a remarkable table. It shows that the first quarter of 1887, on which the Home Secretary relied as upon a sudden and opportune revela- tion in favour of the policy of the Government, had less crime than any quarter of the preceding year, except the last quarter. And this last quarter for 1886 deserves special consideration both for its own sake, and as a test of the honesty of the Home Secretary's style of comparison. It had, as has been seen, but 166 crimes; that is — fewer crimes than the first, fewer than the second, fewer than the third quarter of 1886. All thi3 although the December quarter is nearly always the quarter which, in Irish experience, is most deeply stained with crime. But in 1886 the crime of the December quarter is lower than that of any of the other quarters of the year. It stands out in bold relief as the crimeless winter quarter of its year, which makes two facts the more iemarkable. First, that thi3 especially crimeless winter quarter was the quarter when the Plan of Campaign was in fullest operation ; and secondly, was the quarter when the Government resolved that Ireland stood in need of coercion. In the absence of statistics Mr. Balfour proposed coercion on three other grounds. The first was a series of stories — 'narratives,' or 'anecdotes,' Mr. Balfour himself called them — which were not authenticated nor con- firmed ; in fact, were the merest gossip. ' On what authority,' interrupted Mr. Parnell, when the Chief Secretary was telling one of his ' narratives ' or ' anecdotes,' ' on what authority does the right hon. gentleman rely for these statements V ' 1 am giving the House,' was the reply of Mr. Balfour, ' the facts which I have obtained on my responsibility from what I con- sider an authentic source !' In other words, the gossip which Mr. Balfour heard, and Mr. Balfour believed, the House of Commons was likewise bound 'v> accept as gospel truth ! Were ever the liberties of a single and a com- mon pickpocket taken away on evidence so flimsy as that which was held to justify the Chief Secretary in taking away the liberties of a whole nation ? But though the Chief Secretary was vague in his ' anecdotes,' and though the Bill was being hurried through as fast as the Government could manage, there was plenty of time to test and to destroy most of the cases brought forward by the Chief Secretary. One was the case of a farmer named Clarke, indicted for obtaining money by means of a forged document. 4 The case,' said Mr. Balfour, ' was proved in the clearest manner. . . . The judge charged strongly for conviction, but the jury, which consisted principally of farmers, in tne same rank of life as the prisoner, disagreed,' Mr. ParneU THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. was able to prove that Clarke was not a Catholic farmer, but a Protestant) maltster, was not a National Leaguer, and was acquitted owing to the complicated nature of the accounts in dispute. A second case was that of a man called John HogaD. 1 He was charged,' said the Chief Secretary, ' with a most horrible outrage upon a girl. He was acquitted by the jury in face of the clearest evidence. And why ? Because he was a well-known leader in that neighbourhood.' The association between an outrage upon a woman and political or agrarian combination is rather remote, especially in a country where such offences are rare, and are bitterly resented ; ^ut in any case the whole story was an invention. Hogan was charged with rape ; it came out in evidence that he had been five hours in the company of the woman on the evening when the offence was stated to have oeen committed ; it was alleged that the consent of the woman was given ; the prisoner himself was examined, and the jury believed his evidence ; and according to a barrister who was present, and who wrote to an Irish member, were completely justified in believing him. A third 'anecdote' — this was given by the Attorney-General — perhaps even more clearly shows the kind of case on which the Government made their proposals. ' At the County Kerry Assizes,' said the Attorney-General, ' on March 11, 1887, Patrick Hickey was indicted for a moonlight offence at the house of Mr. Casey, a farmer. During the melee the disguise of one of the attack- ing parties fell off, and Casey recognised Hickey, his own cousin. No evidence was called for the defence, and a verdict was given, " Not guilty. " Here certainly was a very bad case, if true ; but what happened V * I rise to order,' said Mr. T. Harrington. 1 1 defended the prisoner, and 1 pledge my word to the House, and I am willing to abide by the decision of Mr. Justice O'Brien, if he did not directly charge for the acquittal of the prisoner on the ground that the charge was a fabrication, and if it was not at the judge's instance that I declined to examine any witnesses for the defence.' And the only reply the Attorney-General had to this crushing refutation of this charge was a joke, and the statement that he had founded . hia assertion on a report of the case in the Freeman's Journal. The second plea of Mr. Balfour was illegal or violent action on the part of branches of the National League. 1 Everyone knows,' said Mr. Balfour, ' that boycotting prevails over certain di&tricts of Ireland, and makes life perfectly intolerable. Everyone knows that every branch of the National League uses boycotting as the means of carrying out its decrees. ... I have a good many cases of such occurrences here, which prove that it is done audaciously all over Ireland. One instance is from Mayo, and it is reported in United Ireland. In this case a branch of the League passed a resolution "that no tradesman shall work for any person who cannot pro- duce his card of membership of the League. The hon. member for Cork stated that any branch of the League that put such pressure on would be immediately dissolved." ' Mr. Parnell : ' So it was ; that branch was immediately dissolved.' Not shamed by this exposure, Mr. Balfour went on to another case, and, jit will be seen, with the like result. Mr. A. J. Balfour : 'Then there was another case in Sligo.' M?. T. Harrington : ' Yes, and I called for the resignation of the com- mittee. 5 The manner in which Mr. Balfour treated this part of his case is so characteristic of his methods and controversy that it is worth while dwell- ing upon it for a moment. I have other and stronger reasons for doing THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. 311 bo. There were two sets of judges' charges, which might properly be referred to in connection with the Bill — the charges which were delivered while the Bill was in preparation, and the charges which were delivered as the Bill was passing through. Mr. Balfour treated neither set candidly. As to the charges which were delivered while the Bill was in preparation, or immediately after its introduction, he chose to make his extracts from judges notorious for the frantic violence of their partisanship. One case will be sufficient to show the value of this evidence. Of course the hero is Mr. Justice Lawson, one of the sinister brood, the story of whose malign in- fluence runs through so many of my pages. Here was the description of County Mayo in a charge of Judge Lawson which Mr. Balfour quoted in his first speech in favour of his Coercion Bill. ' He regretted to say that on this, the first occasion on which he had the honour of presiding in this court of the County Mayo, he could not say anything to them in favour of the state of things which existed in that county. . . . The present state of things was morally unsatisfactory, and according to the reports made to bim, approached as near to rebellion against the authority of the country as anything short of civil war could be. 5 This charge was delivered on March 10, and it, therefore, referred to the Btate of the county in the first quarter of 188 7. There was accordingly no opportunity of testing its accuracy until the Government produced the returns of crime for that quarter. When these returns were published, an astonishing discovery was made. The county, as has been seen, was described as being ' as near to rebellion against the authority of the country as anything short of civil war could be. ' What were the facts ? The county has a population of 230,000 ; in three months the total number of offences in this vast population was 12, and of these 7 were threatening letters ! When one looked into the offences, the revelation was still more extraordinary. In a county ' as near to rebellion against the authority of the country as anything short of civil war could be,' there was not one case of murder, nor of manslaughter, nor of firing at the person, nor of attempt to murder ; not one assault on a bailiff, or a police-constable, or a process- server ! And, now, as to the second set of charges. While the Bill was under discussion the summer assizes were taking place all over Ireland. To these charges Mr. Balfour made no reference whatever ! The reason will soon be obvious. Extracts from these charges have been collected in a remarkable pamphlet entitled ' Coercion without Crime,' by Mr. J. A. Fox. This small pamphlet is as glorious a testimony to the crimelessness of an entire country as perhaps any nation has ever been able to show. There is almost a monotony in the language in which the judges address the Grand Juries. ' Nothing,' said Mr. Justice Murphy to the Grand Jury of Fermanagh County, ' can exceed the peace and quiet obtaining in this, as I trust I may call it, now prosperous county.' 'I believe, practically,' said Mr. Justice O'Brien, to the Grand Jury at Limerick City, 1 that there is no criminal business at all to be done.' ' There is nothing serious" to come before you at the present assize,' said Mr. Justice Harrison to the Grand J ury at North Tipperary. ' There are only two cases to go before you,' said Mr. Justice Lawson to the Grand Jury of Westmeath County. ' I can only congratulate you,' said Mr. Justice Harrison to the Grand Jury of Wexford County, ' on the general peace of this county, and hope, if I have the honour of coming here again, the condition of your county will be that you will not even have two cases that you are asked now to 3 I2 THE PARNELL MO YEMENI consider.' Mr. Baron Dowse is known as one of the wits of the Bench, and he found the smallness of criminal business provocative of one or two characteristic sallies. ' The number of bills,' he said to the Grand Jury of Wicklow County, ' to go before you on the present occasion — and when I say that, I look with a sympathetic air to my friends the Crown counsel ' (laughter) — ' is only two. One is a case of concealment of birth, and the other is a rather serious case — a case of stabbing ; and that is the whole business that you will be called upon to investigate as the criminal Grand Jury at the present assizes. I am here to discharge the gaol, and there is nobody in it ' (laughter), 'for I understand that the two offenders are out upon bail.' ' The business to go before them on the present occasion,' he exclaimed to the Grand Jury of Queen's County, ' was light, there being only two cases to be investigated by them. These were the only cases, and he would take care that the bills were sent up to them at once, and he hoped they would take up whichever case was likely to be shortest, so that the Court might have something to do.' It was a singularly ironical fact that Mr. Justice Holmes, who had taken a large share in piloting the Coercion Bill through Parliament, should have been one of the judges who found the practical reply to the case he had made in the absolute crimelessness of Drogheda. In Drogheda, with a population of 12,297, there was no crime ; in Kilkenny City, with a population of 12,299, there was no crime ; in Longford County, with a population of 61,009, there were two cases ; in Westmeath County, with a population of 71,798, there were two cases ; in Louth County, with a population of 77,684, there were four cases ; in Monaghan County, with a population of 102,748, there were two cases; in Sligo County, with a population of 111,578, there were two cases ; in Waterford County, with a population of 112,768, there were four cases. At no less than three assize towns, namely, at Drogheda, with a population of 12,297, at Kilkenny, with a population of 12,299, and at Waterford, with a population of 29,181, the judges were presented with white gloves because there was no crime to try. It is perfectly clear from these facts that the Coercion Bill was not directed against crime, for I have been able to prove by the incontestable testimony I have just adduced that crime did not exist. The Coercion Bill was not against crime, and as it was not against crime, it must have been against combination. This will appear much more clearly by-and-by, when we come to the period when the Crimes Act was put into operation. Suffice it for the present to say that as the Bill was not against crime — which did not exist — but against combination — which did — the Chief Secretary for Ireland naturally denied that it was against combination, and as naturally asserted that it was against crime. ' This was a Bill,' said Mr. Balfour in the House of Commons, ' to put down crime. ... It was not conflicts between landlord and tenant they desired to put down, it was not combinations they desired to crush.' It was somewhat un- fortunate for our faith in the veracity of Mr. Balfour, and for the con- sistency of the Government, that the Marquis of Salisbury and the Marquis of Hartington confessed what Mr. Balfour had so strenuously denied. c Our position,' said the Marquis of Salisbury, speaking in the House of Lords, ' is that the Land War must cease. We have offered to the other House of Parliament a measure, not without hesitation, in order to put a stop to certain combinations.' The Marquis of Hartington was even more explicit. The Tory Minister confined himself to the statement THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. 313 that the Bill was intended to put down the combination of tenants. The Marquis of Hartington went farther, and declared that it was intended to put down a political party. 1 To sum up finally : I have now, I believe, succeeded, even at this stage, in proving conclusively the case that has been made against the Coercion Bill by its Liberal and Irish critics, that it was not provoked by crime or directed against crime. I have proved this by showing from (1) The Statistics, „ (2) The Judges' Charges, (3) The Admissions of Mr. Balfour, that there was no crime, and therefore, as a Coercion Bill could not be directed against that which did not exist, it could not be directed against crime. Not directed against crime — for what, then, was the Coercion Act required ? The answer brings me to the second half of the Government policy. Immediately after the enactment of the Coercion Act, Mr. Balfour brought in a new Land Bill. In studying the provisions of that Bill, the reader will find the answer to our question as to the real cause and purpose of the Coercion Act. It will not be forgotten that Mr. Parnell brought in a measure in 1886 for allowing the tenants to have their judicial rents revised ; that he based this Bill on the statement that the vast depreciation in agricultural prices had made the payment of the old rent impossible ; that the Government had met these statements with a blank denial, and had rejected his Bill ; and that, as the outcome of these transactions, there came the Plan of Campaign. The Government, having produced their Coercion Bill as an answer to the Plan of Campaign, now proceeded to act with the consistency characteristic of English statesmanship in dealing with Ireland and Irish parties. They themselves introduce the Bill which they had rejected when proposed by the Irish members, and intro- duce it after a year's delay. Characteristically, too, the Government which had reached the unsurpassable maximum in coercion for the benefit of the landlords, brought down this measure of relief to the irreducible minimum which would be permitted by the circumstances of the case, and their alliance with the Unionist Party. Again characteristically, the Govern- ment rejected every proposal of amendment made by the Irish Party, and the result was the production of a measure which, while it has afforded some relief, has aggravated some of the very worst difficulties of the Irish situation. 1 ' I believed, as I still believe, that I have taken many opportunities upon previous occasions of saying that there is in Ireland a revolutionary party which relies, upon the support of "the still more revolutionary party in America, who have acquire!! over the minds of the people of Ireland an undue and excessive influence, which has to be contended with and to be overthrown before a final settlement and solution can te arrived at. The conflict with that party was a conflict which was in progress during the whole of these years to which I have referred, when Mr. Gladstone's Government was in power, from 1SS0 to 18S5. That conflict was unhappily suspended when the Conservative Government came into office in 1885 ; and that conflict was still more unhappily absolutely suspended when the late Government came into power on the basis of surrender and concession. That conflict is now being renewed ; that conflicC will now have to be decided one way or the other, and it will not be until the final decision of that conflict has taken place that the field will, in my judgment, be left clear for any Government or any party to propose either a final solution of the agrarian questions which are the real root of the evils of Ireland, or to make a final offer or proposal for a concession to the Irish people of those extended powers and opportunities for self-government which we, as well as any other portion of the people of this country, are perfectly willing to grant to Ireland, to Scotland, or to the peonle of England.'— Times, April 18, 1887. T 314 THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. The Land Bill of Mr. Balfour was founded on the case of Mr. Parnell— that the depreciation of prices had made the payment of the existing rents impossible. It proceeded to enact that judicial rents should be fixed, not from the date at which they were settled, but from the date of the applica- tion of the tenants for a fair rent ; it enacted that the judicial rents should be reduced, and it also enacted that the leaseholders who had been excluded from the benefits of the Land Act of 1881 should be allowed to go into the Courts and have their rents revised. Just a word or two about these provisions. As to the first and the second, these two provisions only carried out demands which had been made by the Irish Party as far back as the Land Bill of 1881 itself, and which had been rejected by the House of Commons. The same demand had been made in Land Bills brought in every single year since 1881 by the Irish Party, and had been rejected every session in succession. The Tory Government was now, after six years of delay, carrying out the proposals of the Irish members, but naturally Mr. Balfour made no acknowledgment of the efforts they had made, and the sources from which he had obtained his proposals. The history of the third enactment throws a considerable light on that high sense of honour and the exalted morality which are so greatly claimed by the Unionist Party. When the Bill was first introduced, it contained no provision with regard to the revision of any rent fixed by the Land Courts. Lord Salisbury, indeed, over and over again declared that under no circum- stances would the Government think of interfering with the judicial rents. Speaking in August, 1886, ' We do not,' he said, ' contemplate any revision of the judicial rents ; we do not think it would be honest in the first place, and we think it would be exceedingly inexpedient.' He was equally em- phatic in April, 1887, eight months afterwards. 'A belief,' said he, 'on the part of men, that they will have to fulfil promises they make is the very foundation of civilized society.' ' You,' he exclaimed, addressing the Liberals, ' are laying the axe to the root of the fabric. You may depend upon it that such interference with judicial rents, attractive as it may seem for the moment, will be dearly paid for by the absolute loss of confidence between man and man.' Mr. Goschen was as emphatic. 'We have refused,' said he, 'a general revision of judicial rents, as has been and is now asked for by the Glad- stonian and Parnellite Party ; we have refused that the rents, all over Ire- land, should again be opened up, and our contention is this, that a periodical or general revision of rents is incompatible with that permanency which should characterize purchase.' And, finally, most emphatic of all was Mr. Balfour. It would, he said, speaking on March 22nd, 1887, be ' madness ' or ' folly ' to break a contract solemnly entered into only five years ago. The speech of Lord Salisbury was delivered some time before the final surrender ; but the speech of Mr. Goschen was delivered on July 6 ; five days after Mr. Balfour came down to the House and announced that the proposal which Lord Salisbury had said was dishonest, and Mr. Balfour had described as madness, had been accepted by a Government which still retained the services of Lord Salisbury's honesty and Mr. Balfour's sanity. The Bill, so far as leaseholders and the fixing of the dates of judicial rents were concerned, was thus satisfactory, because it followed upon the lines laid down by the Irish Party. But on the other points, where it departed from these lines, it was a curse rather than a blessing. Especially the Bill was unsatisfactory in not removing the cause which THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. 3*5 produced the crisis, and the consequent disturbances in Ireland. That crisis was the creation of two circumstances — the excessive rents, and the existence of arrears. Under the plan of the Government, the rents could only be reduced in proportion to the reduction in the prices of produce. This gave a halting and inadequate relief. For instance, the price of produce might rise, and the yield of produce might fall. It is no com- fort to a farmer that he can get double the usual price for his hay if he have less than half the usual yield. It subsequently did turn out, as will be eeen, that the prices did actually rise, while the yield was greatly decreased, and that thus the farmer was actually poorer, whilst the price of his pro- duce was higher. The Land Commissioners, however, unable to consider the question of yield as well as prices, were compelled to raise the rent of farmers who had actually become poorer. But the blot in reference to arrears was even still more serious. This question of arrears lies at the very foundation of the whole struggle going on in Ireland at the present moment. 10n the one side it is arrears that pro- duce evictions, and on the other side ib is arrears that produce the combina- tions to oppose evictions ; and it is evictions and combinations between them that call for the operation of the Coercion Act.~ : As will be seen by-and-by, every single one of the acts of brutality, cruelty, and oppression which the Coercion Act has brought into existence since its baneful birth is due directly to the question of arrears. How, then, did the Government propose to deal with arrears ? Acting on the shallow suggestions of Mr. Chamberlain, they brought in a number of clauses which enabled the tenant to become bankrupt and to make a composition, not only for the arrears of rent to the landlord, but for the arrears due to all other creditors. The proposal requires but a moment's consideration to show its injustice and its unwisdom. The tenant has been made by legislation the co-partner of his landlord in the possession of the soil. He cannot be evicted ; he cannot have his rent raised ; he is entitled to sell his interest, and his interest sometimes brings more than the interest of the landlord. All these things point to the admission by statute of the already existing fact that the tenant is part owner, as he had been part creator, of the property in the farm. The reduction of the rent, which is the landlord's share of the joint profits of the common concern, is, there- fore, justifiable, as in the case of any other partnership. But the relations of the farmer to the shopkeeper are very different. The farmer has not built the house of the shopkeeper, nor made his business. The shopkeeper has had to pay for the goods which he supplies to the tenant, and the refusal of the tenant to pay in full for these goods would be robbery — in the peculiar circumstances of Ireland it would be more : it would be robbery and the basest ingratitude combined. In most parts of the country, the ties of common sentiment have made the shopkeepers and the farmers as united as antagonism of race, creed, and interest have made the farmers and the landlords disunited. There are, of course, instances in which the shopkeepers have yielded to that cupidity which assails the class in every part of the world, and the ' gombeen man,' or rural usurer, is a figure in the rural life of Ireland, as in France, Germany, Hussia, and every other agri- cultural country. But the ' gombeen man ' is not a frequent figure in Irish life. The shopkeeper, as a rule, is the friendly and generous neighbour of the farmer, trusting him and helping him through his seasons of diffi- culty and distress. For instance, the details were given of a case before the Land Commission of 1SS0, in which a shopkeeper of the town of Sligo was owed no less than £8,000 for Indian meal which he had supplied to the THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. farmers of the surrounding district. The story is characteristic. Yellow meal is the lowest and the cheapest form of food, but so poor were the tenants in 1879 — the period to which allusion is made — that they were obliged to get even this food on credit. The proposal of the Government now was that, because the tenant was charged a rack-rent by his landlord, he should be able to rob the shopkeeper of the money for his food. In other words, because the landlord was prevented from robbing the tenant, the tenant was to be induced to rob the shopkeeper. Further, the effect of these bankruptcy clauses would have been to destroy the credit and to deeply impair the honesty of the Irish farmer. With such an easy means of relief, a certain number of these farmers might unquestionably have raised difficulties about paying their debts to the shopkeepers. The shopkeepers in their turn have to obtain credit for their goods from English merchants. Unable to meet their own debts, because cheated by their own debtors, their credit would have been destroyed in England. In fact, there was scarcely ever a provision more cunningly calculated to produce financial chaos, national disrepute, and national insolvency, than this scheme of the combined genius of Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour. The Liberal and Irish Parties, of course, refused to have anything to do with this portion of the Bill of the Government. And then the Govern- ment adopted a strange attitude. They declared that if they could not get the assistance of the Liberal and Irish Parties to pass their proposals, they would drop them. This meant that, while the Government admitted the existence of a great, crying and urgent evil, they refused to apply any remedy, because the particular remedy they proposed was not accepted by their political opponents. When they were proposing a Coercion Bill which the Liberal and Irish Parties regarded as fatal to the liberties and the prosperity of Ireland, they walked roughshod over the Liberal and the Irish Opposition. They applied the gag in its most violent form, and they refused to make the smallest concession. When it came, however, to a measure of relief, they yielded to the smallest pressure from the foes whose most vehement opposition they had a short time before violently over- thrown. The final outcome of the whole business was that while the existence of arrears was conceded, no real remedy was applied. But there was a sham remedy. The County Court Judge was given the right, not to remit the arrears, but to spread their repayment over a considerable period. This is how such a provision worked : A tenant came into Court owing, say, three years' rent of a rental of £10. The rent was reduced to £5, perhaps to less, for reductions of 50 per cent, and upward have been common in recent years. The tenant, therefore, for all future years was compelled to pay £5 instead of £10. Of the £30 he owed then, £15 was rack-rent, but the Land Court had no power to reduce the arrears of £30 to £15 ; its power was limited to spreading the repayments over several years. Of what benefit was it to a tenant, who, being in arrear, may be assumed to have been unable to pay his rent, that he had the privilege of retaining his holding if he were able to pay in a number of years double the rent the Court had decided he was able to pay ? This forecast of the result of this clause was correct, and its suggested benefit was either entirely inoperative or entirely futile. The action of the Government with regard to this question of arrears is made the more striking and absurd by the action of a Liberal Govern- THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. 6 ij ment with regard to the question of arrears in Scotland. In Scotland the Land Commission has the power not merely to reduce the rent, but to reduce or extinguish the arrears. Here are a few examples of the working of the Scotch Land Act under these powers. Crofter. Parish. Old rent. Fair rent. Arrears. Amount. Cancelled. John Nicholson Portree 12 7 2 6 36 18 10 36 18 10 Samuel Nicolson do. 6 13 7 3 24 3 10 24 3 10 Widow Xicolson do. 6 13 7 3 24 13 6 24 13 6 Widow Munro Kelmuir 4 10 2 5 13 10 13 10 Donald Martin South Uist 6 19 6 4 2 7 13 5 18 It has been argued that the cases of the Scotch crofter and the Irish tenant are different. It is said that while the Scotch Land Court is dealing with tenants who have never had their rent reduced before, the Irish Land Court is dealing with tenants who have had their rents reduced under the Land Act of 1881. But this argument does not bear investigation. In the first place the majority of the tenantry of Ireland were still outside the Land Court and without judicial rents at the moment Mr. Balfour's Act was passed. When that Act was passed, 184.204 had entered the Court and had obtained a reduction of rents ; but that number is but a small pro- portion of the half a million who form the entire tenantry. Secondly, the Irish tenant had done everything for land, and the Scotch landlord had done much, though of course not enough, for the land of the crofter. And, thirdly, the rents of the Scotch crofters, though extremely high and unjust, were not so high as those which were imposed on the Irish tenants. 1 Finally, as has been seen, the reductions of the Land Commissioners in the years from 1S81-84 were so inadequate in the case of judicial rents as not to justify the argument that these reductions can be regarded as starting the Irish farmer on a better basis than the Scotch crofter. The second reason given as justifying the difference between the treatment of the 1 1 1 own a small property in my native county, Orkney, -where the conditions of small holding's are very similar to those which prevail in the poorer districts of Ireland, and having paid repeated visits to those districts during the last five or six years, I was led to make a great many inquiries as to the scale of rents and conditions of tenure, as compared with those of my own county. I took my own rents as a standard of comparison, for they represent a fair average of those on large estates, and I do not know that I am either a better or a worse landlord than Colonel Balfour, Lord Zetland, and other large landed proprietors in Orkney. ' The result was this : from a return which I had made four years ago, when Mr. Gladstone's Land Act was before the House of Commons, I had thirteen tenants paying rents ranging from £2 to £60 a year. The average rent was 15s. 2d. per acre, of which 4s. 6d. was interest on outlay for farm-buildings made by the landlord at the tenant's request. This left 10s. Sd., of which quite half represented interest on further outlay by the landlord in making roads, main-drains, and allowing the tenants for a long series of years to pay part of their rent by draining. The rent proper for the land without improvements was certainly not more than 6s. or 7s. per acre, equivalent to 9s. or 10s. for the Irish acre. And this for land very far superior to the average land of small Irish holdings. The best test of the quality of land adapted for grazing and green crops is the sort of cattle it will rear. My tenants used to get £12 to £14, and in some cases a3 high as £16 to £18 a head for two-year-old3 until the great fall of prices which began three years ago. They now get from 25 to 30 per cent. less. ' I believe you might search the West of Ireland through, from Donegal to Kerry, and hardly find a single small holding where the rent is as low as this for land of the same quality ; and you would find thousands where it is far higher for vastly worse land.' — ' The Plan of Campaign,' by Samuel Laing, pp. 7,8. 3*8 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Irish tenant and the Scotch crofter is that the Irish tenant had the advantage of a previous Arrears Act in 18S2. This is true, but the Irish tenant could not take advantage of the Arrears Act of 1882 until he had paid a year's rent, and the raising of this year's rent had thrown back a large number of them into a state of helplessness, out of which the Arrears Act was intended to drag them. This fact, coupled with the revolutionary reduction of prices that came soon after, left the Irish tenant burdened with hopeless arrears. But why argue the question further ? The landlords of Ireland have admitted the justice of the case for dealing with arrears by themselves, giving in the majority of cases voluntary, and in some cases compulsory, reductions, not merely of the existing rent, but also of arrears. In Mr. Stead's 'Extra ' (pp. 20-22) there are two long lists of landlords who had made, or were making, reductions on the half-year's rent of 1S86. In this list reductions are named not merely on non-judicial, but also on judicial rents. Forty per cent, is no uncommon reduction on the non- judicial, and 20 and 25 per cent, on the judicial rents. In the case of Lord Fitzwilliam, the reduction reached the figure of 50 per cent, abate- ment equally on judicial and non-judicial rents. By-and-by, instances will be given in connection with the Campaigned estates, in which there were reductions equally large, not merely on rents, judicial and non-judicial, but reductions far larger on arrears. Suffice it for the moment to say that we have two additions to the three arguments already existing in justification of the Plan of Campaign. To 1. The extra-legal action of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and his subordi- nates, 2. The report of the Tory Commissioner, 3. The enormous increase in the reductions by the Land Commissioners, we must now add : 4. The Act of the Tory Government, rediTcing judicial as well as non- judicial rents. 5. The action of the landlords in making large voluntary reductions on judicial and non-judicial rents. Even this does not exhaust our list of reasons, as will be again seen by vnd-by. Returning once again to the Bill of Mr. Balfour, there was another, ind an even more fatal clause. This was the clause which has since come to be known as the ' eviction made easy ' clause. Under the Land Law of Ireland as it previously existed, a tenant who had failed to pay his rent had to be evicted, and after the actual process of eviction, he had still six months to redeem his land. But usually a period of six months intervened between the time when the Court gave judgment for eviction, and the actual eviction ; and thus the ordinary course was that a period of twelve months was given to the tenant to redeem his holding. The ' eviction made easy ' clause did away with the necessity for evictions in the first instance. All the landlord had to do was to send a registered letter through the post. In this way he evaded the trouble, the expense, and also, it should be added, the disturbance and the scandal of an actual eviction. Under this new process the tenant found himself reduced by the simple receipt of a letter to the position of a caretaker without any rights whatever. This clause, which was the most deadly weapon yet placed in the hands of the landlords — a more deadly weapon than was even proposed in those terrible days of unchecked land- THE PARLIAMENT OF BROKEN PLEDGES. 319 lord tyranny which followed the first half of the century after the Union — was actually defended by Mr. Balfour as in the interest of the tenant. It afterwards proved, as will be seen by-and-by, the most potent weapon in the war against the people. And now we see the position which had been created. The tenants, brought to a position of weakness and insolvency by a gigantic reduction of prices, whether they did or did not owe arrears, were left without adequate relief. Where there were no arrears, the reductions of rent were insufficient, owing to the powers of the Land Commissioners being limited to proportioning the abatement of rent merely to the fall of prices. Where there were arrears, they were left without any relief whatever, for, however great might be the reductions of the Land Courts on the current rent, the landlord was first able to evict on the arrears. Such was the position of the tenant ; what was the position of the great class with which he was still in conflict ? The landlord had at his disposal a stringent Coercion Act. Under this Act he could put down all combination whatever created by the tenants. If any tenant dare to combine himself or to urge others to combine against rack-rent or eviction, magistrates were at the disposal of the landlord, and the tenant found himself inside a gaol. In addition, the landlord had the power of reducing his tenants to the position of caretakers by the ' eviction made easy ' clause. But above all this, the landlord had at the head of affairs a Minister who stimulated him in warring against the tenant, and was ready, not merely to supply him with magistrates to imprison his enemies, but with soldiers and police to carry out his evictions. Such was the fierce and apparently unequal struggle into which th« tenants of Ireland were now plunged. On the one side, overwhelming debt, threatened combination, cruel imprisonment, with chance of death from the bayonet of the soldier and the policeman, and the relentless hostility of a powerful Government. On the other side, all the army, all the police, all the magistracy, all the laws, a Minister callous, cruel, a united Parliamentary majority. We shall see in the next chapter the incidents of the conflict which now ensued. CHAPTER XVI. THE REGIME OF BKTJTALTTY. The new Chief Secretary was not long in giving an example of the new style in which Ireland was to be governed. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach — as has been seen — had employed the previous recess in endeavouring to make peace between the landlord and the tenants. Mr. Balfour at once pro- claimed war against the people. The circumstances of the Mitchelstown Estate have already been briefly referred to, and will be more fully d«alt with presently in this chapter. The struggle was still going on between the landlord and tenants, and a meeting was held on Sept. 9, 18S7,. for the purpose of discussing the position of the tenantry. The main circumstances of the meeting are undisputed. It is one of the many features of English rule in Ireland which brings home the difference between that country and this, that police reporters are sent to nearlv all THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. public meetings for the purpose of making a report which can be used against the speakers. Under Mr. Gladstone's, and indeed under all previous Administrations, the presence of police reporters on the platform had been arranged with the organizers of the meeting, and there had never been the least trouble or disturbance in the matter. The police reporters were not assaulted, and were never even denounced except in a few isolated cases where some dispute ai'ose as to their admission on the platform. The police authorities, under the new spirit which was infused into them by Mr. Balfour, did not consult with' the organizers of the meeting before- hand, but just as the meeting was in progress, they came and endeavoured to push their way through the crowd. There was some resistance, and then the police returned a second time in larger numbers and once more attempted to push their way through the crowd. There was a scuffle and the police were driven back, and finally took refuge in the barracks. It is quite clear that the action of the police in thus attempting to break up a perfectly legal meeting, which had not been proclaimed, was distinctly illegal, and the people were in the right in offering legal resistance. The police, after they had reached the barracks, in a spirit of panic or of vengeance, fired upon the people, and three persons were shot. It has been proved conclusively that at the time the shots were fired there was no crowd in front of the barracks, the scrimmage between the people and the police having finished some distance away, and therefore the danger to the lives of the police — if it ever existed — had entirely passed away. The episode created intense excitement in Ireland, and almost as intense in England. The Parliament had not separated, and the matter was brought immediately before the House of Commons. Mr. Balfour made haste to justify to the fullest the whole conduct of the police, and gave an account of the transaction, not one important detail of which afterwards turned out to be correct. He declared that the police in trying to get the reporter inside the crowd ' did not do so with any violence at all.' Several eye-witnesses testify that the police used the greatest violence ; that the people did nothing further than push, and that some of the farmers who were mounted attempted to block their way by keeping as close together as the circumstances would permit. The mounted farmers indeed, as the correspondent of the Irish Times (Tory and Unionist^confesses, ' were indeed scarcely in a position to move, so close was the press.' ' The police,' says the same reporter, con- tinuing the narrative, ' drew their batons and struck the flanks of the horses severely.' The police in this way advanced some distance into the crowd ; ' here,' continues the correspondent, ' the passage was blocked again, and they proceeded to force their way, using the muzzles of their rifles.' * When the reserve force came up,' says Mr. Conbrough, an eye-witness, ' some were armed with rifles and some with batons, and they made a determined onslaught on the crowd.' ' We struck the horses to keep them from kicking and rearing,' confesses Head-constable O'Doherty. 4 Showers of stones,' said Mr. Balfour, ' were thrown at the police, and they were struck with black- thorns before they drew their batons.' ' Sticks were raised ' is the account of Head-constable O'Doherty, 'and the people were shouting and pushing us back. The horsemen were spurring their horses. Some of the men were struck, and one stone passed my face.' ' I saw one stone,' says Mr. Dillon, ' come from the outskirts of the crowd, go high in the air and drop among the police. I saw no other stones thrown. In a second the police were batoning everyone around them, and men fell beneath the blows as if a hail- THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY, MB. BALFOUE. 'It was not until they were thrown into disorder, and routed by a charge of the men on horse- back — it was not until they were knocked down, wounded, and forced to fly for their lives, until the ma- jority of them took refuge in the barrack, ichich was attached and the door broken, that resort was had to firearms — firstly for the purpose of protecting the barracks, and secondly, for the purpose of pro- tecting the unhappy police stragglers who were still left outside.' Storm of shot had been sent in among them.' 1 Before the onslaught,' says Mr. Conbrough, 1 1 did not observe the people do anything towards them,' meaning the police. The next misstatements of Mr. Balfour are so gross and so significant that I have to put the true and the false statements in parallel columns : HEAD -CONSTABLE O'DOHEETY. • The barrack door was open when the first shot was fired from outside the barrack door. Sergeant Kirwan could have entered the barrack. Constable Leahy was coming up to the barrack at the time. The bar- rack was not broken into before the 'police fired. Stones were thrown, but the barrack door was not broken. / did not get my rifle before Con- stable Leahy {the only straggler) came in. A crowd of four or five hundred persons followed down to the barrack. They were throwing stones at the barrack. The stones were coming from the square. Stones were striking the barrack windows. Tliere were six out oj one hundred and sixty panes oj glass broken 1 . No person was injured by the stones which came towards the barrack.' Mr. Dillon gives testimony which corroborates that of the Head-constable. He had succeeded in getting inside the barrack before the firing began. Thinking that there was a crowd outside -whose attack on the barrack was inducing the fire of the police, he asked to be allowed to address the people, and then he asked to be allowed to go outside. ' They unbolted the door,' says Mr. Dillon, ' and when the door was unbolted, there v:as nobody outside. I walked out, expecting to see a crowd that would have to be dispersed, and / found nobody ; and there were not ten men within sixty yards of the barrack.' Similarly as to the alleged attack on the barrack, Mr. Dillon corroborates the Head-constable. The Head-constable states that out of the one hundred and sixty panes, six were broken. Mr. Dillon says he only saw three. The correspondent of the Standard puts the number of broken panes, like the Head- constable, at six ; but he adds : ' Some of the broken glass lies outside ' — that is to say, some of these panes were probably broken by the policemen pushing their rifles through. And now, as to the manner and temper in which the firing took place, I 6hall again put the true and the false statements in opposite columns : ME. BALFOUE. 'The fire from the barrack was not a random fire — it was not the fire of men who had lost all self- control owing to the treatment they HEAD-CONSTABLE O DOHEETY. ' / got no orders to get my rifle. I went myself. I saw other men taking their arms. I could not say if they went of their own accord. I 21 522 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. HEAD-CONSTABLE O'DOHERTT. went of my own accord to where my rifle was, and brought it down.' Mr. Morphy (Counsel for the Police). ' We admit that Sergeant Kir wan got no order to fire ; but he fired.' CONSTABLE RYDER CROSS-EXAMINED. Who was the inspector who gave the order to advance ? — On my oath I can't tell. Who gave the order to retire ? — I cannot tell you. Was it your superior officer ? — I believe it was. Which of them ? — I cannot say. Was it the same officer who gave you the order to advance that told you to retire ? — Things were so con- fused that I could not tell if it was. On your oath, when you fired did you single out anyone whom you saw stone-throwing ? — I did. Did you single out any person to fire at ? — Yes. On your oath did you swear a moment ago that you did not fire at any single person ? — No ; but ir this way, when one man is in fra&f; of the others. Though the man might be inno- cent ? — I could not tell an innocent man in a crowd. Did you aim to kill ? — I did. To sum up this case, Mr. Balfour described the people as aggressors ; it has been proved conclusively that the police were the assailants. Mr. Balfour described the barrack as attacked fiercely ; it is proved conclusively that there was no attack on the barrack at all that justifies any such descrip- tion. Mr. Balfour asserted that the firing was deliberate and under the orders of the commanding officer of the police ; it is proved that the firing was random and without orders. All these statements do not depend on the word of Mr. Dillon, or any other of the Irish members. They were corroborated by Mr. Labouchere, Mr. J. T. Brunner, the able member for Northwich ; by Miss Amy Mander, Miss Holcroft, and many other English ladies and gentlemen who were present, and, above all, they were proved — as has been seen — out of the mouths of the police-constables themselves. In face of this complete exposure of his inaccuracy, Mr. Balfour has gone on giving false versions of the Mitchelstown massacre. He likewise has thrown the whole weight of his authority on the side of the police. A verdict of ' wilful murder ' was given against them by a coroner's jury ; he got the verdict quashed. The one investigation which has ever been MR. BALFOUR. had received, natural, in my opinion, as such absence of self-control would have been. It was the de- liberate fire of men acting under the orders of their officer, who in- structed them to fire only at those -portions of the mob attacking the barrack, and who did their best to direct their fire at those who were guilty of this assaidt. THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 323 ordered was an investigation of the conduct of the police by the police authorities, and the word of Mr. Gladstone is true, that the deaths of three men in Mitchelstown remain as unavenged as if they had been three dogs. Meanwhile, Mr. Balfour had made no delay in putting into operation the new weapon with which Parliament had armed him. The Coercion Act received the Royal Assent on 17th July, 18S7. On the 22nd he dined with Sir Red vers Builer, then Under-Secretary for Ireland, and both that night and the following day, he had interviews with the divisional resident magistrates, the inspectors, and the Deputy Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and at 4 o'clock on the 23rd, there was a meeting of the Privy Council. That meeting 1 consisted for that occasion of himself, the Lord-Lieutenant, Dr. Ball (ex-Tory Lord Chancellor), Vice -Chancellor Chatterton,who is also a Tory, Mr. Justice Monroe, another Tory, and Lord Chancellor Ashboixrne, better known as Mr. Edward Gibson. Sir W. B. Kaye, Clerk to the Council, Sir Redvers Builer, and Sergeant (now Attorney- General) O'Brien, appear to have been also present at this meeting. At about 5 p.m. the Council broke up, and most of those who had assisted at its deliberations started, apparently in the highest spirits, for Kingstown, where they dined, and where, amidst the pleasures of feasting, they congratulated themselves, no doubt, on their day's work. What had been done at this Council was to proclaim the greater part of Ireland under the most effective clause of the new Coercion Act. This was the first of many breaches of the pledges which Mr. Balfour had made in the course of the debates on the Coercion Bill. ' We hope,' he said on the 27th June, 18S7, ' that the area of Ireland over which it will be necessary to use it will be but a small part of the country ; we hope that for years together it may be possible to allow the Bill to remain quiescent.' Nevertheless, instead of applying the Coercion Act to a 'small part of the country,' he applied it indiscriminately and almost universally. Under the Coercion Act, the Lord-Lieutenant, as has been seen, had power to proclaim the National League as a dangerous association, and to make the membership of it a criminal offence. On 19th August, the proclamation of the National League was agreed upon. This proclamation declared the association dangerous, but it is well to notice the reason which is given for this conclusion. When the Coercion Bill was passing through Parliament, Mr. Balfour — as has been seen — thought it was a Bill 1 to put down crime,' and ever since he and all the Tories and Unionists have pro- claimed, that crime, and crime alone, was aimed at by the different Acts of coercion. By crime, of course, I must again insist that we mean a very different thing from what is meant by such language in the mouth of coercionists. By crime we mean serious offences against the person. Now, if it were considered that the National League were a body which provoked, stimulated, or utilized crime, the Lord-Lieutenant had a perfect right to say so under the clause of the Act which permitted him to proclaim any as- sociation as dangerous. There were five grounds upon which he could so pro- claim. He could do so on the ground that the association was (1), 'formed for the commission of crime,' or (2), ' that it carried on this association for or by the commission of crime,' or (3), that it ' encouraged or aided persons to commit crime.' The Lord- Lieutenant did not care to embody the gigantic lie in a public document that the League was guilty of any one * 'A Year of Unionist Coercion,' by J. J. Clancy. M.P.. pp. 1 and 2. 21—2 324 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. of these things. He accordingly selected out of the five grounds, another. He declared that the League ' promoted and incited to acts of violence and interfered with the administration of the law.' Acts of violence and intimidation and interference with the administration of the law are doubtless questionable acts. But they are not, and nobody in his senses will maintain that they are, what we understand by 'the commission of crime,' or 'the encouragement of crime,' as these terms are used in England. And thus out of their own mouth are the coercionists convicted of the mendacity of their own charges and the fallacy of their own defence of coercion. On the 20th September, about a month later, 200 branches of the League in the counties of Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Clare, Wexford, and Gal way were declared to be suppressed, and under this decree anybody who had anything whatever to do with these branches became liable to six months' imprison- ment. These steps alone, and the grounds on which they were justified, are an additional proof of the case I make throughout against the Coercion Act, that its purpose is not to put down crime, but combination. The landlords themselves so considered it. They immediately were encouraged towards beginning campaigns of evictions, from which they had hitherto abstained. They were not deluded by the talk that the fight was for the suppression of crime, and not for the collection of rents. One of their number put the case so clearly that his letter is worth quoting. It sums up and sets forth the meaning and the purpose of coercion more clearly than the most powerful arguments of an opponent to coercion could do. This gentleman writes : ' I have received a letter from you and ten other tenants on the Coolboj Estate, stating you are "firmly resolved not to pay rent this year unless we get a reduction of at least 35 per cent., come weal come woe." As there is clearly a combination or conspiracy to defraud the landlords of their lawful debts, / have placed the letter in the hands of the authorities, and the result will be that you will all be prosecuted under the Crimes Act ; for what may be perfectly lawful for each tenant individually becomes a conspiracy when tvjo or more combine to do the same thing. * Faithfully yours, 'Robert M. F. Townsend.' 'To Mr. Patrick McCarthy, Coolboy, Skibbereen.' And now we find the two wings and two weapons of the landlords' army acting simultaneously. We have the landlords evicting, and we have Mr. Balfour prosecuting. The first persons whom Mr. Balfour attacked were the newspaper proprietors. ' There is no interference,' he said, when he was introducing the Coercion Bill, ' with the liberty of the press.' He proceeded to carry out this promise by prosecuting Mr. T. D. Sullivan, then Lord Mayor of Dublin, for publishing in his journal the reports of branches which he had declared to be 'suppressed,' and later he followed with the prosecution, for a similar offence, of Mr. Hooper, of the Cork Herald, Mr. Harrington, of the Kerry Sentinel, and Mr. Walsh, of the Wexford People. When he was confronted with the contrast between his promise and these acts, his calm reply was that when he spoke of the liberty of the press, the liberty to which he alluded was in the editorial, and not the reporting columns. So that the press is held to be entirely free if it has power to comment upon events, but not to record then*. THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 325 It «eemed as if this first bio wat the Irish leaders and the Irish press would fail. Mr. T. D. Sullivan was brought before the Chief Magistrate of Dublin, Mr. C. J. O'Donel. Mr. O'Donel holds his office on a very different tenure from that of the resident magistrates. They are re- movable ; his place is permanent. The difference between his conduct and that of the resident magistrates shows the importance of having cases tried by magistrates in an independent position. He refused to convict, on the ground that the Crown had not sufficiently proved the character of the meetings which Mr. Sullivan had reported. At once there was an outcry by the coercionists, who held up their hands in horror at a magistrate who dared to have an opinion different from Mr. Balfour's. The cab-e was brought on appeal to a superior Court, and Mr. O'Donel was compelled to give a conviction. He, however, still acted in a spirit becoming a magistrate, standing independently and impartially between the prosecuting Crown and the defending subject. Regard- ing, as everybody did, Mr. T. D. Sullivan as a political offender, and a man of the highest character, he refused to reduce him to the level of the burglar, the pickpocket, and the wife-beater. He sentenced him to two months' imprisonment, but two months' imprisonment as a first-class misdemeanant — a result almost as disappointing to Mr. Balfour as the original refusal to convict. Mr. William O'Brien, the editor of United Ireland, was another of Mr. Balfour's formidable opponents. Now, as in a previous epoch of trial and struggle, he stood forth to brave and defy all the terrible forces which were at the disposition of the Government. He had taken the most prominent part in the struggle over the Mitchelstown Estate. He was called upon to perform this duty not only as a public man, but as a representa- tive of the particular district in which this estate lay. In this work he received the most valuable assistance from two men whose names will b3 T -and-by become more familiar to the reader, Mr. John Mandeville and Mr. T. J. Condon. Mr. Mandeville was a gentleman farmer, who lived in the midst of the Mitchelstown Estate. The greater part of the land he held was freehold, and had descended to him from his ancestors. He belonged to a good and ancient Irish family. He was at that time a splendid specimen of physical manhood ; he was upward of six feet high, broad- shouldered, robust, and never had had a day's illness throughout his whole life. His fortune was easy, and his domestic circumstances were happy. Married to a superior woman, to whom he was thoroughly attached, he was accus- tomed to spend a great part of his leisure time in adding to his knowledge, and was learning, along with his wife, Latin and Greek at the moment when he was called upon to enter the struggle for the rights of the people. Finally, he was at this time just thirty-eight years of age. He had no per- sonal interest whatever in the struggle on the Mitchelstown Estate. He was not a tenant on the property. He entered into the strife solely from his sense of the duty he owed to his fellow-citizens and his fellow-country- men. Mr. Condon, the other chief figure on this occasion, is one of the members for Tipperary. In presence and character he is a typical Tip- perary man. He is tall, broad-shouldered, resolute, and, withal, good- humoured. He is willing to face any amount of personal danger in the cause of the people ; but when the strife is over, he is the cheeriest of com- panions, the best singer of an Irish song, the brightest spirit of the social gathering. 326 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. And now the time has come to give a short sketch of the facts of the Mitehelstown Estate. All the tenants — numbering 1,200 in all — with either one or two exceptions, were leaseholders. Like most of the lease- holders of Ireland, they were paying a rack-rent, and when the disastrous years of 1885 and 1886 came, they were no longer able to pay. They applied to their landlord for a reduction. The reduction demanded was 20 per cent., and the demand was made by the tenantry in a body. The landlord refused to deal with the tenantry in a body. Each case, he said, would be considered on its own merits. This is a favourite reply of landlords to the demands of their tenantry. It is induced by the desire to set the tenants against each other, and in that way to break up that combination which is the chief protection of the tenant. It is, in fact, exactly the same as the plan adopted by some employers in England, of refusing to deal with their workmen as a trades union, while ready to deal with them as indi- viduals, and has the same motives. Furthermore, the landlord declared that the reductions demanded were too high, and offered reductions de- scending from 15 per cent. The tenants thereupon adopted the Plan of Campaign. Again there were negotiations, the landlord still refusing to treat with the tenantry in a body, and raising his maximum reduction from 15 to Yl\ per cent. The tenants once more refused to accept the terms of the landlord, and writs were issued. The reader has not forgotten the Act of Mr. Balfour. That Act passed into law on August 23rd. The writs were issued shortly before August 8th. These dates must be clearly recollected, for it formed the most important part in the whole dispute. When Mr. Balfour's Act was passed into law, the position of the Mitehelstown tenants was revolutionized. As leaseholders they were, up to that date, without the same privilege as the other tenantry of Ireland, of going into the Land Courts and having their rents judicially decreased. After that date they were, of course, admitted to this privi- lege. If the tenants, however, were evicted, their power to go into the Land Court was gone. It will, therefore, be seen what was the object of the landlord. It was to anticipate the passage of the Bill — in other words, to dash from the Mitehelstown tenantry the cup of relief just as it reached their lips. These were the circumstances that induced Mr. O'Brien to intervene. As he himself put it, he was doubtless guilty of a technical illegality in coming to the relief of his constituents, just in the same way as he would be guilty of a technical illegality if he stayed the arm of the. executioner when he knew, and the executioner knew, that a respite was at the gates. Meantime the struggle proceeded on the Mitehelstown Estate. On August 8th, Mr. O'Brien, Mr. John Mandeville, and others held a meeting once more to protest against the action of the landlords. Imme- diately after Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Mandeville were brought before the resident magistrates. Trial and conviction are synonymous terms when the defendants are political opponents of Mr. Balfour and the magistrates are his official subordinates. Of course Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Mandeville were both convicted. Mr. O'Brien was sentenced to three and Mr. John Mandeville to two months' imprisonment. Both appealed, and the case came on for trial on October 31st, 1887, before the County Court judge. The appeal to a County Court judge is an appeal from a dependent of Mr. Balfour to a political associate of Mr. Balfour. Nearly every County Bench in Ireland is occupied by either a Tory of reactionary opinions, which would be scouted by even the most benighted squire in an English THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 327 county, or by a Unionist who has towards the people of Ireland the characteristic bitterness of a renegade. At the trial of Mr. O'Brien a remarkable and significant scene took place. He believed he had a right to leave the Court while a warrant was being made out for his arrest. The trial was attended by Captain Stokes, who was one of the magistrates who had sentenced Mr. O'Brien in the first instance. Captain Stokes by an easy transition forgot the magistrate and became the police-constable ; and this gentleman, who had actually adjudicated on Mr. O'Brien, himself seized Mr. O'Brien and took him under arrest. A more shameful proceeding has rarely disgraced the annals even of coercion. Mr. Balfour did not think so ; and his action towards Captain Stokes is in itself an epitome of the system of resident magis- trates. Captain Stokes has since ceased to be a resident magistrate, and has become a district inspector. This means promotion in rank and increase of pay. It is thus that, under the regime, of Mr. Balfour, deeds of shame lead to promotion, while deeds of honour lead to the gaol ; and it is thus that resident magistrates are taught that strict impartiality and that anxiety for the liberties of the people which are supposed to be the heritage of judicial tribunals under the English Constitution. Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Mandeville were first taken to Cork gaol. The scene that followed had better be told in the words of Mr. O'Brien at the inquest on Mr. Mandeville : ' I met Mr. Mandeville about four o'clock on the second morning after our arrival in Cork gaol. "That is not the usual hour for rising in the prison ?" — No, it is an extraordinary hour, and a very extraordinary occur- rence. In winter the usual time for rising is a quarter to seven. I was called some time after three o'clock, and the deputy governor, Mr. Oxford, and the head warder unlocked my cell and entered with a lantern. The deputy governor said, " Get up, Mr. O'Brien ; going !" I said, " In God's name ! where at this hour of the morning ?" He said, " We know no more than yourself ; we were routed out of our beds ourselves." I got up, and was brought on the corridor, and I there met Mr. Mandeville. It was bitterly cold and dark.' 1 1 Did you ever read of anything more like a midnight murder V remarked Mr. O'Brien to Mr. Mandeville — words that have a strange significance at this hour. 'I suppose that's just what they are up to,' replied Mr. Mandeville. A short time afterwards Mr. Mandeville made a remark which also has a pathetic and retrospective interest. He was suffering from diarrhoea from the cocoa he had received in the prison on the previous night : ' but,' says Mr. O'Brien, ' he only laughed at it, and said, " It will take a good deal to kill me !" He was,' said Mr. O'Brien, ' one of the most uncomplaining men I have ever met — a man of few words, and those always cheerful.' The prisoners found ultimately that their destination was Tullamore. The reason of their removal to this distant prison was that if they had remained in Cork the tortures which Mr. Balfour contemplated might have been prevented by visits from the mayor and magistrates of the city, who were in sympathy with the political views of his prisoners. In Tulla- more it was thought that, with the magistracy almost entirely in the hands of Tories, they would be left unvisited and unprotected ; that the brutalities and cruelties might be inflicted upon them in the tomb-like silence of the gaol, and that there would be no communication whatever between them and the outer world. Unfortunately for this pretty plan of Mr. Balfour, 1 ' John Mandeville, Martyr,' by Sidney Hallifas, p. 19- 3 2S THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. there were one or two magistrates who were Nationalists, and it was to the publicity which Dr. Moorhead, one of their number, gave to his treat- ment by the gaol authorities that Mr. O'Brien attributes the preservation of his life. But in spite of Dr. Moorhead, Mr. Balfour had now hi3 opportunity. Perhaps the most formidable of all his political opponents was tight in his grasp, and another Irishman, brave, stalwart, and resolute, was at his mercy. He took advantage of the situation with a disgusting cruelty which must ever remain a blot on his name, and an infamy in English statesmanship. He insisted on Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Mandeville being treated as common criminals ; seized their clothes for the purpose of forcing them to put on the prison garb, and, when they refused to yield, punished them repeatedly. The delicacy of Mr. O'Brien's constitution, and the prominent place he held in the eye and the affections of the Irish people, were to him a certain safeguard ; but with Mr. John Mandeville, Mr. Balfour thought he was safe, and Mr. Mandeville accordingly felt the full force of his cowardly vengeance. Mr, Mandeville had resolved to do nothing which would recognise the contention of Mr. Balfour that his offence was of the same disgraceful character as that of an ordinary offender. On two points the contest between Mr. Mandeville and the prison authorities, acting under the instruc- tions of Mr. Balfour, turned — they turned on whether Mr. Mandeville •would wear the prison dress and whether he would clean out his cell. For refusing to comply with the regulations on these points, Mr. Mandeville was sentenced by the governor of the gaol, or by a magistrate. The governor gave the following list of these punishments at the inquest : November 5, twenty-four hours' bread and water. November 14, three days' bread and water. November, twenty-four hours' bread and water. December 8, forty-eight hours' bread and water. December 20, two days' solitary confinement in punishment cell. All these days of punishment have a tragic history of their own, which is told in the evidence given at the inquest, or in letters written by Mr. Mandeville long before his death, and, therefore, long before he could have contemplated their being used against his political opponents. When Mandeville entered prison — as has been said already, and as was sworn to by his widow at the inquest on his remains — he never had had a single day's illness. ' I had known him since a child,' swore Mrs. Mande- ville. ' I always looked on him as an amazingly strong man and very healthy. Between our marriage and the time he was sent to prison, on the 31st October last, he was always a strong and healthy man. I don't re- member his being in bed for even one day through illness.' But Mande- ville was not long in prison when he began to show symptoms of physical decay. On the 10th of November Dr. Moorhead reported in the visitors' book : ' He complained of sore-throat, and his breathing seemed embar- rassed.' It has been suggested that all the statements with regard to Mr. Mandeville were invented after his death for political purposes, and to excite a storm of indignation against Mr. Balfour. The entry which proves the existence of sore-throat was made many months before Mande- ville's death, and nearly all the other evidence I shall quote will be evidence which was placed on record before his death, and therefore cannot have been manufactured afterwards for the purpose of damaging a political adversary. THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 329 Let us come to his second term of punishment — of that terrible time we have a description in the words of Mandeville himself. He wrote a letter, dated the 2nd of January, to Mr. Sydney Hallifax — he did not die for six months afterwards — and here is his description in this letter of what he went through : ' The punishment diet always makes me ill. I was obliged to give up taking water with my bread, and had to swallow the latter dry, or an attack of diarrhoea was the result. This attack generally lasted for three days, and on one occasion for more than six. I complained to the governor in presence of Dr. Moorhead (a J. P. for King's County) of the unfairness of putting me on punishment dietary, as a double penalty of illness after starvation was inflicted upon me, and stated that if the law allowed starva- tion, yet he had no right to injure my health. His reply was that the medical officer of the prison made no such representation to him, having certified me fit for punishment, and that as I had refused to comply with regulations of the Prison Board, he was compelled to punish me in the proper discharge of his duty. 'At this very time I was suffering from a cold and bad sore-throat, and being medically treated for the latter, besides being generally out of con- dition, the doctor must have known, as he saw me daily. Yet I was sen- tenced to seventy-two hours' punishment. After being fourteen hours on punishment dietary I got a violent attack of diarrhoea. I complained to the doctor that day. Yet as some prison test, unnecessary to mention, did not satisfy him, I was kept on punishment for thirty hours longer. On this occasion I remained twenty-four hours without taking any food, as the dry bread hurt my throat, and I feared to use water to moisten the food, knowing from former experience its effects. I certainly felt very ill and miserable, but hunger was not my punishment. I have all my life been able to endure want of food without suffering much pain, such as numbers of people complain of ; but I consider I was being savagely ill-treated, because the prison physician said I was not ill, and Dr. Moorhead had ex- pressed a contrary opinion. However, I got so very ill and weak, and the prison physician's test having been satisfied, I was allowed off all punish- ment on the evening of the third day and put upon medical treatment. The only change made in my ordinary prison food was white bread sub- stituted for brown. Next day I was very weak and tired after a couple of rounds of the exercise ring. I did not recover my general health for fully a week.' There is one scene finally which deserves record. On the evening of the 22nd of November the governor of the gaol entered Mandeville's cell ; roused him out of bed ; tore off his own clothes — which he was wearing at the time — even took away his shirt, and left him thus the choice of putting on the prison clothes, or of finding temporary cover in the bed-' clothes. Mandeville adopted the latter alternative. He wrapped himself in a quilt and sheet. The remainder of the story will be told in the words of Dr. Moorhead : ' On the 23rd, the day after the forcible removal of his own clothes, I found Mr. Mandeville,' says Dr. Moorhead, ' walking about wrapped in a quilt and a sheet. He had no other clothing on him, not even a shirt. He was barefooted. He complained that his clothes had been forcibly taken from him the previous evening by several warders, after a struggle. He protested against the treatment and demanded his clothes. His legs and feet were perfectly bare, and his chest and one of 330 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. his arms. The floor of the cell was flagged, and the weather at the time was the usual winter weather. I visited him next day, and he was then attired in prison garb. That day he told me the quilt and sheet were taken from him. He was left the choice of going perfectly naked or putting on the prison clothes, and he adopted the latter alternative under protest. I think he remained twenty-four hours naked before putting on the prison-clothes.' Finally, as to what John Mandeville suffered in prison, there is the testimony of his widow. It is asserted by Mr. Balfour and by one of Mr. Balfour's agents — of whom more presently — that Mr. Mandeville left the prison in perfect health. Here is the description which Mrs. Mandeville gave of his appearance when he re- turned home after his release : ' He returned,' she told the coroner's jury, •from Tullamore on Christmas Eve.' ' Was his appearance then much altered ? — Yes, his lips were quite blue, and he had become pale and very thin. His eyes were very sore ; he could not read at all by lamplight, and in the daytime he could only read with difficulty. He always wrote a fair, firm hand before he went to prison ; for a month after he left prison he could hardly write at all, or only with great difficulty. He complained of the weight of his overcoat, and com- plained that he could not walk the mile from his house to Mitchelstown. ' Can you tell any incident to indicate his strength, Mrs. Mandeville ? 1 Witness : He used to carry me upstairs and he never did it after he left prison. 1 Did he try to do it ? — He did once, and I remember him saying that I had got very heavy. He told me after he left prison that he never re- covered his strength, and there seemed to be always some little thing the matter with him. At one time it was his throat, and he complained of having a bad tooth. I noticed for a month before he died that he had great difficulty with his throat, and he complained of his throat being sore and of weakness.' Next, as to his prison treatment, here is what Mrs. Mandeville had to say : 1 Did he tell you the whole of his prison life ? — Yes ; he told me the whole of his prison life. He told me more than he told any person in the whole world. • What did he tell you of his prison life ? — . . . He complained very much of his throat after he came home. He complained to me that the doctor did not believe him about his throat, and that he frequently certified that he was fit for punishment when he was not fit. . . . He told me that while his throat was sore he was three days on punishment diet. He told me that his throat was so sore during that time that he could not eat the punishment diet, brown bread, and could not drink the cold water ; that he took nothing to eat for more than twenty hours, because he could not eat the bread or drink the water. He told me that one, I think, of the Tang prisoners in the gaol had given him a rope, and that he tied it round his waist, and as he suffered more and more from hunger he tightened the rope (great sensation in court). He said to me that Dr. Moorhead said to him that he was seriously ill, yet that Dr. Ridley seemed to think that he could stand the punishment. • Did he say anything as to the state of his mind ? — He told me that from hunger his mind wandered, and he told me — of course it was in confidence between husband and wife — he told me he prayed to God that he might die rather than go mad (sensation). THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY, 331 * Did tie say anything about a scrap of food he got in prison ? — He told me one incident. He told me that there was a warder one day outside his cell door — one of the ordinary warders, not a friendly warder — and that the warder evidently was eating his dinner outside the door, and he said he opened the door and ' he threw me in a scrap of meat as I would throw it to Rover ' — that is our dog — and he said he never in his life enjoyed any- thing so much — it was a mere tiny scrap.' Such is the story — the shocking and terrible story — told by Mrs. Mande- ville v-ith regard to her husband. One of the many delicate suggestions which Mr. Balfour has made in the course of this controversy is that Mrs. Mandeville invented this entire story. But if she invented the story to damage Mr. Balfour, she must have begun the process of invention before she could ever have contemplated that her husband's treatment would become one of the weapons against Mr. Balfour. The evidence I have quoted was given after the death of Mr. Mandeville, and so might have been invented for the purpose, Mr. Balfour has suggested ; but unfor- tunately for that theory, Mrs. Mandeville said exactly the same things before, as after the death of her husband. First, as to his appearance after he came out of prison. ' He was very thin and weak,' wrote Mrs. Mandeville, on January 7th, to Mr. Hallifax. ' I was horrified when I saw him,' she wrote to Mrs. Tillyard, of Cambridge, at the same period. Then, as to the terrible story in which he is repre- sented as tying a rope around his waist and his fearing madness, here is an extract from the same letter to Mrs. Tillyard : ' His cell was flagged and bitterly cold. I wonder my husband did not go mad. He tied a rope round his waist, which he tightened as hunger grew worse.' As to Mrs. Mandeville's statement about the scenes when he was sentenced to three days' punishment, nearly all are exactly the same as those which have already been quoted from a letter which Mr. Mandeville wrote himself shortly after his release from imprisonment. There is one other witness as to the circumstances of John Mandeville's death who must be mentioned. For the purpose of investigating the treat- ment of the political prisoners. Mr. Balfour obtained the services of a Dr. Barr. Mr. Balfour denies all responsibility for the selection of this par- ticular gentleman ; but it seems a singular coincidence that a man should be selected for this work who was an active Tory, an official of the Tory organization, and a man of strong Tory connections in Liverpool. Whether it were these facts or not that led to the selection of Dr. Barr, it is certain that he proceeded to his work in a spirit of the bitterest partisanship. At the time that Mr. Mandeville was in Tullamore Gaol Dr. Ridley was the physician. Everybody knows now the character of this un- happy man. He was apparently a weak man with strong instincts of humanity, afraid to give his instincts any rein lest he should lose his appointment. The first thing that Dr. Barr did was to warn Dr. Ridley that if he showed any indulgence to the prisoners under his charge the forfeiture of his place would immediately follow. The result of it was that Dr. Ridley at once agreed to the punishment of the prisoners immediately after every visit of Dr. Barr. Alderman Hooper, who was in gaol at the time, narrates how Dr. Ridley came in terror to announce an approaching visit of Dr. Barr, and removed him in consequence from the hospital back to his cell. In one of his letters written by Mr. Mandeville after his THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. release, from which quotations have already been made, there is an allusion to Dr. Barr. It confirms the suggestion of Mr. Hooper, that the purpose Dr. Barr fulfilled was that of hounding on Dr. Ridley to the more brutal treatment of his prisoners. ' In justice to the doctor,' writes John Mande- ville in a letter of January 2nd, ' I must say that I complained of being kept on punishment, and stated all these facts to a medical inspector from the Irish Prisons Board, who said the prison doctor should act as he did, according to the instructions he received, if he discharged his duty properly, and that if he did not do so, he could be dismissed at twenty-four hours' notice from the Prisons Board. I complained also about being punished by being put on bread and water, knowing, as the doctor did, that it had in- jurious effect upon me, and the only observation he made was that I did not get enough punishment.' But we need not go further than the evidence of Dr. Barr himself as to the spirit in which he performed the work assigned to him by Mr. Balfour. In his evidence at the inquest he declared that Mr. Mandeville's death lay at the hands of the doctors who attended him, and that Mrs. Mandeville's statement as to the appearance of her husband after his release could not possibly be true. With the following extract we may finally dismiss Dr. Barr : ' The MacDermot : Now I ask you another question, and take time to recollect, if you wish. Did you say to any gentleman in Liverpool that Mandeville was a great scoundrel and did not get half enough, or deserved what he got ? — I may have used words to that effect (sensation and mur- murs in court).' John Mandeville died on July 8th. The conduct of Mr. Balfour after his death was even worse than the cruelty by which he had brought Mr. Mande- ville to a premature grave. He kept silence on the subject until he spoke at a Tory meeting in Glasgow. Mr. Balfour has since attempted to explain away as best he could the tone of that speech ; and if it did no other good, it had the effect of making him a little ashamed of himself for the first time since he undertook the Chief Secretaryship of Ireland. The speech certainly did require an apology ; and if the apology of Mr. Balfour had been frank, it might have been something of a reparation. But the apology was an audacious denial of what was true. Mr. Balfour denied that he had joked over the grave of Mr. Mandeville ; but the record of the speech and of how it was received remain, and across every line is written the cynical delight of the speaker in the story he was telling, and uproarious delight of the audience that heard it. What is even worse, Mr. Balfour sought — slyly and by insinuation rather than by open statement — to blacken the character of a man he had done to death by a calumny as unfounded as ever assailed the fame of the living or the dead. In the report which was published in the Glasgow Herald, a Unionist journal, on the day after the speech was delivered, the reader is constantly met with 1 laughter,' ' shouts of laughter, ' etc. In this speech there is a description of what Mr. Balfour calls 'the engagements' of Mr. Mandeville. He gives the following account of Mr. Mandeville's doings, the minuteness of which gave to the shocked con- science of the country an insight into the system of political espionage which Unionist government and coercion demand in Ireland : ' On the 21st May he drove home late at night, having taken part in a drunken row ; on the 30th May he attended an open-air demonstration ; and then, on the 3rd June, attended another open-air meeting, and made THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 333 afterwards % speech on the 4th June ; he attended on the 5th June another meeting, and the day was pouring wet, and he was out in it all day (laughter) ; on the 6th J une, which was also a wet day, he took part in a demonstration ; on the 14th June he was in Fermoy in the evening, and remained in a public-house till after ten o'clock (laughter), and then he drove home (renewed laughter) ; on the 17th he spoke at Killiclig, and on the 18th headed a mob at Fermoy ; on the 22nd June he was in court, and on the 25th June he was in another public-house at Fermoy at 11.30.' 'And so on,' properly commented William O'Brien, ' with the astound- ing record of where he was on such a day, what house he visited, whom he saw, what he said, what hour he left home, and what hour he returned — a picture worthy of the most loathsome traditions of Russian despotism or of the dark cabinets of Fouche - and Vidocq.' There is scarcely an item in this long list which does not convey a false impression. In the first place, Mr. Balfour did not take the trouble to inform his hearers that the work of agitation on which Mr. Mandeville was engaged was that of encouraging the people against an iniquitous blood- tax of one thousand pounds which had been awarded to one of the constables injured in the scrimmage at Mitchelstown. The constable when he was injured was engaged in an illegal act, and if he were entitled to compensation, should have got it, not from the people who were resisting illegalitv, but from the Government which had given him the illegal orders. Furthermore, Mr. Balfour did not tell his audience that while this large sum was being collected at the point of the bayonet for the injured constable, the blood of the three innocent men whom the police had shot down had remained unavenged. No man had been put on his trial, not one penny of compensation had been given to the families of which they were the bread-winners. Their deaths had been as little thought worthy of inquiry as though they had been ' three dogs,' to use again the vigorous but appropriate phrase of Mr. Gladstone. This contrast between carelessness as to the lives of the people, and the unjust fine for the injury to the constable, more than justified Mr. Mandeville's opposition to the blood-tax. Furthermore, the public-house, of which Mr. Balfour speaks frequently, with, of course, the palpable suggestion that Mr. Mande- ville was in the habit of carousing and quarrelling with rowdies, is a respectable hotel, where the Nationalist leaders met to arrange for baffling the emergency men. The two or three nights on which Mr. Mandeville was away from home were nights when the collectors of the blood-tax were making raids on the people's cattle in the middle of the night, and Mr. Mandeville was there to warn them in time. The final argument Mr. Balfour employed to prove that Mr. Mandeville's death was not really due to prison treatment was the fact that Mr. Mandeville after his imprisonment had spoken cheerfully. The reply of Mr. O'Brien is con- clusive. 'The cheery words of a brave man,' said O'Brien, 'were tortured by the Chief Secretary into a correct account of his real state of health.' Such is the story of Mr. John Mandeville. It deserves to be told at length because of the light it throws on the meaning of coercion, and on the character of Mr. Balfour. But it only differs from many another case in the fact that in the case of Mr. Mandeville it was fatal, while in the others it has only resulted in terrible mental, and sometimes in terrible physical, suffering, and in the permanent weakening of health. The treat- ment of Mr. Hooper, Mr. Lane, Mr. Sheehy and Mr. Blane was just aa brutal. 334 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. I extract from Mr. Clancy's pamphlet, ' A Year of Unionist C^srcion' (pp. 126-131), the following summary of the indignities and tortures in- flicted on different Irish members under Mr. Balfour's regime, : Mr. David Sheeht, M.P., for a public speech — 1. Arrested and denied bail pending trial, although his wife was dangerously ill. 2. Taken to an empty cell for refusing to take off his clothes, knocked down by five warders, and stripped of his clothes by force. 3. Left naked in the cell for two hours, with an open window, which faced the north and was out of reach. 4. Put by force in prison clothes, and conveyed to another cell, where he flung off the prison clothes, except the shirt and drawers, which for four- teen days were his only clothing in the day-time, the month being December. 5. Put on bread and water (or punishment) diet for refusing to clean his cell. 6. Roused up at an early hour on 3rd January, forcibly dressed in prison clothes and his own overcoat, and (he having cast away the prison cap) brought a long journey bareheaded before his own constituents, and into the courthouse at Portumna, as a witness in the case of Mr. Blunt. 7. Put to sleep on a plank bed. 8. Fed on prison food. 9. Imprisoned for one month as a common felon ; imprisoned afterwards for another speech for three months as a first-class misdemeanant — the change in the treatment being due to the humanity of the County Court judge who heard the second case on appeal. Alderman Hoopek, M.P., for publishing in his newspaper, the Cork Herald, reports of public meetings — 1. Stripped of his clothes by force and clad in prison garb. 2. Put on bread-and-water diet, and kept in constant confinement for five days, for refusing to clean out cell utensils. 3. Suffered from diarrhoea as result of bread-and-water diet, and com- pelled to go to hospital for ten days. 4. Prevented from taking exercise, and confined in a cell 14 ft. by 6 ft. for twenty-four days, because he would not take it in company with two criminals who were in prison for stabbing. 5. Put on plank bed. 6. Kept in prison for two months. Mr. W. J. Lane, M.P. , for a public speech — 1. Stripped of his clothes by force and clad in prison garb, 2. Put on bread-and-water diet for eight days. 3. Confined to cell twenty-two days. 4. Rendered unable to sleep eight nights. 5. Put on plank bed. 6. Kept in prison one month. Mr. J. B-. Cox, M.P., for a public speechj — 1. Clad in prison clothes (his own clothes having been taken out of hia cell the first night). 2. Put on plank bed. THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 3jS 3. Put on bread-and-water diet, which caused diarrhoea, whereupon removed to hospital for ten days by doctor's orders. 4. Kept on prison fare remainder of the term. 5. Put to picking oakum like ordinary criminal. 6. Kept in prison for one month, and afterwards another month as a first-class misdemeanant. Mr. Douglas J. Ptne, M.P., for a public speech — 1. Stripped of his clothes by force and clad in prison clothes. 2. Kept in cell without a fire, which brought on chilblains on ears, whereupon removed to room in hospital ; also suffered from diarrhoea. 3. Set to picking oakum. 4. Locked up in cell from 5 p.m. to 11 a.m. every day, and out only half an hour every Sunday morning when at church. 5. In prison six weeks. Mr. James Gilhoolt, M.P., for a public speech— 1. Made to sleep on a plank bed. 2. Stripped of his own clothes and put in prison clothes by force. 3. Fed on prison fare and put on bread-and-water (or punishment) diet for several days. 4. Kept in close confinement for several days for refusing to take exercise with ordinary criminals. 5. Kept in prison for fourteen days, and for a further period of fourteen days for an alleged assault on a policeman, which was sworn by several respectable persons to have been committed only after Mr. Gilhooly had himself been assaulted. Mr. Edward Harrington, M.P., for publishing in his newspaper, the Kerry Sentinel, reports of public meetings — 1. Imprisoned for one month as a common felon. 2. Clad in prison clothes. 3. Brought in prison clothes from the gaol into the court-house in Tralee — the county town in the division of Kerry which he represents in Parliament — to give evidence in the case of his brother, Mr. T. Harrington, M.P. 4. Fed on prison fare. 5. Put on plank bed. Mr. William O'Brien, M.P., for a public speech, the object and result of which was to save a large body of tenants in his own constituency from extermination, and to enable them to take advantage of the Land Act of 1887— 1. Imprisoned for three months as a common criminal. 2. Having refused to take off his own clothes and put on prison clothes, was for six days after committal subjected to constant threats of force. 3. Put on bread-and-water (or punishment) diet for several days in suc- cession for refusing to wear prison clothes. 4. Had his clothes stolen while he lay asleep, and thus rendered unable to get out of bed at all for several days. 5. Subjected in his cell to the torture of night alarms and constant Bpying. ' 6. Denied the use of pen and ink or pencil, and compelled to send a letter out of prison written with a pin in his own blood. 336 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. 7. Kept in a cold and airless cell and made to sleep on a plank bed for a considerable time. 8. Threatened with tubercular disease in consequence of his treatment, and so wasted on his release that his medical attendant forbade his taking part in any public work for a time, and ordered him to go abroad for the benefit of his health. Mr. O'Brien, it should be explained, suffered some years ago from lung disease. This was the treatment of Mr. O'Brien during his first imprison- ment : with the brutalities practised on him during a second imprison- ment the country is ringing even at the moment these pages are being written. I have but little space to give an account of the working of coercion in its different phases. A volume as large as that which I have to devote to the history of nearly half a century of Irish history would be required to tell the tale in its completeness. There are several works already published to which I must refer the reader for further details than I can give — notably the diary of coercion by Mr. T. Harrington, M.P., and the excellent pamphlet, 'A Year of Unionist Coercion,' by Mr. J. J. Clancy, M.P., to which I have already alluded. Let me extract from these pam- phlets just a few typical cases. It has been seen how editors of news- papers have been attacked because of the publication of reports of meetings, but these were not the only persons attacked. One of the most instructive cases is that of Dennis Macnamara, of Ennis. The following is a brief record of the action against him : — 1. On 26th November, 1887, he was convicted of the crime of selling copies of United Ireland and sentenced to seven days' imprisonment. 2. On the 24th of December he was con- victed of the same crime and sentenced to two months' imprisonment with hard labour. 3. On the 7th of January, 1888, he was prosecuted for dis- playing in his window a transparency representing the harp and shamrock and bearing the words ' God save Ireland !' and fined two pounds. 4. Police were posted outside his shop to take down the names and addresses Df those who went in and out, apparently with a view of destroy- ing his business as a grocer. 5. On the 16th of December, 1887, the police entered his house, ransacked his shop and all his private apart- ments, and carried off without payment thirty dozen copies of United Ireland. Even young lads were arrested for the same offence, but the crime in their case was refusing to sell, instead of selling. When the case was brought before Mr. Balfour, his answer was that they had not been arrested because of their connection with the newspapers, but for drunkenness, street obstruction, and the like. Whenever the Chief Secretary has to answer a peculiarly hard case, he can always take refuge in such charges as street obstruction of the police. The prosecutions for boycotting have also been very numerous under the Coercion Act. I may say at once that I regard boycotting as morally justifiable and politically necessary under the present condition of Ireland. I have written in vain the many pages which precede this if I have not shown to the reader that the most fatal weapon in the hands of the landlords against the rights and lives of the tenantry has been competition unchecked by combination, or — as it used to be — even unchecked by the hopelessness of paying the rent. Unchecked competition has been found fatal by the Labour of all nationalities and of all kinds in thia struggle with Capital, and Labour has taken refuge in THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 337 Trades-Unionism, which is a check on unrestricted competition. It is too late in the day now to argue that this is a necessary defence of the working classes. No man is bold enough to deny it, and in the statute law of England the right of the artisan to combine for self-protection is fully recognised, and even jealously safeguarded. In Great Britain the combina- tion of the artisans is occasionally broken by a man who from weakness, timidity, or selfishness, prefers his own interest to that of the order to which he belongs. Such men are reprobated by their fellows, and are known by the appropriate epithet of ' knobsticks.' The f knobstick ' of England is the land-grabber of Ireland. But the land-grabber is in some respects worse than the ' knobstick.' As has been insisted so often already, the tenant is the partner of the landlord in the possession of the soil. When the landlord seeks to escape any part of the loss that falls on the tenant in a bad season owing to depreciation of prices, he is acting as a dishonest partner who wants to take all the profit to himself, and leave all the loss to his partner. The land-grabber, then, who takes an evicted farm is nothing more or less than a receiver of stolen goods. Eurther, the feeling against the land-grabber is naturally justified and intensified by the special position in which Ireland is at the present moment. The position is the same as if a great strike were going on in England. When we have a gigantic strike in England, the working men as a rule abstain from any acts of violence, though occasionally the exasperation caused by hunger, and the hunger of their children and wives, does lead to breaches of the peace. But unquestionably the period of strikes makes the feeling against the ' knobstick ' much more bitter than at any other period. The Irish tenant, and, indeed, the Irish people generally, are on strike against unjust landlordism and coercion at this moment ; and the land-grabber, who at such a crisis in the history of his class and of his country, takes the side of the enemy, subjects himself naturally to popular indignation. I would like to know what would happen to an Englishman who, if we were in- volved in a war with France, would act as an ally of an invading French army. Whenever a people has been fighting against a tyrannical rule, the enemies of the country have been treated with scant forbearance. Mr. Clancy quotes the example of the Italians in the days of Austrian tyranny — a tyranny which had no enemy more resolute than Englishmen. 'A stranger,' says the writer, describing Venice at that period, ' in Venice finds himself planted between two hostile camps, with merely the choice of sides open to him. Neutrality is solitude in Venice, and friendship with neither party. The Italians do not spare one of their own number if he consorts with their Austrian masters. There is neither social nor com- mercial intercourse between the two parties. Yet it must not be supposed that the Italians hate the Austrian residents as individuals ; they are simply hated as the means by which an alien government is imposed on a people believing themselves born for freedom and indepen- dence.' If any further defence of boycotting were required, it would be found in the action of the very men by whom the prosecutions for boycotting are instituted. The Frimrose League in England is one vast organization for the purpose of boycotting. Anybody acquainted with the rural parts of the country will know of stories of the vengeance which the Frimrose League works on the labourers who dare to express Liberal principles, or vote for a Liberal candidate. In some towns, the system of boycotting ia even pursued against teth the shopkeepers and the workmen. There are 22 333 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. instances where the Primrose Dames have pointed to the closed window* of rural shopkeepers in proof of their power, and of the danger of voting for the Radical candidate. And in some parts of the country there is a system by which workmen are tracked from village to village, from mill to mill, from mine to mine, because of their political principles. And over these organizations the Marquis of Salisbury frequently presides, and its officials include every prominent leader of the Tory Party. It is the organizers of this system of social and political tyranny who make hypo- critical appeals to Heaven because the Irish farmers, with their backs against the wall, do not overflow with love for the thieves and the traitors who rob them of their property, and ally themselves with their enemies. But while saying these things with regard to boycotting, I freely acknowledge that it marks an unhealthy and even a hateful state of feeling and of circum- stances. It is no more to be commended, except in such exceptional times as now exist, than are those rude arts which prevail in the time of war. The cure, however, for boycotting will never come until Ireland is free from the struggle in which she is now engaged, and until her people are ruled by her own laws and by her own public opinion. The Government have used the clause against boycotting in the interests of landlordism, and their magistrates have been so anxious to do their work that they have convicted people of boycotting without the smallest vidence. Under the clauses in the Coercion Act the crime of boycotting is to induce other people to conspire to boycott. But to induce a conspiracy to boycott and to boycott are not the same thing. The one is an act you in- duce others to do ; the other is an act you do yourself. The one is the act of a combination ; the other is the act of an individual. This is a distinc- tion which even the lay mind can appreciate, but it was not a distinction which made itself clear to the legal luminaries who sit on Mr. Balfour's magis- terial bench. It was the confusion of these two different things that led to the now famous Killeagh case. Four shopkeepers living in Killeagh, County Cork, named David Barry, David Lindon, Thomas Heaphy, and Thomas Barry, were convicted by Mr. H. A. Redmond and Mr. J. C. Gardiner of the crime of boycotting under the Coercion Act. The solicitor who appeared for the defendants protested that the conviction was illegal, and over and over again asked that the case should be stated for a superior Court for the purpose of testing the question. But the magistrates dis- missed the demand as frivolous, and it was not until Mr. Healy, by a series of tactics at once bold and skilful, succeeded in moving the Ex- chequer Division of the High Court, that the case came to be tried. The Court not only held that there was a case, but reversed the decision of the magistrates. ' I am bound to say,' said the Lord Chief Baron, ' that I do not find one shadow of evidence in this case.' ' And I entirely concur in the conclusion arrived at by the Lord Chief Baron,' said Mr. Justice Andrews, ' that there is absolutely no evidence to sustain the convictions that have been pronounced. ' Though Baron Dowse differed in some points from his colleagues, he made some remarks on the character of Mi Balfour's magistrates which are well worth reproduction. ' Appeal,' he said, ' is given by the Act of Parliament in certain cases, and a case must be stated by the justices if they have a difficulty on a point of law. But I fail to see that they had a difficulty on a point of law. They evidently considered themselves infallible, and they had no difficulty of any kind.' * The justices,' he said elsewhere, ' were asked to state a case for the opinion of the superior Court, which thev declined to do. There are several things I THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 339 have never been able to understand in the course of my life, and one of them is the mind of local justices, or how they bring their minds to bear on a case ; and I am less able to understand, very often, the state of mind of the justices of whose legal competence the Lord-Lieutenant has been entirely satisfied. Now, these justices (I never saw either of them, and never heard of them except once I heard of one of them), how they have satisfied themselves that the point made here is a frivolous one, I cannot comprehend.' 'Why, these justices,' he said in another part of his case, 1 did not in a proper way state a case for a superior Court surpasses my comprehension. I hope for the future they will be wiser, and they will not be of opinion that a point practically decided by the majority of the Court of Exchequer, substantially decided by the majority, and practically decided by the whole of it, that that is a frivolous point.' And then Baron Dowse quoted this passage from Finlay's 'History of Greece': '"Where true liberty exists, every agent of the Administration, from the gendarme to the Finance Minister " — I suppose that will include a resident magistrate of whose legal know- ledge the Lord-Lieixtenant is satisfied — "must be rendered personally re- sponsible to the citizen whom his act affects for the legality of every act he carries into action. This is the real foundation of English liberty, and the great legal principle which distinguishes the law of England from the laws of the Continental nations of Europe and that of Rome, from which they are derived." ' Well might Mr. Gladstone declare that this case was ' a travesty of justice, as gross, as palpable, and as shameful, as any that ever disgraced even the career of Judge Jeffreys. ' In face of this gross and palpable case of injustice, what was the attitude of Mr. Balfour ? He stood up for the magistrates in face of this damning testimony against them. In one of those bursts of feminine petulance which overthrow all the fabric of his mendacity, he at once confessed his absolute control of the magistrates he had always previously described as perfectly independent, and at the same time showed that no mistake, pro- vided it were against the liberties of the people, would receive even reproof from him. ' The right hon. gentleman,' he said, replying to Mr. Gladstone, ' asked me if I was not going to dismiss them. I am not going to dismiss them.' 1 This is the proper place to supplement what I have already written with regard to the resident magistrates. No condemnation of these persons can be more crushing than a Parliamentary return issued by the Government themselves. That return, in its plain nakedness, is as astounding a display of the kind of instruments despotic Governments are willing to employ as even the annals of French Governments could produce. To appreciate some of the facts which will be quoted from this return, the reader should be reminded that these gentlemen have to deal with the law of conspiracy — one of the most delicate and difficult laws even for the highest judicial knowledge and experience ; that these gentlemen have to pronounce sen- tence on the men whom Ireland regards as her best and most important citizens ; and, finally, that before any of these gentlemen are allowed to adjudicate on Crown cases, the Lord-Lieutenant had to pronounce himself satisfied of their legal knowledge and competence. Here, then, are the names and previous occupations of some of these Solons : 1 Hansard, vol. 827, p. 1377. 22—2 340 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Names of the Resident Magistrates before whom Coercion Act cases were tried. D. G. Bodkin ... Colonel Bowlby T. Butler Major Caddell ... Colonel Carew ... H. F. Considine Colonel Connolly George R. Cronin T. J. Dillon ... R. J. Eaton R. C. Evanson ... T. W. French ... Vesey Fitzgerald John O. Gage ... J. C. Gardiner ... T. D. Gibson ... T. Hamilton ... A. M. Harpur ... R. Harvey Benjamin Hill ... Major Hutchinson J. B. Irwin W. J. Joyce Colonel Longburne J. F. Lynch R. A. Massey ... G. D. Mercer ... A. J. M'Dermott J. S. M'Leod ... J. T. M'Sheehy Captain M'Ternan Major O'Brien ... W. F. Purcell ... W. J. Paul Captain Peel Colonel Persse ... H. E. Redmond Major Rolleston Cecil Roche Captain Segrave Colonel Stewart Captain Stokes ... Occupation of these Magistrates before their appointment. Civil Engineer and Militia Officer. Officer in the Army. Country Gentleman. Officer in the Army. Officer in the Army. Kept terms for the Bar, but was not called. Officer in the Army. Constabulary Officer. Justice of the Peace. Barrister-at-Law. Officer in the Army. Surveyor of Income-Tax. Political Officer in India. Officer in the Army. Constabulary Officer. Constabulary Officer. Constabulary Officer. Constabulary Officer. Constabulary Officer. Superintendent of Devon County Con- stabulary. Officer in the Army. Constabulary Officer. Constabulary Officer. Officer in the Army. Officer in th e Army and Resident Magis- trate in West Coast of Africa. Lieutenant in the Rifles. Constabulary Officer. Constabulary Officer. Constabulary Officer. Justice of the Peace. Barrister-at-law and Militia Officer. Officer in the Army. Constabulary Officer. No occupation. Officer in the Army. Officer in the Army. Officer in the Army and Constabulary. Militia Officer. Barrister-at-Law. Officer in Cape Infantry. Officer in the Army. Officer in the Army. 'Officer in the army,' 'constabulary officer,' 'militia officer' — such are the classes from which Mr. Balfour has got his tools ; and it is well known that in men of such a class tyranny has always found its most brutal THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 341 and its most pliant instruments. 'Kept terms for the Bar, but was not called ' — that is the qualification of another of the gentlemen who have to decide the most delicate questions of law, who can send William O'Brien and John Dillon to gaol — with whose legal knowledge the Lord-Lieutenant is satisfied ! Two of these gentlemen deserve a few words of special notice. When the history of this painful time comes to be written, the name of Mr. Cecil Roche will stand out in special infamy. He has been the ruffian par excellence of the magisterial bench. The harshness of his sentences, the brutality and insolence of his demeanour, his trickery, mark him out as the embodiment of the foul system which Mr. Balfour carries out with so much gusto. He goes to his work with the gusto of natural brutality. Indeed, his appetite for ruffianism is not sated with his preformances on the bench. When he had sentenced Mr. Edward Harrington at Tralee, he left the bench to head a baton charge of the police on the crowd that cheered Mr. Harrington. When the evictions were proceeding at the "Vandeleur Estate Mr. Boche looked on at the operations, it is said, helped to direct them, and then, when the tenants were brought forth from their ruined hemes, wounded and bleeding, Mr. Boche sat on a wall, in a billycock hat, and sent them to gaol. Mr. Latchford, a highly-respected Brotestant gentle- man of Tralee, a justice of the peace, was one of those who joined in a public protest against the ruffianism of Mr. Boche. A short time after- wards Mr. Latchford was brought before Mr. Boche. The offence with which Mr. Latchford was charged arose out of a dispute as to a water- course between him and another gentleman. It had as much right to come before a Coercion Court ae a quarrel about a washerwoman's bill ; and if it did come before such a Court, a personal enemy was not the magistrate to try it. But Mr. Boche remained on the bench, and had the satisfaction of sending Mr. Latchford to gaol. The case was afterwards brought before a higher Court and the sentence was decided to be illegal ; but Mr. Latch- ford had to serve his term of imprisonment, and Mr. Cecil Boche remained on the bench. Erom that seat he has recently pronounced the sentence of six months' imprisonment on Mr. Edward Harrington, which has been found savage and. unjustifiable by even Tories. To complete the fellow's history it should be stated that Mr. Boche jumped from the platform of the Loyal and Batriotic L~nion to the magisterial bench. He delivered lectures for that body — which subsequently acquired the valuable services of Mr. Houston — during the election of 18S6. Brobably, like most of the orators of that organization, he denounced the Irish leaders as traitors and assassins. In a few weeks he was privileged to send these political opponents to gaol on trumped-up charges and for manufactured crime. Such is the law and the order w T hich Irish patriots are denounced for not respecting ! Captain Segrave is another of Mr. Balfour's instruments. It was he who was in supreme command of the police and military at Mitchelstown on the day of the massacre. . On him primarily devolved the responsibility of preserving the peace at that place on that memorable occasion. At the inquest on the bodies of the men murdered there, Captain O'Neill Segrave was a witness. Here is a bit from his cross-examination by Mr. Harring- ton, M.B. ' Where did you get your legal training for the position of B>.M. ! — I had no legal training. 342 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. 'And, Captain, where did you get your military training?— In South Africa. ' A very good place, I suppose, to train a man to deal with an Irish crowd. Did you ever get a commission in the home army ? — Never. 1 Did you try ? — I did. • Did you fail ?— I did. 1 Did you try once more, Captain ? — I tried once more for the preliminary examination, and I passed the second time. ' Did you try again ? — I tried a third time for the commission and failed, not very ignominiously, I must say.' Let us drop the curtain for the moment on this worthy magistrate with the statement that he was publicly dismissed from the Cape forces for em- bezzlement ! It has been said that several of these magistrates were appointed by Lord Spencer. It is true ; but they were not appointed for, and certainly they did not discharge, such work as Mr. Balfour has entrusted to them. A man may be a good resident magistrate when he has nothing beyond the ordinary duties of a police magistrate, and be at the same time utterly unfitted for such terribly serious work as administering a Coercion Act. Besides, the glory of the appointment of Mr. Roche and Capt. Segrava belongs to the Tory Party. In spite of the authoritative declaration by the justices as to what the real law of boycotting was, boycotting prosecutions of exactly the same kind as that of the Killeagh case went on before such magistrates as these, and the persons convicted were still kept in gaol, though their case was, from the legal point of view, exactly the same as that of the Killeagh prisoners. Thus at Miltown-Malbay, Thomas O'Brien, Martin McDonagh, John Maguire and William O'Dwyer were prosecuted on a charge of having taken part in a criminal conspiracy to compel and induce certain persons unknown (!) not to work for certain members of the Royal Irish Constabu- lary, but no evidence of conspiracy to induce was given. The only evidence given was that the accused had themselves refused to supply horses and" cars to the police for the purpose of preventing a meeting of the suppressed branches of the National League. There was not a tittle of evidence to show that they had conspired to induce or compel other per- sons to refuse to supply horses and cars to the police, which would have been the evidence required under the Killeagh decision. But they were each sentenced to one month's imprisonment, and they each underwent the sentence. On the same day and in the same place John Maguire, Joseph Maloney, Martin Heaney and Patrick Reidy were charged with a criminal con- spiracy ' to compel or induce certain persons to refuse to shoe a horse for Mrs. Maroney.' Again the only evidence was that these persons had each refused to shoe a horse, but not a tittle of evidence of conspiracy was pro- duced, and, nevertheless, three of these blacksmiths were sentenced to a month's imprisonment with hard labour ; 4 because,' as Mr. Clancy puts it, ' they had themselves each refused to deal with Mrs. Moroney, they were assumed to be guilty of a conspiracy to intimidate other blacksmiths (who did not even exist in Miltown-Malbay) into treating her in the same way f 1 Four other persons were charged with the same conspiracy as to Hannah Connell, and when they appealed, their sentence was increased to six i • A Year of Unionist Coercion,' p. 34. THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 3^3 months' imprisonment with hard labour. Again there was no evidence whatever of conspiracy. In County Clare a number of farmers were sentenced to two, three, and even four months' imprisonment with hard labour, because they refused turf to the police, although it was proved (1) that some of the defendants had to buy turf for themselves, and (2) that the police acknowledged that they had sufficient turf in the barracks. Perhaps even a worse case was that of twenty-four publicans, also in Miltown-Malbay. On the 4th of February, 1888, a number of persons were to be tried in the town for conspiracy, and the priest, fearing a disturb- ance, induced the publicans to close their shops so as to avoid the drunken- ness which might lead to a disturbance. The police rushed about the town, knocked at everypublic-house door and demanded drink. They were refused, and the publicans were then prosecuted for conspiracy. A number of them were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour. The scandal was aggravated by the admission that the police had in their barracks as much ' refreshment ' a3 they required. 1 "When I come to sum up the purposes for which coercion has been employed, it will be seen why these boycotting prosecutions were instituted. With similar vindictiveness the sections of the Coercion Act have been carried into operation which made criminal the membership of a suppressed branch of the National League. No less than 71 persons were tried for this offence up to Whitsuntide of 1888 — 49 were convicted, and for this artificial, manufactured offence eighteen people were sentenced to between one and two months' imprisonment with hard labour ; sixteen to between two and three months' imprisonment with hard labour, and actually three persons were sentenced to between five and six months' imprisonment, but without hard labour, for simply taking part in a meeting of a suppressed branch. Finally, by way of giving some idea of the lawlessness which now usurps the name of law, it will be well to give a few specimens of what may be called 'the curiosities of coercion.' The prosecutions for member- ship of the National League have already been referred to. It might, at first sight, appear somewhat difficult to prove membership of the League, unless by the evidence of spies and informers. But the resident magis- trates could do the work of Mr. Balfour in" spite of all such obstacles. At Tarbert, on the 25th of January, 1388, nine men were prosecuted for having attended a meeting of the suppressed branch of the League. Captain Massey, the resident magistrate, who pronounced the decision of the Court, thus laid down the ground on which evidence of the guilt of the prisoners had been brought home to the judicial mind of himself and his colleague : ' In this particular case we should be satisfied, of course, that there was a meeting of the Irish National League held upon this occasion. We are. of opinion that there is presumptive evidence of a National League meet- ing, throwing the onus of proof on the other side.' 2 Major Rolleston, another resident magistrate, according to a report in the Cork Herald, even more candidly reversed the ordinary principle that innocence must be assumed until guilt is proved. A man named John Ronayne was being tried at Galbally, County Limerick, for unlawful assembly. ' How do you know,' said Major Rolleston to the prosecuting policeman, ' that he ' (meaning the accused) 1 had not thrown a stone V Mr. Barry, the solicitor for the prisoner, pointed out that this question 1 'A Tear of Unionist Coercion,' pp. 40 and 41. » lb., p. 78. 344 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, was somewhat unfair. ' It implied,' said Mr. Barry, * a presumption of guilt, whereas one of the most common principles of English law was that a man was to be deemed innocent until he was proved guilty.' Major Rolleston : ' Oh ! that has now come, not to be generally accepted a principle of law? Mr. Barry said he was inclined to think with Major Rolleston, having in view the manner in which the Crimes Act was administered. 1 * At Omagh, according to the Freeman's Journal, a ballad-singer was sent to prison for a month for singing a song, of which the following is the most treasonable passage : ' Shout hurrah for Home Rule, For we must have our own ; For Englishmen are with us, We're no longer alone. Shout hurrah, boys, and the landlords' eyes will get sore, When they read of this meeting to-day in Dromore.' 2 A large number of persons have been sent to gaol for no worse offence than that of ' booing ' Mr. Balfour. Of course, that was not the offence with which they were charged. The police were able to add ' riot, unlaw- ful assembly,' or some other charge, which was either a pure invention, or their method of describing the excitement which their own aggressiveness produced. Perhaps the palm should be given for the invention of grotesque cases to that brought against Maurice Moynihan and Thomas Quinlan, who at Tralee Petty Sessions, and before Mr. Cecil Roche and Mr. R. Fitzgerald, were charged with laughing and booing at Sergeant Clarke. The police-constable examined on behalf of Sergeantr Clarke described the offence committed by the prisoners as not exactly a boo, but a contraction betioeen a boo and a laugh. 'The defendants,' continues the report, 1 were bound over to keep the peace, or to go to gaol for a month. They were lodged in the county gaol, and were escorted,' continues the report, 1 by a large force of baton men.' 3 And now what is the source of all these prosecutions? A few figures from an excellent little work by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre — ' Incidents of Coercion ' — supply the answer in a very complete manner. The principal struggles between the landlord and tenant have been on the estates of Lord Clanricarde, Lord Massereene, Mr. Vandeleur, Mrs. Moroney, on the Michelstown and the Ponsonby Estates, and, quite recently, on the estate of Mr. Olpherts. If an analysis be made of the prosecu- tions under the Coercion Act, it will be seen that far and away the greater number — indeed, it might be said all the principal cases — are associated with these estates. Thus, no less than 160 persons have been sent to gaol in connection with the Clanricarde Estate ; fifty-four persons in connection with the dispute with Mrs. Moroney ; thirty-three persons in the dispute on the property of Lord Massereene ; and some forty cases in connection with the dispute on the estate of Mr. Vandeleur. Forty-one persons have been sent to gaol, or are awaiting trial, in connection with the Olpherts Estate. Of the 1,700 prosecutions which had taken place up to the time at which Mr. Lefevre wrote his book, 1,200 convictions are to be traced directly or indirectly to the disputes on these and other estates. 4 Again, the disputes on these estates are to be traced to the existence of • * A Year of Unionist Coercion,' p. 79. 2 lb., p. 111. 3& 4 ' Incidents of Coercion.' THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 345 arrears, and the absence of any method of giving legal relief. If this be a true statement of the origin of the dispute on the Clanricarde, on the Vandelcur, on the Ponsonby— in fact, on all the estates where there is a struggle — the fight is mainly upon arrears of rent. As, again, the prose- cutions under the Coercion Act are also on these estates, it follows that coercion is for the purpose of collecting arrears. I have now, by a series of undeniable facts and unanswerable arguments, brougnt the case of coercion to this point — that coercion is a weapon for the payment of arrears ; and having brought it to that point, let us see what is involved. First, the pretence that the Coercion Bill was required to put down, or has been employed to put down, crime, is proved to be false. Secondly, the assertion, which has been so often denied, that coercion is for the landlords, for the collection of their rents, for the oppression of their tenants, is proved conclusively to be true. Thirdly, the statement, which has been denied with equal vehemence, that coercion is not against the Combination of tenants, is proved to be false. And, finally, coercion, after all, is shown to be not for the maintenance of the Union, not for the preservation of the Empire, and assuredly not for the defence of a higher morality. No ; as Mr. Frederic Harrison puts it : ' The Coercion Act is thus part and parcel of the campaign of eviction. Every clause and every prosecution is used in the interest of the rent — that is to say, the rack-rent — of the landlord. This whole contest between us is not really a political question, nor even a social question ; in essence it is a question of money.' 'What,' he says justly, 'the Act of 1887 practically accomplished was this : it threw the who]e power of England, armed with the arbitrary machinery which on the Continent is called " the state of siege," into the hands of one party in an economical struggle. It armed the rich and the Protestant Englishman, already equipped with all the legal machinery which chicanery could invent,- with what is practically martial law, to enable him to crush the wretched Catholic peasantry, and wring from them the last sixpence which organized force can screw out of abject weakness.' 'And this,' exclaims Mr. Harrison, with justifiable in- dignation, ' is the gigantic, permanent systematic wickedness which you cover with the name of morality, justice, and honour.' 1 Finally, what a light all this story throws on the sagacity of Mr. Balfour and his confederates ! The question at issue between the Irish - tenants and the landlords is not one of even one million pounds sterling — probably it is not much more than one-tenth of that sum. The Govern- ment might have settled this question by giving to the Land Commission? rs of Ireland the same power as they have given to the Land Commissioners of Scotland — the power of dealing with unjust arrears as well as with unjust rent. Instead of that, they prefer to sacrifice life ; to destroy all liberties ; to imprison the men most honoured and loved by the Irish people ; to torture them in prison ; and to keep Ireland in a state of turmoil, exas- peration, and seething hatred. And this is the policy deliberately adopted by the men who claim to be able to govern Ireland with greater wisdom than her own people and her own leaders ; and all this is done by those who profess to work for the happiness of Ireland and for the consolidation of the Empire ! Before I come to the episode with which this account, for the moment, must close, I have to give one more instance of the strange difference * ' An Appeal to the Liberal Unionists, 34<5 THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. between the pledges of the Ministry when the Parliament was coming into existence and the Acts to which it afterwards consented. I asked the reader in the previous chapter to take special note of the attitude adopted by the Tory and the Unionist candidates at the election of 1886 with regard to the question of Land Purchase. In the session of 1888 the Government announced that, in spite of their protests to the contrary at the General Election, they had resolved to bring in a Bill for placing five millions sterling at the disposal of the Purchase Commissioners in Ireland, to enable tenants to buy out their holdings. A breach so regardless of solemn political engagements at first almost took one's breath away. The report that the Government intended to propose such a measure was at first discredited, and it was only when the announcement was made in the House of Commons that the story was finally believed. Everything was added to aggravate the original breach of pledge. The Government, ■which had wasted time on other business, which had brought Parliament together for an autumn session on the distinct understanding that Estimates, and Estimates alone, would be discussed, suddenly announced that the Bill would be taken de die in diem, or, in other words, rushed at break-neck speed through the House of Commons. It declined to adopt any amend- ments — even amendments necessary equally in the interest of the Irish tenants and the English taxpayers. It was proved conclusively that as long as the question of arrears was left unsettled, the tenant did not approach the landlord in that spirit of independence which was necessary to enable him to make a fair bargain. Instance after instance was given in which the landlord used the arrears as a lever to force the tenant into the purchase of his holding, not on the terms which he himself would freely choose, but on the terms which the landlord was enabled to impose. It was pointed out how the landlord, with coercion on the one hand to break down combination, and arrears on the other to enforce eviction, came to the tenant with an offer which the tenant would be more than human to resist, especially when the certainly of immediate eviction was on one side, and the remote possibility of a future insolvency on the other. The honest and statesmanlike plan, of course, would have been to have introduced clauses which would have settled the question of arrears ante- cedent to any scheme of purchase. But the Government refused to deal with the question, and pushed the Bill through without any provision as to arrears. On the 18th of April, 1886, a thunderbolt fell on the political world. On that date the vote was to be taken in the House of Commons on the second reading of Mr. Balfour's Coercion Bill. It was not by an accident • — as we now know — but by set purpose, that on that very day the Times published the letter attributed to Mr. Parnell. The letter was in these words : « 15/5/82. •Dear Sir, ' I am not surprised at your friend's anger, but he and you should know that to denounce the murders was the only course open to us. To do that promptly was plainly our best policy. ' But you can tell him and all others concerned that though I regret the accident of Lord P. Cavendish's death, I cannot refuse to admit that Burke got no more than his deserts. * You are at liberty to show him this, and others whom you can trust THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. also ; but let not my address be known. He can write to House of Commons. 'Yours very truly, 'Chas. S. Paenell/ The leading organ took care to set forth this extraordinary document with every form of display which is at the disposal of a printing-office. The letter was given in facsimile, and was spread over several columns ; the first leading article was devoted to it, and, in fact, no method of concen- trating public opinion upon it was neglected. There was little or no necessity for these devices. The letter standing alone was quite sufficient to in- tensely excite the whole political world. For days, and even weeks, no other subject occupied so prominent a place in the public mind. The Tory Party were almost ready to declare that the days of Mr. Parnell's political career were ended, and that with the end of his career would come also the end of the last and the greatest movement for Irish liberation. The letter was considered so important that it was telegraphed to every part of the world, and it appeared also in facsimile immediately after its appearance in the Times in nearly every important paper in America, from New York to San Francisco. It was propagated by the Tory Party in pamphlet, in leaflet, and in placard. A by-election was going on at Taunton the moment of its appearance, and a circular was immediately issued to all the electors with a copy of the facsimile letter. Mr. Chamber- lain was also engaged at the same time in one of his periodical Scotch tours, and Mr. Jesse Collings, his servitor, having received the announcement of the letter by telegram, was so carried away with his exultation that with- out further delay he announced the death-warrant orthe Irish leader amid his own open delight and the cheers of his audience. The facsimile letter was not by any means the first attack that had been made on Mr. Parnell and his colleagues. For several days previously the Times had pubhshed a series of articles entitled 'Parnellism and Crime.' These articles were characterized by sly insinuation rather than open suggestion, but the charges were deadly enough. They amounted to a declaration sufficiently explicit that Mr. Parnell and his colleagues associ- ated with murderers and dynamitards, knowing them to be murderers and dynamitards ; that they were privy and accessory to their plots of outrage and crime ; that Mr. Parnell had personal connivance with the hideous assassinations in Phoenix Park ; and that the Land and National Leagues had, with the knowledge and connivance of Mr. Parnell and his associates, used crime as a means of propagating their policy. Since the Times has been brought face to face with these accusations, it has made a considerable withdrawal from its original position ; but the following passages, among many, wiD show that the description just given does not exaggerate the suggestions in the articles : April 18, 1887 {Publication of the Forged Letter). 1 In-Concluding our series of articles on " Parnellism and Crime," we intimated that, besides the damning facts which were there recorded, unpublished evidence existed which would bind still closer the links between the " Constitutional " chiefs and the contrivers of murder and outrage. In view of the unblushing denials of Mr. Sexton and Mr. Healy on Friday night, we do not think it right to withhold any longer from public know- ledge the fact that we possess, and have had in our custody for some time. 34§ THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. documentary evidence which has a most serious bearing on the Parnellite conspiracy, and which, after a most careful and minute scrutiny, is, we are satisfied, quite authentic. We produce one document in facsimile to-day by a process the accuracy of which cannot be impugned, and we invite Mr. Parnell to explain how his signature has become attached to such a letter.' April 19. ' We have in our possession several undoubted examples of Mr. Parnell's signature, with which that of the letter has been carefully compared, and we repeat that, in our deliberate judgment, there can be no doubt of the genuineness of the latter.' April 21. ' It is a matter of no consequence to us whether Mr. Parnell attempts to vindicate his character or abstains from doing so. In the first case we shall substantiate our charges.' April 25. ' But never have we acted under a graver sense of responsibility, under a stronger conviction of obligation, than in the present controversy.' July 6. ' These charges, we acknowledge, are " grave " and " terrible," as Lord Coleridge calls them. We have brought them forward, however, under the fullest sense of responsibility, and with perfect readiness that they should be sifted to the bottom.' July 13. c We are prepared with our proofs of the genuineness and authenticity of the letters read by Sir Richard Webster.' Mr. Parnell and his colleagues for a long time were disposed to take no notice whatever of these attacks. The palpable neglect with which they were regarded by the general public, who looked upon them as simply a rechauffe of old charges, inclined the Irish members to think that any publicity given them would simply enable their enemies to divert the public mind from the policy of the Government in Ireland, and from the great and essential question of Home Rule. However, their enemies were deter- mined not to let the Irish members rest. The Tories affected a hypocriti- cal concern for the character of the Irish Party. Sir Charles Lewis came down to the House one afternoon, read one of the attacks of the Times, and taking up, unasked, the position of advocate of Irish members, moved that the article be taken as a breach of the privilege of the House. This move was taken, of course, with a view of forcing the hand of the Irish members. It was probably imagined by Sir Charles Lewis that the Irish members would have shrunk from the attack, and would thereby have allowed public opinion to go still more strongly against them. The public passion had by this time been aroused and inflamed by the manner in which the charges of the Times had been repeated, reiterated, and pro- pagated by Tory speakers and Tory journals throughout the country ; and the temper of the more ignorant portion of the country had been worked up into one of the periodical hurricanes of hatred and misunderstanding to which Irish leaders have been exposed at every stage of their career. To THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 349 the surprise of Sir Charles Lewis the Irish members, instead of refusing, immediately accepted the challenge. They declared that they were quite ready to have the entire indictment against them investigated, and investi- gated forthwith. They proposed the tribunal which above all others was marked out by precedent and by the circumstances of the case. They were members of the House of Commons, and it was as members of the House of Commons that they were assailed. The almost universal precedent had^. been that when charges were brought against members of the House of Com- mons, as such the House of Commons made itself the guardian of the honour of its members, and proceeded to investigate the charges and pronounce upon them. The Irish members accordingly moved that the charges should be investigated by a committee of the House of Commons. They asked for no restrictions upon that body. They even were ready that, as their enemies had a majority in the House of Commons, so the committee should con- sist of a majority of their enemies. Then took place a counter-move on the part of the Government, which will show the degradation to which their breach of pledges by the Unionist Party had brought them. For weeks they had been making political capital out of these charges. By every form of incitement and insult they had been daring the Irish members to meet these charges, and they had interpreted the silence of the Irish Party as an admission of the most heinous guilt. At last the men accused of assassination and treason had turned upon their foes. They offered to meet the charge which had been so fiercely pressed upon them ; consented to test before a tribunal even of their enemies the whole indict- ment out of which so much capital had been made, and the answer of the Unionist Party was the doubly cowardly one of neither withdrawal from the charges, nor the grant of an opportunity of having them investigated. Indeed, the whole conduct of the Unionist Party in this controversy is full of a low trickery that one would have thought impossible in English politics, and especially on the part of the party that has been described as essentially the party of English gentlemen. The Government throughout have been professing to act with perfect impartiality between the Times on the one side and the Irish members on the other. But Mr. Smith, the leader of the Tory Party in the House of Commons, had in his other capacity, as head of a great publishing firm, done more than the Times could do itself to spread the articles throughout the country. On every one of his bookstalls throughout our vast railway systems the pamphlets containing the articles were exposed and even pressed for sale. The counter-proposition by which Mr. Smith and his colleagues now met the demand of the Irisn members was this : They proposed that a criminal prosecution should be entered against the Times, and that the Attorney- General should be instructed on the part of the Government to prosecute for the Irish members. The very impudence of the proposition almost took men's breath away. Here was the Government that was profiting by these calumnies, that had made them part of their political stock-in-trade, that were now resorting to every possible expedient to evade an inquiry into their truth or falsehood — here was this Government actually pro- posing that the Irish members should entrust their defence to a member of the Government. The Irish members at once saw that what they were asked to enter into was a collusive action in which the Government, while professing to fight their cause, would be acting as the spy and the friend of their enemies. It will be seen by-and-by that the subsequent conduct of the Attorney- General gave but too much ground — in fact, entirely con- 350 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. firmed the suspicion ; for it was this very gentleman who was to honestly and fearlessly prosecute the Times on behalf of the Irish members that has since been the leading advocate of the Times in prosecuting these charges against the Irish members. In the hands of the Attorney-General the Irish members would have been as safe as the revolutionary conspira- tors were in the hands of the now famous Major Le Caron. - This audacious and dishonest proposal of the Government was rejected by the Irish members, and then the Tories — having for the moment run away from the charges — returned to them, and once more began to propa- gate the charges which they had not had the courage to test. This, again, is conduct that may well be examined as showing the clearness of the title of the Tory Party to the distinction of being the party of English gentle- men. The Tories now asked that Mr. Parnell should go before a London jury. Indeed, they went further, and expressed their astonishment that he did not go before any jury. If he did not like a jury in London, said Mr. Goschen, then let him try a jury in Edinburgh, and if he didn't like a jury in Edinburgh, why, let him try one in Dublin. Mr. Parnell declined to place his fortunes, and those of his party, before a London jury. There is no necessity for going at any length into the reasons which prompted this decision. It is known that London juries consist mainly of that prejudiced and ill-informed class of small Tories who are not intellectually capable of giving a verdict on a question with so many various and broad aspects as a political movement ; and it was because they knew the incompetence and the partiality of the tribunal that the Tories so strongly insisted on recommending it to Mr. Parnell. Before a committee of the House of Commons, on the other hand, the evidence would be given in accord with the rules of common-sense, and not under the strict and technical rules which guide law courts. The tribunal would have consisted of political partisans, it is true, but then one side would have its representatives as well as the other ; and if men acted as partisans, they would do so openly. Besides, it was felt by Mr. Parnell that he would have been able to bring evidence so convincing of his innocence of the main charge brought against him, that even his most bitter and most un- scrupulous enemies would be shamed into giving a verdict in his favour. However, the Tories rejected the appeal to a Parliamentary committee, and Mr. Parnell rejected the appeal to a London jury ; and so the matter seemed to have come to a lame and impotent conclusion. It was revived in a curious and unexpected way. Among the members of the Irish Party for a portion of the Parliament of 1874 and all the Parlia* ment of 1880 was Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell. He has shown himself a man of considerable ability ; was a ready, though not an effective, speaker ; and had abundant self-confidence, much energy, and considerable strength of character. His efforts, however, were rendered null by overwhelming self-esteem. Coming into Parliament shortly after Mr. Parnell, he had never forgiven that gentleman for beating him in the race for the leadership ; if the word ' race ' can be fitly applied to Mr. Parnell, who never sought any honour in his whole life. Torn by impotent ambition, he had adopted an uncertain course — at one time supporting, at another attacking his col- leagues. At an epoch in Irish history when for the first time the Irish people were thoroughly united, these efforts to produce discord were strongly and justly resented, and when the General Election of 1885 came, Mr. O'Donnell did not venture to put himself forward as a Parliamentary candidate. The allusions to Mr. O'Donnell in the articles of the Times THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 352 were very few, and, indeed, were not very severe. Nevertheless, Mr. O'Donnell, with characteristic want of consort with his colleagues, took an action for libel against the Times. The Times vainly protested that they did not mean to attack Mr. O'Donnell ; that they had never regarded him seriously as one of the trusted colleagues of Mr. Parnell, and as one of the real leaders of the Irish movement. Mr. O'Donnell went on with his action. Left to fight almost entirely with his own resources, and with no distinct charges against him, Mr. O'Donnell was not able to make any case, and the whole business ended in a fiasco. The trial, however, had the effect of once more calling attention to the articles in the Times, and once more the demand arose, that Mr. Parnell should take some steps to meet the charges made against him. The Government, meantime, had given another specimen of the spirit of impartiality which they had pro- fessed ; their own Attorney- General — whom but a few months before they had offered as advocate to Mr. Parnell — had acted as the chief advo- cate for the Times. Mr. Parnell again demanded that his character should be investigated by a committee of his colleagues, and again the Government met him with a counter-proposition. They proposed to refer the charges to a tribunal of judges. Mr. Parnell eagerly accepted it, imagining that the Government were going to act in good faith. As has been said already, it was the fac- simile letter which had first attracted attention and first given any import- ance to the articles in the Times. It was also the first definite charge made against Mr. Parnell. With regard to the other charges in the articles, they involved matters of speculation, which must remain matters of speculation to the end of time. Whether this or that political movement was conducted in a legitimate or illegitimate manner is a ques- tion that the Muse of History will never completely decide. Whether the effect of this or that speech is to encourage crime, or to discourage it, is again a matter of speculation upon which political partisanship gives, and will always continue to give, conflicting verdicts. These are matters which it is grotesque to refer to a judicial tribunal which has to deal, not with the probabilities of speculation, but with matters of fact. What re- quired investigation was whether or not Mr. Parnell could be proved by definite act to have connived at or plotted crime, and especially whether he had written letters which in some cases were a condonation, and in others a distinct incitement to crime. For since the publication of the letter of the 18th of April, the Times had fathered other epistles on Mr. Parnell. Here, for instance, is one : ' 9/1/82. «Dear E., ' What are these fellows waiting for ? This inaction is inexcuseable } our best men are in prison and nothing is being done. 1 Let there be an end of this hesitency. Prompt action is called for. * You undertook to make it hot for old Forster and Co. Let us have some evidence of your power to do so. ' My health is good, thanks. ' Yours very truly, 'Chas. S. Pabnell.' In spite, however, of the protests of the whole Liberal and Irish Party the Government would set no scope or limit to the inquiry. It was to be ths investigation, not of the characters of particular public men, but of two 352 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. great political movements ; or, as Mr. Matthews more comprehensively put it, of ten years of Irish history. Mr. Parnell protested again and again against the unfairness with which he had been treated ; the Government went on. There were, however, some murmurs at the evident breach of faith, and Mr. Chamberlain came to the rescue of the Government. He declared that the letters must form a leading, if not the principal, subject of inquiry. This speech was made on the second reading of the Bill. People not sufficiently acquainted with the character of Mr. Chamberlain imagined that when the measure got into committee he would make some effort to make good his own words ; but this showed an imperfect appreci- ation of Mr. Chamberlain's character. Mr. Chamberlain is not bound by any previous utterances, nor is he ashamed to break any pledge, or to prevari- cate as to it and explain it away. Accordingly, when the Bill came into committee Mr. Chamberlain joined in steadily voting down every amend- ment which attempted to carry out his own description of the purpose of the Bill. Afterwards the chivalrous gentleman was found in the honour- able position of one of Mr. Walter's touts for evidence to back up the case for the Times. There were several stormy scenes during the debates on the Bill. It was elicited, for instance, that Mr. Smith, while actually preparing the Bill, had admitted Mr. Walter to a consultation at his private house. He defended this gross piece of collusion by the statement that Mr. Walter was an old friend. The incident was important as adding another proof to the already damning accumulation of evidence that, while professing im- partiality, the Government stood behind the Times in the whole business. At last the Bill reached the House of Lords, and there was subjected to masterly analysis in a remarkable speech by Lord Herschell. Every objec- tion that he pointed out against the Bill has been more than confirmed by what has since happened. The trial has developed into the trial of a great political party, a great national cause, two great popular movements. It is impossible that judges should take part in such a trial without bring- ing into question that perfect independence and perfect impartiality of the judicial tribunal which has never been questioned in our time before. There is no tradition of EngUsh life more sacred and more valuable than the impartiality of our judges, and the confidence of the nation in that im- partiality. In their desperate desire to prevent the enfranchisement of the Irish people, the Unionist Party have been ready to throw even that sacred and valuable tradition into the mart of political hatreds and con- troversies. Nay, they almost went out of their way to aggravate this defect in their original scheme. According to all precedent in such cases, the leaders of the Opposition bench — whose interests were involved in the inquiry — should have been consulted as to the constitution of the new tribunal, and should have been asked to take a share in making the nomina- tions. In such a way all suspicions would be removed of any desire to try a political case with political partisans of one side to the complete exclu- sion of the political representatives of the other. But this precedent was departed from. The members of the Court were probably chosen by the Attorney- General. He may or may not have consulted the Lord Chancellor. Whether his choice was thus assisted or not does not matter. If he did consult the Lord-Chancellor, it would only make the difference that the Court was chosen by two instead of by one member of the Government. That was sufficiently scandalous, but the scandal did not end there. The Attorney-General, besides being a member of the Government, which is THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY, 353 allied with the Times in the whole affair, and whose interests are identical with the interests of the T^ies, is the leadingcounsel for the Times. It conies, then, to this, that the Times has been enabled to bring its case before a tribunal chosen for it by its own counsel. A more scandalous breach of decency, honour, fair-play, and the traditions of English justice was never perpetrated. I say nothing of the judges themselves. I sincerely hope that they will rise superior to their origin, and that though they are all of different political opinion to the Irish members, whose characters and whose cause they are trying, and though they must know that this antagonism was the reason of their selection — I hope, I say, that they will be true to the great traditions of the lofty position they occupy. A thing almost as sacred as the cause of peace between England and Ireland is at stake and lies for decision in their hands — the almost unbroken tradition in our day of the impartiality and independence of the bench. At the moment at which I write, the Commission has been sitting for more than fifty days. The course adopted has been worse than even the worst an- ticipations of the critics of the Commission Bill anticipated. As has been said — as Mr. Chamberlain admitted — the question in which the country is really interested is the authorship of the letters attributed by the Times to Mr. Parnell. But the counsel for the Times took care that this question should be postponed to the last possible moment. It is more than fifty days — as I have said — since the Commission began to sit ; and it is only within the last few days that the letters have been dealt with. Instead of the letters we have had a dreary succession of landlords, land agents, police officers, informers, and spies, who came before the Court to rehash the old and hideous story of the crimes and outrages by which the movement of the Land League — like all great popular uprisings — has been attended. These witnesses naturally declared that Ireland was entirely peaceful, and that crime was entirely unknown till the rise of the Land League and the advent of Mr. Parnell. As the most cursory glance at the preceding pages will have proved, the struggle for the land is centuries old in Ireland ; and outbursts of crime have been periodical since the struggle began. Every single one of the mournful, tragic and shameful features of the Land Leagne agitation are the exact reproduction of things that have over and over occurred in previous epochs of violent struggle. The assassination of landlords, of tenants who took evicted land, the houghing of cattle, and all the rest, even if the evidence of this kind were pertinent to the issue, were heaped up by the limes — apparently for the purpose of diverting the public attention from the letters — in spite of the urgent and the piteous appeals of the judges, until the Commission Court became the most odious bore of the day, and newspaper editors ceased to print and the newspaper reader ceased to peruse its reports. Towards the close of the case for the prosecution, and just before the oeginning of the evidence upon the letters, the Times did produce a witness, though he told little that was germane to the Commission, who was in him- self an object of keen interest. This was Major Le Caron, the chief spy in the payment of the Government for the last twenty years. Le Caron's real name is Beach, and he was born in Colchester. He went to America during the Civil War ; and while serving with the Federal troops, became acquainted with General O'Neill, who was afterwards the leader of the Fenian invasion of Canada. Beach represents that he was made adjutant-general, and in that p sition had the duty of arranging all the details of the invasion. These details he immediately revealed to the 23 354 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. Canadian Government, with the result that the invasion was a complete failure. Having got his hand in, Beach became a regular spy from this time forward. According to his statement in the Commission Court, he did so purely from patriotic motives ; while in an interview with the New York Herald he is represented as attributing the adoption of the role to the desire to get money enough to enable him to obtain a profession. Anyhow, he studied medicine and was admitted a medical doctor. Mean- time, another secret revolutionary movement was started ; and, acting under instructions from home, he became a member of it. He rose gradually in the ranks, until in the end he was one of the leaders of the executive. He was also for ten years senior guardian of the Revolutionary Camp in Braidwood — the small town in Illinois in which he had fixed his home. He sat in council when dynamite outrages were resolved upon ; and, as he himself puts it, always voted with the majority. During the whole of this period he gave information regularly to the authorities at home. His story was that for some years the Revolutionary Party had 'cap- tured ' the open movement in America, and had directed it. He produced several reports from the executive of the Revolutionary body — inflated and prolix documents which appeared very childish in face of their immediate revelation to the Government. The main point he was apparently called upon to prove was a conversation which he professed to have had with Mr. Parnell in the House of Commons. He represented Mr. Parnellas saying that he thought Ireland could only be freed by an armed insurrection ; and as asking him to procure a better understanding between the open movement at home and the secret society in America. Mr. Parnell had not yet given his answer to this evidence when this chapter had to be concluded. It may, without impropriety, be pointed out, however, that such a conversation with a perfect stranger bears little resemblance to the ordinary conversation of a man noted above all his contemporaries for reticence and reserve. At last the letters came to be investigated. The story then revealed came as a shock to everybody who had hitherto regarded the Times as con- ducted with something like the ability and the caution proportionate to its great position. To the astonishment and even the bewilderment of the entire world, it was confessed that on the famous 18th of April, when the letter was published, the Times was absolutely without evidence as to the authenticity of the letter, except the internal evidence, the opinion of one expert, and the statement of a person comparatively unknown to them, that such a letter had been written by Mr. Parnell. Full justice cannot be done to the appalling evidence on this point, except in the words of the principals themselves. Mr. Soames, the solicitor for the Times, stated that the letters had been given to the Times by Mr. Houston. Mr. Houston had not revealed the name and the person from whom the letters had been obtained ; nor did he do so till long after the letters had been published. Here is an extract from the cross-examination of Mr. Soames, which followed this avowal : ' Did you ask him from whom he obtained them ? — I did not. ' Did you at any time ask from whom he had got them ? — Never. ' Nor any of them ? — Nor any of them. ' Am I to take that, Mr. Soames ? — You are to take it ; it is the truth, »nd I will tell you the reason why. He told me himself at the outset that he was obliged not to divulge the name, and that if he had to divulge the name he would have to do it himself in court when he gave his evidence. THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 355 ' Am I to take it that no information has come to you from Mr. Pigott indicating in any way from what person or persons he received these letters, or any of them ? — You may take it so. I have not had any infor- mation from any source whatever.' And here is another passage, later on, in the cross-examination of the same witness : ' Did it occur to you to press Mr. Pigott as to where he had got these letters ? — Do you mean the Times letters ? The batch of letters, numbering altogether seventeen, I think ? — No, it did not. And you never have ? — I never have. Has anyone, to your knowledge, interested for the Times ? — No j as far 'as I know, nobody has pressed him upon that point.' This was astonishing enough, but the evidence of Mr. Macdonald, the manager of the Times, and the man chiefly responsible for the publication of the letters, was even more astonishing. Mr. Macdonald had confessed that he had published the letters when they had been supplied to him by Mr. Houston ; and then he was cross-examined thus : ' Did you then or afterwards ask him from where he had got the letters ? —No. 1 Did you ask Mr. Houston whether he had ever seen the envelopes in which the letters had been contained ? — No ; I do not think I did. * Neither then nor at any subsequent date ? — No. ... I did not press Mr. Houston upon the subject of the source whence he had obtained the letters, nor did I invite explanation from him on the subject. 1 Before April 18, 18S7 (when the letter was published), had you made any inquiries to satisfy yourself as to the original recipients of these letters, or any of them ? — No, I had taken no steps. 'Or where Mr. Houston had got them from ? — No ; Mr. Houston told me that he was not free to tell me ; therefore I made no inquiries.' ' "What, then, inquiry had Mr. Macdonald made with regard to the letters ? — He had simply asked an expert to pronounce upon their axxthen- ticity; and he had not taken the trouble to inquire of more than one expert. 'Am I to understand, then,' asked Mr. Asquith of Mr. Macdonald, 'that the investigations you made were exclusively investigations into handwriting ? — Yes. ' And that you took no steps to inquire who were the original recipients of the letters ? — No.' Inglis, confessed Mr. Soames, was the only expert employed up to the time of the O'Donnell trial. The full force of this evidence cannot be sufficiently appreciated without putting it in contrast with the language employed by the Times on the day when it published the facsimile letter, and on every occasion after- wards in which it referred to it and the other letters which I have already reproduced. It will be seen from all this that the whole case for the letters depended on Mr. Pigott ; and on February 20th, Mr. Pigott appeared in the witness- box. Tn examination by the Attorney-General, he told his story glibly enough. He had met in Paris a man named Maurice Murphy, and another man named Tom Brown, and from these people, after various 23—2 356 THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, interviews of a mysterious character, he received the letters. They had lain in Paris for some time in a black box, which had been left behind by Frank Byrne. The examination lasted but a short time, and then began one of the greatest cross-examinations in the history of even celebrated cases. Sir Charles Russell was embarrassed with the multitude of material which he had to break down and expose the witness. He began by a request which threw a startling light on the whole history of the letters. He asked Pigott to write several words, among others ' likelihood ' and 'hesitancy.' When the handwriting was produced, it was found that both these words were misspelt in exactly the same way as in the letters. Sir Charles Russell was then able to prove out of the mouth of Pigott himself that as far back as March, 1887, he had communicated with Archbishop Walsh, giving mysterious hints as to a coming attack upon Mr. Parnell, and his own ability to meet the blow. About these letters Pigott prevari- cated, contradicted himself, and finally confessed that he lied. Then he was brought face to face with the record of his hideous past. He was con- fronted, for instance, with a correspondence which had taken place with Mr. Egan — correspondence which had actually been printed in the public press years before. In this correspondence he made statements which had an extraordinary resemblance to the clumsy lies with which he afterwards imposed upon the Times. He had received a visit — he told Mr. Egan — from two mysterious strangers, who had presented him with what pur- ported to be the balance-sheet of the Land League. He did not believe in the statements contained in it, nor did he believe in the authenticity of the balance-sheet ; but if it were published it might perhaps do harm. He was loath to publish such a document ; it was certainly false ; but, in short, he would have to get £500 to stop the publication. Mr. Egan replied in a letter which exposed the real natu?e of this transaction as one of pure, unadulterated blackmail, and the wretched Pigott shuffled out of the business as best he could. But a much more dramatic exposure of Pigott's hideous past came. Sir Charles Russell, in the midst of the cross- examination, called Mr. Wemyss Reid. Mr. Wemyss Reid stood up in his place and produced, at Sir Charles Russell's request, the correspondence that had taken place between Pigott and the late Mr. Forster. From this correspondence it was clear that at the very moment he was posing as a Nationalist journalist, Pigott was in communication with Dublin Castle. He proposed that his newspaper should be subsidized by Mr. Forster. Mr. Forster refused this request, and substituted a personal loan. Having once found Mr. Forster willing to give him pecuniary aid, Pigott went on begging at intervals. The letters gave a curious and painful picture of the man's character. There was in them all the same story of hopeless poverty, the same snivelling testimony to Mr. Forster's high-mindedness, the same demands for further sums, the same promise that this would be the very last loan, and that repayment was certain to come Finally, there was the same curious and clumsy artifice which was the only one that ever Buggested itself to a mind full of villainy but devoid of resource. After he had been treated with this extraordinary kindness by Mr. Forster, after he had sworn eternal gratitude, he one day sent an anonymous threat to his benefactor that their correspondence would be published unless a certain sum were forthcoming. During the reading of this correspondence the face of Pigott was a painful sight that will never efface itself from the recollec- tion of those who saw it. His mouth was open, his jaw hung, his face was alternately ghastly and flushed j he looked the picture of villainy at bay a^ THE REGIME OF BRUTALITY. 357 the terrible record of his awful life rose thus before him. Everybody in the Court, meantime, in spite of the tragic tension of the situation, could not help laughing as the self -drawn picture of an unmitigated scoundrel unfolded itself. There were shouts of laughter which even provoked a responsive smile from the severe President of the Court, and open and un- restrained merriment from Mr. Justice Day. It was in the midst of one of these shouts that the wretched Pigott said, with the one attempt at resistance he showed in the limp and broken condition to which he was brought, ' It is very amusing to you, but it is not to me.' In short, by the time Pigott had been under cross-examination for a couple of days, there was not a single person in the whole world that did not know that he was the forger, and that he was backing up his forgery by perjury. So the situation stood on Friday night. On Saturday there occurred a series of remarkable events. In the course of his examination, Pigott had acknowledged that in the autumn of last year he had had interviews with Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Lewis, and Mr. Parnell. His story to the Attorney- General was that he had been offered a thousand pounds by Mr. Labou- chere to — as he put it — tell a lie, namely, to confess to the forgeries. On this memorable Saturday he came to Mr. Labouchere, and, in the presence of Mr. G. A. Sala, he signed a full confession of having forged every single one of the letters which had been produced by the Times — not only the letters of Mr. Parnell, but letters attributed to Mr. Davitt, Mr. O'Kelly, and Mr. Egan. This was not all. He had interviews likewise with Mr. Shannon, one of the solicitors who were acting for Mr. Soames, and to him also he gave a confession. With curious trickery even to the last, the two confessions were contradictory. While in that of Mr. Labouchere he had confessed to having forged all the letters, he asserted in the confession to Mr. Shannon that some of the letters were genuine. On Tuesday morning his cross-examination was to be continued. Sir Charles Russell had, mean- time, obtained further material. There was evidence to prove that for years he had forged bills in Dublin, and that for years also he had been a dealer in indecent literature. But no Pigott was there. It turned out that he had fled on the previous day. The next intelligence from him was a letter from the Hotel des deux Mondes, in Paris. Immediately warrants were issued for his arrest. From Paris, where he stayed only a short time, he made his way to Spain. In the forenoon of Thursday (February 28th, 1888) he arrived in Madrid, and was taken by an interpreter to the Hotel Ambajadores He carried only a small handbag. Having obtained a room, he sen* the following telegram immediately — with a strange uncon- sciousness of the feeling about him — to Mr. Shannon, at 58, Lincoln's Inn Fields, the address of Mr. Soames : ' Please ask Mr. S. to send what he promised, and write to Ponald Ponsonby, Hotel Ambajadores, Madrid.' This telegram was immediately handed by Mr. Soames to the police, and instructions were at once telegraphed to Madrid for Pigott's arrest. Mean- time Pigott, who seemed to be quite happy, spent the day with the inter- preter in visiting the museum, the cathedral church of San Isidro, and the other sights of the city ; dined well in the evening, and retired to bed at an early hour. He seemed disappointed next morning at finding that no reply had come to his telegram, and he was worried and restless. By four o'clock he had been traced, and at half -past four the police officers came to the hotel and asked for him. He was in his bedroom on the first-floor, and thither the police officers and the interpreter proceeded. The interpreter entered, and said that a policeman wanted to speak to him. Pigott turned 353 THE PAR NELL MOVEMENT. deathly pale, and for a moment seemed to lose his nerve completely ; but he recovered himself quickly, and said ' it was all right. He would see the gentleman.' The inspector entered the room, and Pigott, muttering some- thing about his luggage, stepped back a pace or two and opened the small handbag which he had in the room. The inspector seemed to divine Pigott's object, and sprang forward to seize him, but it was too late. Pigott had drawn a large revolver from the bag, placed the muzzle against his mouth, drew the trigger, and fell to the ground, a horribly mutilated corpse. It was a curious but characteristic contradiction in the creature's career that beneath his underclothing was found a scapular, dirty and greasy from long wear, with the sacred monogram ' I.H.S.,' surmounted by a small mounted cross. He was taken to the chief dead-house of the city, and, when he was fully recognised, was quietly buried. A few days before another of the chief actors in this squalid drama had died under circum- stances almost as tragic. Dr. Maguire, who had lent Houston the money which bought the forged letters, died in a lodging-house in London and away from every friend. The country is still fresh under the horror of these hideous transactions The storm against the Government rose high and tumultuous. At the very moment when all these events were taking place, Parliament was engaged in discussing an amendment on the Queen's Speech which Mr. Morley had proposed in denunciation of the administration of the Coercion Act. The general interest, however, was elsewhere. Pigott was in every mind and on every lip. The final burst-up of the hideous conspiracy against Mr. Parnell's character, and against the cause of his country, produced abject despair on the Tory benches, and a corresponding exultation among the Liberal and Irish members. Even the effrontery of Mr. Balfour gave way before the popular tempest. He spoke feebly and with a pallid face, and even his own party forgot to cheer. The indignation excited by the final exposure of the Times was increased by the widespread and universal horror which had been created in the country by the new brutalities inflicted upon Mr. O'Brien and the other Irish leaders who had been im- prisoned. Most of the Tory speakers were so cowed by all these circum- stances, that they adopted a tone of apology, and expressed their strong desire that the prison treatment should be changed. On the night of Friday, March 1st, all these various streams of political passion joined. At the beginning of a night big with events, Dr. Tanner made his appear- ance after many weeks' successful evasion of a warrant against him. Then Mr. Gladstone — fresh from Italy — delivered one of the most remarkable speeches of his whole life — well-knit, vivacious, grave and gay by turn, and delivered with almost an exuberance of physical power. Late in the even- ing Mr. Parnell arose, and then came a scene almost unparalleled in Parlia- ment. Every single one of the Liberals, including Mr. Gladstone, Sir William Harcourt, and Mr. John Morley, as well as, of course, all the Irish members, arose and cheered for several minutes, Mr. Parnell meantime standing unmoved, save that his face grew a little more pallid than usual. On that same night Dr. Tanner was accompanied to hie hotel by a hundred English and Irish members, many of them singing 1 God Save Ireland !' and was immediately afterwards arrested. In the course of his speech, Mr. Gladstone called attention to the fact that, since the General Election of 1886, there had been sixty by-elections. At all these elections, with barely an exception, there was the same tale. The Torv gave way to a Liberal, or, where the Tory still succeeded, he was A FEW PARTI XG WORDS. 359 returned by a considerably reduced majority. In 1886 the sixty seats were divided thus : Conservatives, 27 ; Liberals, 33. In 1885, amid the enormous success of the Liberals, these particular seats showed a greater preponderance of Tory strength, for they then stood : Conservatives, 33 ; Liberals, 27. Finally, in 1889, they stand : Conservatives, 30 ; Liberals, 30. These are but few of the many abounding evidences that the policy of the Government has been already tried and already condemned by the nation. By their breach of their election pledges in the refusal of all local government and the enactment of coercion, as well as by their repudiation by the nation, the present Government and the present Parliament have been reduced to usurpers, and their reign cannot last much longer. No better ending can be given to this work than the peroration of Mr. Glad- stone's great speech, in which he addressed the present wretched Govern- ment : " You may deprive of its grace and of its freedom the act which you are asked to do, but avert that act you cannot. To prevent its con- summation is utterly beyond your power. It seems to approach at au accelerated rate. Coming slowly or coming quickly, surely it is coming. And you yourselves, many of you, must in your own breasts be aware that already you see in the handwriting on the wall the signs of coming doom." APPENDIX. A FEW CLOSING WOKDS. With these words of Gladstone, I closed the last edition of this narrative, published in Great Britain. The hopefulness which they breathe was no greater than circumstances then warranted, and perhaps not as great as the events immediately succeeding would have justified. Between Ireland and the early consummation of her hopes there stood but one obstacle. The tenants on the estates which came to be known as the Plan of Campaign es- tates were threatened with disaster, owing to the enormous burdens placed upon them by the fight against the combined forces of landlordism, coercion, and the Government. Greater enthusiasm, moreover, had been infused into the struggle, and the line of battle had been extended, bv an event which occurred in the town of Tipperary. Mr. Smith Barry, an Irish land- lord, had formed a syndicate of English and Irish enemies of Ireland for the purpose of backing up Irish landlords in their hostility to the just de- mands of the tenants. One of the estates to which the operations of this syndicate extended was that of Mr. Ponsonby. The circumstances of the fight on this estate have been described on preceding pages, and it has been shown that the tenants had a strong case. The landlord evicted several of their number, but did not thereby succeed in breaking down their com- bination, and accordingly had been induced seriously to consider the de- sirability of submitting the case to arbitration. The" arbitrators had met. They had discussed the differences in a friendly spirit, and were approach- ing a compromise, when the hopes of a peace — which would have restored the people of the entire district in question to security and industry — were blasted. Mr. Smith Barry's syndicate intervened, and by the .promise of pecuniary aid to Mr. Ponsonby during the struggle, induced the latter to reject the proposals of the arbitrators. This malignant intervention of strangers in the affairs of the Ponsonby estate led to one of the most re- markable episodes of the struggle, Mr. Smith Barry was the owner of the principal houses of business in the town of Tipperary, and of considerable estates outside that town. Tipperary is one of the "few prosperous towns 3<5° THE PARNELL MOVEMENT, left in Ireland, and the occupants of Mr. Smith Barry's houses there were thrifty and thriving men. Deputations from these tenants waited upon Barry, and in respectful language implored him not to stand in the way of an amicable settlement between Mr. Ponsonby and his tenants. Barry sullenly refused to withdraw. The tenants thereupon resolved that they would have no lot or share in the evil work, and though in pursuance of their humane resolve they sacrificed, in many cases, thousands of pounds ; they willingly suffered, one by one, eviction from their farms and shops. One after the other they peacefully left their homes, until some of the streets of Tipperary were reduced to blank desolation. The people of Ireland, roused by this exhibition of self-sacrifice, deter- mined that the Smith Barry tenants should not suffer. A temporary, new town was built for the evicted, and subscriptions were started in Ireland and Australia. Mr. Dillon, Mr. Deasy, Sir Thomas Esmonde, and Mr. Cox lectured throughout the antipodes, and raised the magnificent sum of $200,000. A national subscription was started in Ireland, which in two or three months amounted to $300,000. But the fight still went on, and the war chest was threatened with depletion. It was felt that the defeat of the tenants, either on the Plan of Campaign estates or in Tipperary, would not only be equivalent to a disgraceful desertion of the men who had sacrificed everything for Ireland, but also a triumph for Chief Secretary Balfour which 'might involve important, if not disastrous results in regard to the coming general election in England. It was resolved to make an appeal to the generosity of the American people, who had never failed in abundantly responding to any such prayer for their assistance. A delegation, consisting of Mr. John Dillon, Mr. William O'Brien, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, Mr. Timothy Harrington, and Mr. T. P. Gill, was appointed at a meeting of the Irish party. The mission was immediately successful, and produced results not only beyond the expectations of the envoys, but far in excess of all previous experiences of American liberality. The delegates passed from city to city amid enthusiastic demonstrations of welcome. In Philadelphia, where they spoke first, they held two equally large meetings in two days, and collected $16,000. In Boston two theaters were crowded on the same day, with a monetary result of $10,000. Other meetings were productive of proportionate results, and the climax was reached when, at a magnificent gathering in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, the unpre- cedented sum of $37,000 was raised. It seemed quite clear that before the envoys completed their task Ireland would be supplied with all the money necessary to carry a most costly and perilous campaign to a successful close. The last chance of Mr. Balfour was gone. The last obstacle in the way of Home Rule was removed, and the Irish people were, visibly, at the vic- torious conclusion of their long and dreary conflict with the power against which they had waged seven centuries of relentless warfare. At this apparently auspicious moment came a stroke of that evil fortune, that strange disaster, which has been proverbial in the history of Ireland ever since the beginning of her political struggles. Mr. Parnell had been prosecuted by Captain O'Shea in a suit for divorce, and had allowed the case to go by default. The Irish people and the Irish party could not see in a private fault of this kind — and one that was condoned by many circum- stances — an insuperable reason why they should desert the chief who had led them with such infinite skill and such unbroken success for so many years ; and at public meetings in Ireland, by dispatches from the envoys in America, and finally at a meeting of the Irish party, it was resolved to stand by him. But for the achievement of Irish liberty by constitutional methods the support of British voters is as necessary as is that of the Irish people. In England a different view of the O'Shea affair was taken, especially in the A FEW PARTING WORDS. 361 Nonconformist communities, who constitute the back-bone of the English Liberal party, and who, also, have been Ireland's stanchest and most effective friends and allies. The tempest was fanned and swelled by rabid, bigoted, and sometimes brutal appeals, and it became perfectly clear that the retention of Mr. ParnelTs leadership meant such an estrangement of English Liberal voters as would make the success of Ireland at the polls impossible. The people of Ireland, then, had to choose between the retention of Mr. Parneil as their leader and the loss of Home Rule for a generatiou. Bitter and painful as was the choice to the majority of Irishmen in all parts of the world, there seemed no alternative but to abandon the leader in order to save the nation. It is not my intention, at this time, to enter into a prolonged considera- tion of the painful events which followed. Every patriotic Irishman hopes that these incidents will soon be forgotten in the complete re- union of the Irish Parliamentary party. Suffice it to say that, after several days of heated debate in "Committee Room No. 15 of the House of Commons, it became clear that the majority of Mr. ParnelTs former followers were against him. In despair of having their resolution put in time by Parneil, who occupied the chair, they (the majority) withdrew, passed a resolution formally deposing him, and elected Mr. Justin McCarthy in his stead. This disastrous division at home produced the expected results. A vacancy occurred in the representation of North Kilkenny, and each faction put forward a candidate. Sir John Pope Hennessey, the chosen of Mr, Parneil" s opponents, was returned by a majority of nearly two to one over Mr. Tincent Scully, who represented" the Parneil faction. Hot words were uttered on both sides during the contest, and the breach seemed to grow wider than ever. O'Brien and Dillon left America to take part in negotia- tions for the settlement of the dispute. Protracted conferences conducted at Boulogneby Messrs. Parneil, O'Brien, Dillon, and other prominent Irish representatives, did not result in a solu- tion of the difficulty. The negotiations were abandoned. Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien returned to England, and were arrested in execution of a sen- tence passed upon them by Irish magistrates, before their departure for America, in respect of the alleged political offence of " conspiracy." These two brave, single-minded, self-sacrificing patriots are at this writing under- going imprisonment in Galway goal. But although the party strife has not yet been entirely allayed, the Irish people, as a nation, are as firmly and fervently determined to win Home Rule as they have ever been. The day of their deliverance draws nigh. Mr. Justin McCarthy's leadership of the great majority of Irish parliamen- tarians is emphatically endorsed by nearly all the really strong and intelli- gent people of Ireland, and is thoroughly approved by the Liberal voters of Great Britain, whose ballots at the next general election will be cast solidly for Irish self-government. Thus am I again enabled to close these pages with a confident anticipation of the speedy triumph^of the cause of Home Rule. INDEX. A. Aberdeen, Lord, 104, 106 Absenteeism, 16, 17 "Adair, John George, 112, 117, 118, 119 Agrarian Crime (Ireland). 214, 215, 216, 217 Agricultural Labourers (Irish), 120 Alexander, Mr., 103 Allen, William Philip, 136 Allman, Charlotte, 177 American Irish. See Irish Americans „ Land League, 173 Andrews, Justice, 338 Anglesey. Marquis of, 8 Archdale, Mr., 261 Argyll. Duke of, 197 Arms Act, 15, 20, 21, 227 Arrears Act, 251, 252, 253 Arterial Drainage (Ireland) Act, 17, 21 ' Ashbourne, Lord. See Gibson Asquith, Mr., 355 A-thlone, 89, 90, 100, 101, 264 B. BALFOUR, A. J., 259, 299, 303, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 316. 319, 320, 321. 322, 323, 324, 325, 326,' 327. 325. 330, 331. 332, 333, 336. 338, 339, 340. 341, 342, 343, 344. 345, 346. 3M Balfour's Coercion Bill,' 3ir John, 246, 251 Healy. Mr. Maurice. M.P., 212 „ Miss Kate, 186 „ Mr. Timothy, M.P., 196, 208, 209, 210, 211. 212. 225. 226. 232. 235, 239, 240, 250, 259, 273, 333, 347, 355 Healv Clause, 232 Heaney, Martin, 342 Heaphy, Thomas. 338 Hennessey, Sir J. Pope, 176 Herbert, Sidney, 107 Berschell, Lord, 352 Hickev. Patrick, 103 Hicks-Beach, Sir M., 140, 156, 158, 292, 295, 300, 301, 303, 304, 305, 318, 319 ' History of our own Times,' 175, 178 3 66 INDEX. Hotmouse, JVlr. H., 287, 289 Hoey, Mr. J. Cashel, 127 Hogan, John, 310 Holcroft, Miss, 322 Holmes, Mr. Justice, 312 ' Home Government Association,' 138 Home Rule, 125, 138, 140, 141, 144, 145, 270, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 282, 283 Home Rule Confederation, 162 „ League, 149 Party, 144, 145, 161, 173, 175 Hooper, Alderman. 33], 332, 333, 334 „ Mr., 324 Horsman, Mr., 75, 126 Houston, Mr., 341, 354, 358 L INCHIQUIN, Lord, 113 ' Incorruptible Parnell,' 150 Independent Opposition, 49, 50, 125 Imrlis, Mr., 355 Insurrection Acts, 18, 19, 20, 21 Intermediate Education Bill, 164 'Invincibles,' 23, 257 Irish Americans, 78, 133, 134, 135, 166, 167, 173 ' Irish Blanqui,' The, 194 Irish Board of Works, 34 'Irish Brigade.' See ' Pope's Brass Band , Irish Church Disestablishment, 9, 123, 137 Irish Land Question, 293, 295 Irish Missions, 112 ' Irish Committee,' 70 Irish in England, 136, 162 Irish Manufactures, 16 Irish Members, Suspension of, 226, 250 ,, Parliamentary Party, 15 Irish People (newspaper), 135, 153 Irish Times. 138, 320 Irwin, Archdeacon, 303 J. Jackson, Mr. H. M., 285 Jagoe, Rev. Mr., 261 James, Sir Henry, 275, 292 Jennings, Mr., M.P., 271 Johnston, Attorney-General, 255 Mr. William, 148 'Journals, etc.. relating to Ireland,' 129 Joyce, Myles, 268 ,, Mr., 299 Judges, Irish, 88, 122, 123, 124 Jury -packing, 8, 13, 14, 48 K. KAYE, Sir W. B., 323 Keane, Mr. Marcus, 114 Keller, Canon, 299, 300 Kelly, Colonel, 136 Kenny, Mr.. M.P., 264 Keogh, Mr. W. (afterwards Judge), 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97. 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 135, 138 Kerr, Mr. M., 261 Kerry Sentinel, 258 Kettle, Mr. A. J., 172, 173 Kildare and Leighlin, Bishop of, 103 Killala, Bishop of, 101 Killeagh Case, 338, 342 Kilmainham Treaty, 247, 248 Kilmartin, Bryan, 269 Kilrush Union, Famine and Evictions in, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67 Kins-Harman, Colonel, 138, 144, 181, 26L 304 Kirk, Miss, 241, 242 Kirwan, Serjeant, 321, 322 II Labouchere, Mr. H., 219, 221, 231, 241, Labour Rate Act, 34, 35, 37, 44 Ladies' Land League, 241 Lahiff, Mr., 120 Lalor, Mr. J. F., 194 ,, Mr. R., 194, 196, 226, 250 Land Act of 1870, 165, 197 1881, 210, 228, 232 Land Acts and Bills, 20, 74, 75, 143, 228, 280 Land Bill (Mr. Redmond's), 247 ,, Commissioners, 300, 301, 303, 304 315, 317, 319, 345 Land Commission (Bessborough), 202 „ Court, 234 Land League, 170, 174, 213, 214, 228, 233, 235, 240, 247, 268, 269 Land Purchase Bill (Mr. Gladstone's), 285, 293 Land Law Act (1SS1), 294, 295, 314, 317 Lane, Mr. W. J., 333, 334 Lansdowne, Lord, 76, 115, 116 Larcom, Sir Thomas, 117 Larkin, Michael, 136 Latchford, Mr., 341 Lavelle, Father, 111, 113 Law, Right Hon. Hugh, 207, 232 Lawson, Judge, 123, 311 Leahy, Mr., 196, 226, 250 Leamy, Mr. E., 196, 223, 226, 250 Le Caron, Major, 350, 353, 354 Leinster, Duke of, 25, 129 Leitrim, Lord, 111, 112, 116 Lethbridge, Sir R., 271, 287 Letters, Opening of, 8 Lever, Mr. J. O., 174 Levinge, Sir R., 98, 104 Lewis, Mr. George, 357 Lewis, Sir C, 148, 273, 348, 349 Liberal Unionists, 124, 2S3, 2S4 Liberal Unionist Pledges against Coer- -cion, 287 Liberal Unionists on the Rights of Ireland to Self-Government, 2S8 Lincoln, Lord, 17, 71 Lindon, David, 338 Litton, Mr., 233 Lloyd, Mr. Clifford, 229, 230, 231, 241, 242, 245, 246 INDEX. 3 6 7 Londonderry, Lord (Lord Lieutenant), 306. 823, 339. 341 Lord Chancellor, 352 Lord Chief Baron, 338, 339 Lowe, Mr., 127 Lowther, Mr. J., 167, 16S, 173 Luby, Mr. T. C, 135 Lucan, Lord, 111, 112, 113 Lucas, Mr. F.. 85, 97, 98, 106 Lyons, Dr., 223, 224 M. MACDEEMOT, The, 332 Macdoi-ald, Mr., 355 Macfarlane, Mr., 196 MacHale. Archbishop, 93, 94, 101, 132 Mackay, Capt.. 253 MacKnisht. Dr., 85 Maclean, Mr. F. W., 289 MacManus, Terence Bellew, 134 Macnamara. Dennis, 336 MacNeyin, B. C. 105 McCarthy,' Cclour-Sereeant. 169 Mr. J., 31, 43, 78. 123. 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, ISO. 196. 197, 198, 203, 213, 224. 226, 250. 273 McCarthy, Mr. J. H, 264 McCoan, Mr., 196, 226 McCormack. Miss, Imprisoned, 241 MeDonagh. Martin, 342 McGrath, M.. 211, 212 McKenna, Sir J. N. 196 McLean, Mr. J. M.,'290 McMahon, Mr.. M.B., 263 M'Donagh, Peter, 299 M'Gee. Mr. T. D., 48, 49 M'Mahon, Ebor, 129 Magan, Capt, 98 Maguire. John Francis, 85, 97, 126, 342 „ Thos., 136 Dr., 358 Mahdi, The. 192 Maher, Father. 103 Mahon, The O'Gorman, 194, 196, 226 Mahoney, Michael, 299 Mallon, Superintendent, 238 Mallow, 255 Maloney. Joseph, 342 \ ManibiLand,' 191 Manayunk, 169 Manchester. 136 Mander, Miss Amy, 322 Manueyille, John, 300, 325, 326, 327, 32S, 329, 330, 331, 332. 333 Mandeville, Mrs.. 328. 33", 331, 332 Marlborough. Duchess of, 173 Maroney, Mrs., 342, 344 Martin, John ; 149 Marum, Mr., 196, 226, 250, 251 Mas-areene, Lord, 344 Mathew, Eev. Theobald, 31 Matthews, Henry (Home Secretary). 123, 289, 296, 308, 309, 352 Mavnooth Grant, 15 Mazzini, 8 Meagher, Thomas Francie. 134 Meath, Bishop of, 101 Melbourne, Lord, 9, 17 Meldon, Mr. C, 145. 196, 303 Metge. Mr. . 226, 250 Midleton Distillery Co., 300 Mill. John Stuart. 24, 177 Mills, Mr. C. T., 290 Milner, Sir F., 271 Miltown-Milbav Prosecutions, 342 Mitchel. John. 12, 13. 14, 25. 36, 47. 48, 79, 134, 176, 193,' 194 Mitehelstown Estate, 300, 319, 326 „ Massacre, 319, 320, 321, 322 Moate, Bector of, 104 Moderate Home 'Eulers. See Nominal Home Eulers Monaghan, County, 259 Monahan. Judge, 117 Monroe, Mr. J., Q.C., 259 Moore, George Henry, 97, 126 „ Mrs.. 241, 242 Moorhead, Dr., 323, 329 Moriarity. Inspector, 302 Morley, Mr. John. 233. 295. 807. 303, 353,359 I Morning Star, 177, 178 I Moroney. Mrs., 241 Morrison. Mr. W., 289 Morphy. Mr., 322 Mowbray, Mr. E, G. O., 290 Moynihan, Maurice, 344 Munroe, Mr. Justice, 323 Murphy, Mr. X. D., 174 „ Sergeant, 122, 123 „ Mr. Maurice, 303, 356 „ Mr. Justice, 311 ' Murty Hynes,' 188 NAAS, Lord (Earl of Mayo), 105, 107 Nagle. Alderman, 254 Naish. Attorney-General, 255 Napier. Sir J., 126 Ration (newspaper), 12. 45. 46, 47, 86, 87, 95, 96, 109, 110, 125, ISO, 181, 187, 208 National League (Suppression of 200 Branches), 324 National Meetings in Ulster, 260, 261, 262 Nelijran. Mr. J. C, 258 iNelson, Bey. Isaac, 226, 265 Newark. Lord, 290 >ewcastle, Duke of, 104, 107 Newdegate, Mr.. 92 Newport. Sir John, 16 New York Herald, 190 Nimmo. Mr. Alexander, 23 Nolan, Col., 298 Nominal Home Eulers, 263, 265 ' No Popery,' 87 'No Bent.' 47, 194. 232 ' >l«| T |nniiimii«H'»'»!?J PLEA^p DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK CARD ! ^UlBRARY6k University Research Library 4b