A GREAT CONSPIRACY BY SIR ROBERT ANDERSON, K.C.B., LL.D. FORMERLY ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER OF POLICE OF THE METROPOLIS AND HEAD OF THE CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT Price 6d. net LONDON: JOHN MURRAY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS UBPv^RY AT URBANA-CHAlvu AIGN STACKS Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/greatconspiracyaOOande 1 Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. University of Illinois Library JflH 26 \m L161— O-1096 A GREAT CONSPIRACY AN ABRIDGED EDITION OF SIDELIGHTS ON THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT BY SIR ROBERT ANDERSON, K.C.B., LL.D. FORMERLY ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER OF POLICE OF THE METROPOLIS, AND HEAD OF THE CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1909 PREFACE IN view of the present state of Ireland this book claims a wider circulation than it has hitherto obtained. For the evils warned against in the concluding chapter (p. ii6) are now being realised in that unfortunate country. In certain counties a more serious state of things exists than marked the worst days of the Parnell movement. For while Parnellism led to the commission of crimes in furtherance of the agrarian agitation, there was no such general demoralisa- tion of the people as at present. In many districts, indeed, ordinary trade debts would be irrecoverable were it not that the King's Judges are making a practice of suspending the ordinary law relative to the service of the King's writs. The belief prevails, moreover, that in regard to these efforts to protect the law-abiding the sympathies of the Government are not with His Majesty's Judges. In the past, defiance of the law in Ireland has generally been attributable to the weakness or incompetence of the Executive. But to-day the suspicion prevails that the Government are deliberately playing into the hands of the agitators in order to convince the British Electorate that " Home Rule " is the only alternative to what is misnamed Coercion." The reader of these pages will find in them materials on V 405974: vi PREFACE which to form a judgment as to the character of Home Rule/' and the meaning of Coercion/' The letters of the late Lord Acton, published since this book appeared, justify and confirm all that has here been said as to the baneful influence of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. It is not a question of one creed against another, but of mediaeval superstition and intolerance against the enlightenment and civilisation of the age. " Ultramontane priests/' Lord Acton declared, " v^ill never be permanently on the side of the State." Indeed if the British public could be brought to regard the Maynooth priests as the educated Roman Catholic laity regard them, the Home Rule agitation on this side of the channel would collapse. PREFATORY NOTE Great Britain has been lulled into the belief that the Home Rule movement is no longer a danger to the State. But Mr. Asquith's Albert Hall speech of Friday- last gives proof that this pleasant belief is a delusion. Home Rule for Ireland has again been formally adopted as "a plank in the platform" of official Liberalism; and if the present Government be restored to power at the coming General Election,, effect will be given to this momentous item in the Premier's manifesto. It is of great importance, therefore, that the British electorate should be informed respecting the history and the character and aims of this great conspiracy, as well as of the disastrous consequences that its success would entail. And to this end the following pages are once again reissued. December 15, 1909. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE ........ V CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY ....... I CHAPTER H LOCAL AND PERSONAL ... . , . lO CHAPTER HI ANCIENT HISTORY . . . . . . . l6 CHAPTER IV THE FENIAN MOVEMENT . . . . . .22 CHAPTER V THE ''F.B." AND THE "RISING" OF 1857 . . .28 CHAPTER VI THE CLERKENWELL EXPLOSION . . . . .36 CHAPTER VII FROM 1867 TO 1880 . . . . . -43 vii viii CONTENTS CHAPTER VIII FROM 1880 TO THE KILMAINHAM TREATY CHAPTER IX THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS CHAPTER X THE IRISH NATIONAL LEAGUE CHAPTER XI THE DYNAMITE CAMPAIGN . CHAPTER XII THE SPECIAL COMMISSION . CHAPTER XIII WHY I WAS NOT A WITNESS CHAPTER XIV LE CARON AND HIS EVIDENCE CHAPTER XV THE CASE FOR HOME RULE CHAPTER XVI MR. GLADSTONE AND HIS POLICY . CHAPTER XVII CONCLUSION : AN ALTERNATIVE POLICY . CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY IN the course of a country walk with some Irish friends, who were not unversed in pubHc affairs, the Parnell Movement/^ and the Special Commission which dealt with the Times charges against the Irish leader, became the subject of our conversation. Certain remarks of mine led my friends to urge upon me that I should write my ^' Reminiscences.^' In reply, I assured them of my intention to take to salmon fishing, and to write a book of reminiscences, as soon as my mental faculties began to fail. But, they pleaded, history was in the making about these matters, and to throw what light I could upon them was a debt I owed the public. ^'That may be so,'' I replied, '^but the debt must remain unpaid till Sir William Harcourt goes." Which brought up the inquiry whether I was under any obligations of secrecy or loyalty to Sir William Harcourt ; and the answer that, on the contrary, he had treated me very badly indeed in this very matter of the Special Commission. And yet,'' I went on to say, I have a feeling of regard for him which borders almost on affection, and I would not write a single line that would be likely to annoy or distress him in his closing years." And in explanation of my words I told them something of what I am about to record in the present chapter. Little did I think that that very day Sir William Har- court was lying dead at Nuneham ! For the date was October i, 1904. Many things have intervened to delay my fulfilling the task thus suggested to me. And yet considerations have not been wanting to make me desire to enter on it. I may 2 I 2 INTRODUCTORY instance in particular that the pubHcation of that charming historical romance, the Irish sections of Morley's Life of Gladstone/^ is fitted to lend importance to some portions of my story. For that biography, being the work of an ex-Minister for Ireland, gives a quasi-official sanction to many false beliefs now current. It assumes, for instance, that the Fenian movement originated on Irish soil as the natural outcome of bad land laws and the presence of an alien Church.'^ It represents the outrages of 1867, at Manchester and Clerken- well, as the work of a deeply rooted conspiracy, and thus as being events that rightly forced the Irish question " to the front. And on other matters, such as the Parnell Special Commission, for example, it presents a wholly misleading picture ; not, of course, by any departure from the truth, but by presenting facts and persons in a false perspective. The story is, in fact, the work of a dramatist rather than of a historian. Possibly, therefore, it will not be deemed presumptuous in one who has very special knowledge of these matters to con- tribute his quota to the materials on which a history of this movement and of these events may yet be based. Oppor- tunities of obtaining information do not, of course, imply capacity to use it ; but so far as the opportunities are concerned, my position has been exceptional, if not unique. Apart, moreover, from considerations of this kind, my purpose has been stimulated by the wish, in anticipation of the appearance of Sir William Harcourt^s biography, to place my humble wreath upon his grave. And this wish it is which leads me, even at the cost of dislocating my narrative, to make the ^' Affaire Le Caron of 1889 the burden of these opening pages. For my tournament with my former chief over that matter illustrates a side of his character which was not understood even by some who think they knew him well. This book makes no pretensions to be history.'' My aim, as I have said, is merely to make some slight additions to the stock of materials upon which historians may draw. I need not apologise, therefore, for thus violating chrono- logical order by bringing in matters here which will come up again at a later stage of my story. And as a new generation has grown to manhood since the days when Le Caron's name was on everybody's lips and the Special Commission INTRODUCTORY 3 attracted universal notice, a few explanatory sentences may be opportune, in order to bring all my readers abreast of the events v^ith which I am about to deal. Early in 1887 a series of articles appeared in the Times^ under the heading Parnellism and Crime/^ ^ As indicated by their title, these articles sought to identify the Irish Nationalist movement with various criminal conspiracies. And they culminated in the publication, on April i8th, of a letter attributed to the Irish leader, in which the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. T. H. Burke was con- doned and justified. Other letters of a still more dis- creditable character appeared in later issues of the paper. In the following year a Special Commission,'^ consisting of three judges of the Supreme Court, was appointed by Lord Salisbury's Government to investigate these allegations and charges ; and the proprietors of the Times were called upon to produce the evidence on which they were based. One of the chief sensations of that inquiry was the appearance of Major Henri le Caron in the witness-box. This remarkable man has told his ov^n life-story,^ and I need not give it here. The son of a Mr. Beach, a worthy and respected citizen of Colchester, his love of adventure led him to leave home as a boy. After filling some engagements in London and elsewhere, he crossed the Channel to seek his fortune in Paris, and in 1861 he crossed the Atlantic to serve in the Federal army during the American Civil War. Thus it came about that he made acquaintance with Generar^ John O'Neill, who afterwards became head of the Fenian organisation in America, and promoted Fenian raids on Canada. Le Caron's patriotism was of the type that a cynic would deem quixotic, and he joined the Fenians in order to thwart their projects — to serve as a mifitary spy in the interests of his native country." He had no thought of Secret Service money," or of employment under the Home Office or Scotland Yard. His only ^'reports" were his private letters to his father, whom he kept informed of all he saw and heard, and who communicated some of the information thus obtained to Mr. Rebow, M.P. for ' The first article of the series was published in the Times of March 7, 1887. 2 ''Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service." In that book he tells how, in pure wantonness, he assumed his French name when landing in America. 4 INTRODUCTORY Colchester. Matters remained on this footing until the winter of 1867, when the Clerkenwell explosion brought Fenianism to the front in England. Mr. Rebow then suggested that Le Caron should be placed in touch with some one representing the Government. He was put in communication with me, and thus began the correspondence which lasted for the twenty years that ended by his appear- ing as a witness before the Special Commission. Our bargain was that, while the information he afforded might be used by me freely in the pubUc interest, his letters were to be deemed private. And so, when he decided, as he expressed it, to testify for the Times^^^ he claimed, in pursuance of this bargain, to have access to his letters in order to enable him to prepare his evidence. To this demand I acceded ; and for doing so Sir WilHam Harcourt declared war upon me. In repy to a question in Parliament, on March i, 1889, Mr. Matthews, the Home Secretary, informed him that in this matter I had acted without his knowledge or sanction.'^ And he thereupon gave notice — That on the Vote on Account relating to the Metropolitan Police he would call attention to the conduct of Mr. Anderson in handing over confidential documents without leave from the Secretary of State, and its bearing upon his position as Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of the Criminal InvestigatiOii Department.^' A fortnight later, speaking on a political platform in Lambeth, he used these words — The confidential agent, the Commissioner of Police, the head of the Criminal Investigation Department, goes and hands over to an informer and to the agent of the Times^ the secret papers of the Home Office without the consent of the Home Secretary. I should have liked to see a man in that position do such a thing under any of the predecessors of the Home Secretary. I know where he would have been to-day. It would not have been at Scotland Yard.'' This appeared in the newspapers of Wednesday, March 20th. At five o'clock that day I had a visit at my office from a friend, who came straight from the House of Commons to tell me *^ that the whole business of the Empire had been put aside in order to discuss my evil deeds," and that Sir WilHam Harcourt, in particular, had attacked me fiercely. His object in calling was to warn me that my position was critical, and to urge me to move at once in my own defence. A letter INTRODUCTORY 5 to the Times^^^ I remarked, might roll back the tide of war. But would it embarrass the Secretary of State ? It would only help the Secretary of State," he assured me ; and as he was a personal, as well as a political, friend of Mr. Matthews, I accepted his assurance. I should here say, however, that, as I afterwards ascertained, he had had no communication whatever with Mr. Matthews on the subject. My first requirement, of course, was to know exactly what had been said in the House. So after dinner that evening I made for the Times office, and appealed to the editor to let me see a proof of the report of the debate — a request to which he at once acceded. Sir WiUiam Harcourt's platform denunciations had not alarmed me. In the same connection he branded Sir Richard Webster as a disgrace to the English Bar " ; and nothing he said of me was quite as bad as that. That was " his way." But his words as Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons could not be treated lightly. And he had charged me, I learned, with ^'acting as a tout for the Times^^^ and betraying the secrets of my Department," thus proving that I was utterly useless in the office I held." Had he been Home Secretary, he declared, a man in Mr. Anderson's position would not have remained twenty-four hours in Scotland Yard." Though I am a man of peace I never shirk a fight, and this sort of thing was just what was best fitted to put me on my mettle. So I took up my pen at once, and a couple of hours later I handed my apologia to the editor. Mr. Buckle was most sympathetic, and set himself to impress on me the gravity of the course I was taking. He urged me to hold back my letter till I had slept over it." And give the He twenty-four hours start?" said I. ^^No; I know what Fm doing, and I fear nothing but delay." The first leading article Hn the Times of next morning (March 21, 1889), began as follows : — ^^We have too much respect for the Special Commission Court and for the purity and independence of pubUc justice to attempt to discuss in any detail the questions raised by Sir WiUiam Harcourt in the House of Commons yesterday ; and, in spite of all provocations, we intend to maintain the reserve we have hitherto shown till the time comes when it will be permissible to speak. For the same reasons we can hardly comment upon the substance of Mr. Anderson's letter, which 6 INTRODUCTORY we publish to-day, and will only say that it seems to stand out in striking contrast for dignity of tone and straightforward statement with the combination of recklessness and shiftiness displayed by his unscrupulous accusers. And on the opposite page the letter appeared, with all the prominence which the best position and the largest type could give to it. Its success was complete. It killed the Affaire Le Caron so far as I was concerned, but it was made the ground of a fresh attack upon me. For Mr. Labouchere's indignation was great at my daring to defend myself against charges that were both false and scandalous. He brought up the matter twice at question time ; and when the House reassembled after the Easter recess, it was made the subject of a set debate. It is germane to my present purpose to notice that on this occasion Mr. Matthews' vigorous defence of me was based on the fact, not only that Sir William Harcourt's charges were unjust, but that, having regard to the terms of violent abuse '' in which they were launched, I was fully justified in writing to the Press to refute them. This in turn eUcited a venomous attack upon me from Mr. John Morley, who described my letter as one of the meanest, as well as one of the most insolent documents ever written.'^ The public can judge whether these offensive epithets are not more applicable to Mr. Morley's words than to mine.^ Though I had no communication whatever with the Secre- tary of State during all this period, I was not ignorant of what had transpired at the Home Office. Influenced by a sinister adviser, Mr. Matthews' first intention was to throw me over. But the Whips gave warning that the members below the gangway '' would not tolerate this. They held that by my letter I had rendered a definite service to the Government, and that I ought to be supported. Hence Mr. Matthews' vigorous defence of me on March 22nd, and again on April 29th. And my reason for emphasising all this is to show that no element was wanting to make a smaller man than Sir William ' If, even at the time, I could afford to ignore Mr. Morley's attack on me, I can certainly afford to forget it now. I sometimes forgive a wrong, but I never forget a kindness ; and the manner in which he received me on the only occasion on which I ever asked a favour of him — it was on behalf of my brother, the late Sir Samuel Lee Anderson, during his last illness — is to me a pleasant and permanent memory. INTRODUCTORY 7 Harcourt more determined than ever to have my scalp.'' And yet from the day my letter was published, he never uttered a single word to my prejudice, but, on the contrary, he went out of his way to prove to me that I still enjoyed his friendship. One afternoon shortly after this Supply debate, I was in the Members' lobby, and seeing him come out of the House, I went forward to speak to him. He failed to recognise me, however, and brushed me aside as he passed. An hour later the incident was recorded, with a sensational headline, in the Special Editions." A few days afterwards I met him again as I was leaving the House by the Members' staircase. He was engaged in close conversation with Mr. Childers, and leaning on his arm. I saluted him in passing, but again he failed to notice me. Before I reached the bottom of the flight, however, I heard him calling after me, and on my retracing my steps he greeted me with all the old cordiaHty. He shook me warmly by the hand, said he was glad to see me, and that he hoped I was getting on well at Scotland Yard,^^ When Sir William Harcourt's biography comes to be written, I question whether it will contain anything better fitted than this simple incident to illustrate the signal gene- rosity of his character. The suggestion that if he thought he had wronged me he ought to have said so publicly does not weigh with me. For he knew that I had put myself right with the public, and that in doing so I had scored heavily " at his expense. The effect this had on smaller men I have already shown. But with him not a spark of anger or ill-will resulted from it. In moments of temper he sometimes said outrageous things, but he never bore malice. In that respect, indeed, he was more like a warm-hearted schoolboy than the cynic he was supposed to be. On the only occasion on which he ever spoke to me in a manner to hurt my self-respect, my rejoinder was, Well, sir, of course my mouth is closed ; for you are the Secretary of State, and I am only a mere subordinate." We were standing on the hearthrug in his room in Grafton Street, and glaring at me in a passion, he demanded what right I had to say that : had he ever treated me in that way ? Sir William, I apologise," I replied ; I'm sorry I said what I did." The storm passed instantly, and sitting down in one of his fireside armchairs he motioned me to the other. Who 8 INTRODUCTORY could help liking such a man ? I could cite many incidents to point the same moral, but I will content myself by giving only the following two. Arriving late at the Home Office one day, I heard that I had been asked for repeatedly ; and on going up to the Secre- tary of State's room, I found him and Sir Adolphus Liddell wrangHng over an important matter relating to the Secret Service. I took sides with the Under-Secretary, and we had a warm discussion which lasted till the Chief left for the House. When I got back to my room, and went into the matter quietly, I became quite certain that Sir William was wrong ; and I told Sir Adolphus so, giving my reasons. Our afternoon seance had made him both angry and sore, for the Chief had said some unpleasant things. So he sat down at once and wrote to Sir William, telling him what I had said. An hour later, as I was about to leave the Office, he sent for me again. Read that," said he, pointing to a letter lying on his desk in Sir William's big spider-like hand- writing. It was a perfectly charming letter, making a frank and full amende. Those who knew Sir Adolphus Liddell can realise the scene. Not another word could I get out of him, and I sat down and waited for the oracle to speak. I believe he was repenting of all the hard things he had intended to say and do in consequence of the afternoon's wrangle. Then at last, his face lighting up like that of a schoolboy who gets a cake when he expects a kick, he blurted out, Well, he can be nasty when he likes, but / couldn't have written that letter. Come along, let us go home." And as we walked together he talked of nothing else, and frankly owned that he was ^*only beginning to understand Harcourt." When Lord Rosebery was at the Home Office, his rela- tions with Sir William Harcourt became at one time some- what strained. And when he held out the olive branch by inviting Sir William to dinner the invitation was refused ; and I happened to know that the refusal was due altogether to ^'sulk." In the days when people dined at a reasonable hour, a pet child often came in to dessert, and got a seat at the head of the table. And at that stage of the dinner in question Sir William Harcourt appeared and a place was made for him beside the host. He had got free sooner than he expected," he said, in his most genial manner, and he could not lose the pleasure," &c., &c. I believe there were only two other guests at the table who knew that this INTRODUCTORY was a charming ^'fib/^ intended to cover a frank acknow- ledgment that he had acted churUshly in refusing the invita- tion. Who but Sir William Harcourt would have had both the courage and the generosity to act thus ? Though the subject will come up again later, I may say here that I formed a very high opinion indeed of Le Caron. He was a man of sterling integrity and honour. Many people are truthful, and some are accurate, but I have seldom met any one who excelled him in these respects. He was not an ^^nformer.^^ It was an almost quixotic desire to serve his country that led him to enter on the task of thwarting the Fenian conspiracy. I regarded him and his work in the same light in which I regarded police duty at Scotland Yard, and the able and estimable men who were my subordinates there in dealing with other branches of crime. In his Life of Gladstone Mr. Morley says that Le Caron had been for twenty-eight years in the United States, and for more than twenty of them he had been in the pay of Scotland Yard.^' The fact is that, until he appeared as a witness at the Special Commission, Scotland Yard " was not aware of his existence. And during five, at least, of the eventful years in which he kept me informed of the doings of the Fenian leaders, his letters did not cost the Govern- / ment even the price of the postage stamps he used in sending / them to me. Though the reward given him for thwarting the second Fenian raid on Canada was petty in comparison with the value of his services, it was, at least, substantial ; but the amount of money he received in other years was seldom much more than sufficed to compensate him for constant interruption of his work as a practising doctor. CHAPTER II LOCAL AND PERSONAL T T r HOM have I the honour of addressing ? ^Ms a formula V V "^i^h which we are famihar. Who is this who claims the honour of addressing us ? is an inquiry the public may reasonably make upon the appearance of a book of this character. To eliminate the personal element from these pages, therefore, would be to exclude the grounds on which I venture to claim a hearing on the subjects of which they treat. But the personal element shall be made entirely subordinate to their main purpose. I hope, without waiting for the salmon-fishing and anecdotage stage of life, to write a book in another vein, giving something of my experiences in the Secret Service and at Scotland Yard. But a few more years must pass, and men too, perhaps, before I can throw off all restraint in writing on such subjects. What I have to say here and now, however, may be said without impropriety or breach of faith. I was born and brought up — well, as the French phrase has it, that goes without saying ; and I am not vain enough to suppose that the particulars are of interest to any one. This much, however, may be opportune : When an alien is naturalised in England he becomes an English citizen ; and as a good many generations have passed since my Scottish ^' forebears settled in Ireland, and that country was my home during the first twenty-seven years of my life, I always supposed I was Irish, until the Home Rule move- ment enlightened me. For no one is Irish nowadays who has not national aspirations'' verging on sedition; or, in other words, who refuses to join in an agitation designed to reduce Ireland to the level of a dependent province, and to rob her of the proud place she shares with Great Britain in the government of the Empire. At all events, I was an Irish 10 LOCAL AND PERSONAL II barrister until the events of which I have to speak drew me away from the practice of the profession of my choice. If I make a passing reference to my college days, it is because of experiences which have some bearing on a pending controversy of great public interest. When 1 entered Trinity College, Dubhn, as a Presbyterian, every member of the governing body, and all the Fellows and Professors, belonged to the estabHshed Church. And at that time a narrowness and bigotry little known on this side of the Channel marked the EvangeHcals of the Irish Church. But though this spirit was rife outside the walls of Trinity College, within them it was unknown. Whether in regard to my dealings with the Dons or with my fellow students, I cannot recall a single occasion or incident to lead me to qualify this statement. And during my years of office in the College Historical Society — full sister of the Union Societies of Oxford and Cambridge — I was brought a good deal into touch with the Dons.^^ During my term as Auditor (or President) of the Society I personally convassed the members of the governing body of the University, to obtain their consent to a scheme of life membership, which they had till then refused to sanction. But neither in my communications with them, nor with my fellow members of the Historical Society, was the question of my religion of more account than whether I drank tea or coffee for breakfast. Among the undergradu- ates, of course, religious questions were sometimes discussed as freely as the political and social problems to which the history of Ireland gives prominence. But we met on perfectly even terms, and learned not only to hear, but to respect, opinions and convictions which we did not share. Thought was free and sympathies were generous. This, however, is precisely the element of college life which the Irish Roman Catholic bishops refuse to tolerate. There is not, I understand, so much as one of their number who was ever at a university, and therefore they do not see the grotesque absurdity of supposing that if this element be eliminated, the benefits of a university education can be enjoyed. Apart from the hall-mark ^' of its degrees, the only distinctive benefits which a university can confer fall under either of two heads. Provided it has prestige and wealth, it can secure teachers of the highest eminence in every department of science and learning. But this is of 12 LOCAL AND PERSONAL practical importance only to a minority. The ordinary pass- men, who always constitute the great majority of students, are incapable of benefiting by such high-class teaching. And for them the benefits of a university education are chiefly of another kind. For education, in the best sense of the word, is not mere acquaintance with facts and the contents of books ; it involves that sort of habit of mind, and that moulding of character, which can only be acquired by contact with men. And if this essential element in education be left out of account, five men out of every six who gradu- ate at our universities might receive as good an education " from private tutors, or, indeed, from competent governesses. In the moral government of the world, men reap what they sow. And it is owing to the influence of Maynooth, as en- dowed by England in the teeth of both principle and policy,^ that the Irish question of to-day seems insoluble. The historian will hereafter point to the rise and growth of theological colleges as the cause of the bitterness which to-day inflames the education controversy between the Protestant Churches in England. But we do not need to wait for historians to tell us of the mischief that Maynooth has caused in Ireland. By none is its influence more de- plored than by the Roman Catholic gentry. Before Maynooth was founded, most of the higher clergy of the Irish Roman Catholic Church were educated in England or France. They were, in the good sense of the term, '^men of the world. In my boyhood, for example, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin was a near neighbour of ours, and though my father was a red-hot Protestant of the Ulster type, he counted Dr. Murray among his friends, and I never heard him speak of him save in terms of respect and regard, as being a cultured Christian gentleman. But nowadays — well, there are some things better left unsaid. I am always on the alert to obtain information about theo- logical colleges. Their special function seems to be to train men to study not only the Bible, but all ecclesiastical and religious questions, through coloured spectacles. They thus tend to counteract the benefits of a university education,^' ' The Roman Catholic College of Maynooth was established by the Irish Parliament in 1795. In the year 1846 Sir Robert Peel obtained an Act of Parliament under which it received a grant of ;^30,ooo for building purposes, and a permanent endowment of ;^26,ooo a year. This annual subsidy was commuted when the Irish Church was disestablished. LOCAL AND PERSONAL 13 which, here in England, the students of very many of them have already enjoyed. But in Maynooth everything in heaven and earth is viewed through coloured spectacles. What can be expected of men who have been placed in seclusion at an age when boys usually go to a public school, and who, for six, seven, or eight years, have been deprived of almost every influence that fits a man for life in the world — the very years, moreover, in which character is formed, and the mind is either developed or permanently narrowed and warped ? These wretched victims of priestly training are never allowed to see even the ordinary news- papers or periodicals ; and if, during their brief summer holiday at home, they read any but a priest-approved book of history or philosophy, their sin is brought to light in the confessional and severely punished. Not only at meals, but even in the playfields they are generally required to talk in Latin. ^ And at the last, with minds thus dwarfed and hearts cramped, and too often also crippled in health — for the fasts imposed on these growing lads are in part responsible for the rapidity with which the college cemetery is filling up — they are turned out as priests, to impose their will upon the unfortunate laity of Ireland. A Roman Catholic College for the training of priests has been established in Cambridge, and its students are required to attend University lectures, and encouraged to mix with other men in the colleges and clubs ; for English Roman Catholics know the value of such advantages. And if the Maynooth-trained bishops will not tolerate a similar arrange- ment in Ireland, even for the laity, it is because the whole spirit of Romanism in that country is ultramontane and retrograde. And their aim in demanding a Roman Catholic University is to bring under priestly rule the only class of their co-religionists that still maintains a moderate share of independence.^" With me, at least, this is not a question of Protestantism versus Romanism. While in Trinity College my personal friends among the Roman Catholic students were more numerous than among men of my own Church. I have learned to live at peace with my neighbours, and I can ' " Do you mean," I remember asking one of them, " that you have Latin for losing your leg stump at cricket ? " Yes," he replied with a laugh ; "but I don't think Cicero would understand it." 2 On this subject see further at p. 108, post 14 LOCAL AND PERSONAL respect a sincere Roman Catholic. My Protestantism has to do with principles rather than with men. But my experience of Ireland confirms the teaching of history, that priest-rule is incompatible with the peace of a home or the prosperity of a nation. I was much struck by a statement which appeared some time since in the newspapers about the influence of the Dutch Reformed pastors in South Africa. The writer, An old Free State Burgher/^ tells how, before the war, these men were supreme. Social life was formed and ruled by them/^ and no book or paper was allowed in the house until ^ Mynheer ' was consulted,'* and so on. And he adds — More than half our troubles in political, social, and com- mercial life have been caused, and are now more than ever caused, by these men fighting to regain their lost power and using any weapon to hand. Of course, the minister says he represents expressed public feeling. So he does ; but it is the expression of a muzzled public, the individuals of which know from experience that to differ from ^ Mynheer ' causes certain household quarrels, and probably a boycott, and so what ' Mynheer ' says is ^ Ja and Amen.' Knowing the great power they had in my own youth, and seeing how that power has waned, I do not wonder at their attempt to regain it ; but I do wonder, and am disgusted that they should make the attempt under the guise of patriotism.'' And the writer concludes by speaking of the ex-Boer officer class," which, having tasted the sweets of power and of flattery, now find it impossible to return to the drudgery of their former life as tillers of the soil, and so lend them- selves to anything that will ensure for a time an easy, lazy, vagabond life among strangers." Change the terms, and this describes exactly the Irish problem. For South Africa" read ^'Ireland," for the Protestant preachers " read the " Roman Catholic priests," and for the ^^Boer ex-officer" read the "Nationalist agitator," and the parallel is perfect. The South African authorities will not truckle to this baneful influence ; but no one may venture to gauge the depths of folly to which an English Government may sink in the case of Ireland. Every educated Irishman, whether he be Roman Catholic or Pro- testant, knows well that all hope of peace and prosperity in that country depends on promoting a spirit of mutual respect and forbearance among members of the different creeds. LOCAL AND PERSONAL 15 Trinity College exercises a most useful influence in this regard, and the demand for a Roman Catholic University has its origin in the desire of the priests to counteract that influence. In the judgment of Irish priests every institution and every individual is Protestant that does not own alle- giance to the Pope and his Church — in other v^rords, that is not Roman Catholic. In this sense also it is that the University of Dublin is Protestant. CHAPTER III ANCIENT HISTORY MY special knowledge of the Fenian movement dates from the State Trials of 1865. Not that I was professionally engaged in those prosecutions ; my standing at the Bar was too jmiior to make that possible. But my father, the Crown Solicitor, with the approval of the Law Officers, deputed the duties of his office to my brother, the late Sir Samuel Lee Anderson ; and never was there between brothers a closer friendship, or more unrestricted confidence, than between him and me. And thus it came about that not only were the Crown briefs at my disposal, but also the confidential reports and secret information which had led the Government to arrest the leaders of the conspiracy. This was known to Sir Thomas Larcom, the permanent Under-Secretary at the Castle ; and so, when, after the change of Government in 1866, Lord Mayo ^ sought for some one to whom he might entrust a task of an exceptionally confidential kind, my name was put before him. Though dangerous conspiracies had been rife in Ireland for years, there existed no Secret Service organisation or Intelligence Department of any kind at Dublin Castle. Our minister at Washington, and some of our consuls in the United States, obtained much valuable information about the rise and progress of Fenianism ; and their despatches were communicated to the Irish Government. But these despatches were deemed so secret that they were put away, without even being registered,^' in the Chief Secretary's Office. And specially confidential reports from the Irish magistracy and pohce were treated in the same manner. ' Then Lord Naas, but I here use the title to which he succeeded in August, 1867, and by which he is now generally known. 16 ANCIENT HISTORY 17 When, therefore, the new Chief Secretary sought informa- tion respecting the history of the conspiracy, the task which confronted him was to master the contents of a cupboard in which all these documents lay heaped in an undigested mass. The duty he entrusted to me was to prepare a precis of these secret papers, and of the other official archives relating to Fenianism. This work was most interesting ; and after completing the precis^ I used it as material for a historical narrative of the origin and proceedings of the conspiracy. It is all ancient history now. But if what I have to say is to be of value, history still more ancient must be put right before I proceed. For the densest ignorance prevails with regard to Ireland. The English and Scotch people are as ignorant of Irish history as the Chief Secretary himself ! Mr. Morley exclaimed in one of his political speeches during Mr. Balfour^s reign at Dublin Castle. And with regard to matters of principal importance in relation to the Home Rule agitation, the Irish chapters in Mr. Morley^s Life of Gladstone will give them no enlightenment. His pages, indeed, will only serve to deepen the delusion which prevails among the educated classes, that it was the Union that created the need of a policy of coercion. Never was belief more utterly false. From the time when the patriarch Noah's adventurous niece sought on the virgin soil of Ireland a refuge from the judgment of the Flood, down through all the ages of its legendary and its actual history, the story is a wearisome record of trouble, disaster, and bloodshed. Not but that there were brilliant epochs connected with the career of one and another of the genuine heroes whom that country has produced. But peace never made her home there, and capacity for government was never developed. Even Strongbow^s invasion was instigated by an Irish king, who, after a long and bloody feud, sought thus to avenge himself upon his successful rival. Strong- bow^s invasion,^' I say ; for the figment that it was an English conquest of Ireland is one of the betises of what passes for Irish history. The raiders were the soldiers of a French King of England, who, by the suppression of the power of the barons, had just completed the conquest of the English which his ancestor, William of Normandy, had begun. The main English element in the business was that Pope Adrian IV., who issued the Bull directing and blessing the invasion, was an Englishman. 3 i8 ANCIENT HISTORY The language of that Papal Bull may well give thought to those who believe that the most Holy Roman Church can never err. Here is an extract from it — There is no doubt, and your nobility acknowledges, that Ireland, and all islands upon which Christ, the Sun of righteousness, has shone, and which have received the teaching of the Christian faith, rightly belong to the blessed Peter and the most Holy Roman Church.'^ The facts are accessible to all in the pages of a work at once so popular and so erudite as the Encyclopaedia Britannica/^ And so dense is the ignorance that prevails respecting them, that the following further extract from those same pages may not be inappropriate : — In 1 156 Dermod MacMurrough, deposed for his tyranny from the Kingdom of Leinster, repaired to Henry in Aqui- taine. The king was busy with the French, but gladly seized the opportunity of asserting his claim, and gave Dermod a letter authorising him to raise forces in England. Thus armed and provided with gold extorted from his former subjects in Leinster, Dermod went to Bristol and sought the acquaintance of Richard de Clare, a Norman noble of great abiUty but broken fortunes. Earl Richard, whom late usage has named Strongbow, agreed to reconquer Dermod^s kingdom for him.'' Thus it came to pass that Strongbow invaded the dis- tressful country.'' Henry himself landed in 1172, having had Adrian's grant confirmed to him by his successor Alexander III., the Pope by whom Thomas a Becket was canonised. The so-called English conquest of Ireland " was thus a conquest by a French king and his retainers — the sequel and completion of the Norman conquest of England — carried out with the sanction and blessing of two successive occupants of the Papal throne. Next in historic order, the cruelties of Cromwell's recon- quest of Ireland, and the Penal Laws of the Protestant Parliament of WilHam III., are the stock-in-trade of the NationaUst agitators. They ignore the fact that Cromwell's mission was to punish a rebellion marked by atrocities and horrors of which the Indian mutiny affords the only parallel in our national story. The following is taken from Hume's account of the massacre of the Irish Protestants in 1641 : — Death was the lightest punishment inflicted by the rebels. All the tortures which wanton cruelty could devise, all the ANCIENT HISTORY 19 lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited without injury, and cruelty derived from no cause. To enter into particulars would shock the least delicate humanity.^' And as for the Penal Laws, it must not be forgotten that they, too, were the sequel and consequence of infamous plots to give up the Protestants of Ireland again to destruction.^ Without posing as apologists for any of these measures, we ought to be able in this twentieth century to consider them dispassionately. I shall have something to say later on about the far more wanton measures by which Irish industries were systematically ruined, and the country kept in a condition of chronic pauperism. But to come back to later times, the vast majority of British electors who vote for Home Rule candidates for Parliament believe that when Ireland actually possessed Home Rule the country was peaceful and prosperous and happy. What are the facts ? It is said that during the eighteen years of ^^Grattan^s Parliament,^' fifty-four ''Coercion Acts'' were placed upon the College Green statute-book. The country was going from bad to worse. Its condition was not only a national scandal, but a national danger to England. In the summer of 1795 a rebellion as terrible as that of 1641 appeared to be imminent. Half a million of the population were believed to have been enrolled in the secret societies, and an outbreak on August 29th was averted only by treason in the rebel camp. The insurrection was thus prevented, but the energies which had gathered for it spent themselves in outrages upon all who sought to enforce the law or to preserve the peace. '' A reign of terror " prevailed throughout the winter months. The first duty of the Irish Parliament, therefore, in the ^ And once their purpose was achieved, the Penal Laws were adminis- tered in such an easy-going Irish fashion as largely to mitigate their severity. My friend, R. J. Mahony, of Dromore Castle, used to narrate a characteristic instance of this. Any Protestant — a near relative always preferred — could rob a Roman Catholic of his landed property by filing a "Bill of Discovery" against him. His Roman Catholic ancestor filed such a Bill of Discovery against himself, and the Dromore estate was by law transferred from D. Mahony, a Papist, to D. Mahony, a Protestant. He then filed Bills of Discovery against his friends throughout the county, O'Donoghue, O'Connell, &c., &;c., and held their properties for them till the Penal Laws were repealed. The trick was a transparent one, but it was connived at. 20 ANCIENT HISTORY session of 1796, was to pass an Insurrection Act. Here are some of its provisions. Administering unlawful oaths was made a capital offence. Strangers in any district might be arrested, examined on oath, and committed to gaol in default of finding sureties. In districts proclaimed by the Lord Lieutenant under the Act, any person out of doors between an hour after sunset and sunrise was liable to be arrested and sent to serve in the navy. And justices had power to enter any house to ascertain whether the inhabitants were absent. Any one proved to be without employment or means of subsistence, and any one obstructing the execution of the Act, might be dealt with as a disorderly person and sent to the navy.^ But this measure, so drastic in its severity, and further strengthened by a rigorous Arms Act, did not suffice to prevent the outbreak of two years later. The historic Rebellion of ^98 called for coercive legislation still more stringent. The writ of Habeas Corpus was suspended, and the Rebellion Act, 1799/^ practically gave power to the Executive to put the country under martial law. In addition to all this, the Whiteboy Act,'' till then a temporary measure, was made perpetual. Such was the code of coercion laws which the Irish Parliament bequeathed to Westminster. If the success or failure of government is to be judged by the necessity for such legislation, the Imperial Parliament need not shrink from the test of comparison. In concluding this ancient history'' chapter, I commend to the attention of the British electorate the following extract from a speech delivered by the Irish Chancellor, Lord Clare, on February 10, 1800, descriptive of the state of Ireland at the time of the Union : — " I will now appeal to every dispassionate man who hears me, whether I have in anything misstated or exaggerated the calamitous situation of my country, or the coalition of vice and folly which has long undermined her happiness, and at this hour loudly threatens her existence. It is gravely inculcated, I know, ' Let the British Minister leave us to ourselves, and we are very well as we are.' ' We are very well as we are.' Gracious God ! of what materials must the heart of that man be composed, who knows the state of the ' By a later Act (39 Geo. III. c. 36, s. 55) such persons might be trans- ferred to the army or navy of any friendly European Power. ANCIENT HISTORY 21 country and will coldly tell us ' we are very well as we are ^ ? ' We are very well as we are ! ' We have not three years^ redemption from bankruptcy or intolerable taxation, nor one hour's security against the renewal of exterminating civil war. ' We are very well as we are/ Look to your statute-book — session after session have you been compelled to enact laws of unexampled rigour and novelty to repress the horrible excesses of ithe mass of your people ; and the fury of murder and pillage and desolation have so outrun all legis- lative exertion, that you have been at length driven to the necessity of breaking down the pale of municipal law, and putting your country under the ban of military government ; and in every little circle of dignity and independence we hear whispers of discontent at the temperate discretion with which it is administered. * We are very well as we are.' Look at the old revolutionary Government of the Irish Union, and the modern revolutionary Government of the Irish consulate, canvassing the dregs of the rebel democracy for a renewal of popular ferment and outrage to overcome the deliberations of Parliament. ^We are very well as w^e are.' Look to your civil and religious dissensions — look to the fury of political faction, and the torrents of human blood that stain the face of your country. And of what material is the man composed who will not listen with patience and goodwill- to any proposition that can be made to him for composing the distractions and healing the wounds, and alleviating the miseries of this devoted nation ? * We are very well as we are.' Look to your finances, and, I repeat, you have not redemption for three years from pulDlic bank- ruptcy, or a burthen of taxation which will sink every gentleman of property in the country." CHAPTER IV THE FENIAN MOVEMENT DURING the half-century preceding the famine the state of Ireland made prosperity impossible. No Govern- ment that the world has ever known could have averted disaster. The population doubled ; and, the potato being as prolific as the people, a couple of acres of land sufficed to enable a cotter to support his family in idleness. Such a state of things was quite millennial, according to the Irish ideal ; but the millennium was brief, and the potato Wight brought a terrible Nemesis. In 1847 nearly three millions of the population were in receipt of aid from the public treasury. And yet, notwith- standing the appalling condition of the peasantry, the greater part of the country was peaceful, and life and property were safe. But with that blind stupidity, that almost criminal folly, which so often characterises the acts of English Ministers toward Ireland, this was the epoch chosen by Lord John Russell's Government to part with the Arms Act, which had been in force ever since the Revolution. The con- sequences were disastrous. In the midst of the most horrible starvation, a universal mania arose for the possession of firearms.^^ So great was the demand, that it was said to have revived the gun trade in Birmingham. In many cases arms were paid for with money received from the public relief works. It is needless to say that there was a serious outbreak of crime. Special legislation followed, of course. Temporary repres- sive laws of much severity, framed on the model of the Irish Statutes, had been passed in 1814, 1822, 1833 i but Sir George Grey's Crime and Outrage Acf of 1847 was so mild in comparison that it scarcely deserved the name of a Coercion Act. To its operation, however, was largely due the failure 22 THE FENIAN MOVEMENT 23 of the " rebellion of 1848. Though that movement was a fiasco, it called for another Habeas Corpus Suspension Act. And in order to check the pestilent activity of the Ribbon Lodges, the provisions of the Crime and Outrage Act were renewed from time to time. But with the collapse of Smith O'Brien^s conspiracy, the country soon became settled, and the year 1850 introduced a decade of tranquillity and prosperity unprecedented in the history of Ireland. As Mr. Gladstone said in his great Leeds speech of October, 1881, no labouring population in Europe made such progress as the Irish during that period. If during those halcyon days a liberal Land Act, and (as Isaac Butt afterwards suggested) a permanent Peace Preservation Act, had been added to the statute-book, the Irish Question might have been settled for ever. The Penal Laws and the mis-government of bygone generations are generally supposed to account for the present condition of Ireland. Sunspots and weather have vastly more to do with it. It is to the mis-government of our own times that we must look to account for the problem. What I have said about Maynooth may be disputed by many. But what I am about to say here will be endorsed by every Irish- man who has passed middle age. I have spoken of the sham millennium of the period preceding the famine, and o£ the real prosperity of the decade which followed. But then, as I have said, another evil era began. In the five years ending with 1865 mischief was done which has never been repaired — mischief which might have been averted by any Government worthy of the name. During that eventful period, Dublin Castle " was a government pour rire. The Viceroy was the Earl of Carlisle, a kind-hearted and cultured man, of a somewhat grotesquely striking presence, but with no other qualification for his high position. He was much in evidence on festive occasions, made elegant little speeches at pubHc functions, and ogled the pretty women. Not that he was a roue ; he was only a fop. Sir Robert Peel, the Chief Secretary, though a man of ability, was a sort of political Bohemian, who regarded his sojourn in Ireland as a picnic, and meddled but little with the work of his office. And the Attorney-General was Mr. (afterwards Lord) O'Hagan, a man of much charm and culture, but with no capacity for affairs. Who governs Ireland ? Larcom and the Police,^* was THE FENIAN MOVEMENT one of the popular witticisms of the time. Sir Thomas Larcom was a man of judgment and capacity ; but the Under-Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant is not competent to institute or carry out a policy. And while his chiefs were amusing themselves, or playing the fool, the unfor- tunate country drifted into a conspiracy which, as Lord Kimberley afterwards declared in Parliament after much consideration and reflection,^' was more formidable than any Irish movement since 1798 ; a high-sounding phrase which really meant very little. "That enormous sack of gas called Fenianism'' was John Mitcheirs description of it. The secret history of the conspiracy lies before me, but I will deal with it only in so far as it is neces- sary to my narrative. Its chief founders were the noto- rious James Stephens — a clerk in a small business house in Kilkenny — and a Tipperary farmer named John O'Mahony. Involved in the revolutionary fiasco of 1848, they were among the fugitives from justice who found an asylum in Paris. And there it was that the new scheme was hatched. Pro- fiting by the experience of past failures, they decided that the new movement should be secret and oath-bound, and that " the Irish race in America should be organised to provide the sinews of war. After some years Stephens returned to Ireland, and O'Mahony crossed the Atlantic to carry out his part of the scheme. O'Mahony, I beUeve, was honest ; just the sort of man who might have been won by conciliatory and just measures. But Stephens was a vain, self-seeking impostor, whom any competent Government would have either bought or suppressed. The Phoenix movement in Munster, which was the first outcome of Stephens' work, had but little vitality, and it was crushed by the arrest of some of its leaders in 1859. Fenianism proper dates from i860, when the scattered fragments of the Phoenix Society were reorganised under the high-sound- ing title of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, known in all Fenian documents as the I.R.B.'' It made little or no headway, however. The farmers were thinking about the land, and the priests about the Church ; and even among the lower classes in the towns it neither excited enthusiasm nor inspired confidence. A public display was evidently needed, and opportunity for this was found in the autumn of 1861. THE FENIAN MOVEMENT 25 Upon the death of Terence Bellew McManus, one of the high treason convicts of the RebeUion, an American deputation conveyed his body to Dubhn, and a great pubUc funeral was accorded him. The event is important, not merely because it made Fenianism popular, but because it led to a breach between the conspirators and the Roman Catholic Church. On account of the element of secrecy which marked the movement, Cardinal Cullen refused the use of the cathedral for the obsequies, and prohibited his clergy from taking part in them. But this seemed in no way to damp the popular enthusiasm, and after a week^s lying- in-state in the Mechanics' Institute, the remains were fol- lowed to the grave by a procession of huge proportions ( November 10, 1861 ). From that day Fenianism began to flourish. Members were enrolled and secretly drilled, arms were smuggled into the country for their use, and efforts were made to corrupt the military in various garrison towns. For three years and a half, in fact, the agents and emissaries of the conspiracy were allowed to carry on their work almost unchecked. Though there was no want of seditious journalism in Ireland, Stephens decided to found a weekly newspaper as ^' the avowed and accredited organ of the Brotherhood,^' and on November 28, 1863, the first number of the Irish People appeared. The following extracts, culled from some of its brilliantly written articles, are fair samples of the teaching by which, week by week, the people were in- cited to revolution : — By force of arms Ireland was wrested from her right- ful owners, the Irish people. By no other means will she ever be restored. And is she not ^ a land worth fighting for ' ? The sentence is an admirable one. It indicates at once the means and the end, the only means that can ever prove effectual, the only end that is worth the work. Those means are simply the rifle, the sword, and the cannon in the hands of those who know how to use them.'' The overthrow of tyranny has always been the work of the people. It is by their combined and determined efforts that rulers are made and unmade. America and France have furnished us with glorious examples of this. But in the streets of Paris, and upon the rich soil of America, blood was shed before freedom came ; and so it must be in Ireland. To win for ourselves an independence, to raise 26 THE FENIAN MOVEMENT Ireland to her proper rank amongst the nations, we must not, when the time comes, be chary of our own or the enemy's blood/' Something more than even a successful insurrection is demanded. And what is that ? An entire revolution which will restore the country to its rightful owners. And who are these ? The people.** '^We saw clearly that the people should be taught to distinguish between the priest as a minister of religion and the priest as a politician, before they could be got to advance one step on the road to independence. Our only hope is in revolution. But most of the bishops and many of the clergy are opposed to revolution. Is it not, then, the duty of the Irish patriot to teach the people that they have a right to judge for themselves in temporal matters ? This is what we have done. We have over and over again declared that it was our wish that the people should respect and be guided by their clergy in spiritual matters. But when priests turn the altar into a platform, . . . we believe it is our duty to tell the people that bishops and priests may be bad politicians and worse Irishmen.^' What would have happened in Ireland had the personnel at the Castle remained much longer unchanged, it is idle to conjecture. But in November, 1864, Lord Wodehouse (the late Earl of Kimberley) succeeded Lord Carlisle as Viceroy. Though there was no recent precedent for such a course, the new Lord- Lieutenant took to reading official papers, and interested himself generally in the state of the country. I recall a mot by which one of the clerks in the Chief Secre- tary's office — a man who posed as a wit ^ — gave expression to the surprise of the staff at such proceedings, and to their sense of the want of dignity they betokened. On my asking their opinion about the new Viceroy, he promptly replied, He's the best clerk in the office.^' But though Lord Wodehouse entered on his duties in the winter of 1864, it was not until the following autumn, when Mr. Lawson had succeeded Mr. O'Hagan as Attorney- General, that any action was taken to suppress the con- spiracy. On September 16, 1865, the office of the Irish People was raided, and the staff of the paper arrested. And ^ Lowry Balfour, well known in Dublin society. He was also a " genUeman at large " in the Viceregal household — an official designation which aptly described his role in Hfe. THE FENIAN MOVEMENT 27 at the Special Commission which followed, T. C. Luby, the nominal proprietor, John O^Leary, the editor, Donovan Rossa, the publisher, and C. J. Kickham, a leading mem- ber of the staff, were, with others of less note, convicted of treason felony and sentenced to penal servitude. No one, surely, who knows the facts, and can realise how these men were entrapped into treason by the shameful incompetence and criminal apathy of the Government of the day, can fail to sympathise with them and to deplore their fate. With one notorious exception ^ they were, both in ability and character, much above the average M.P. of the Parnellite era. After evading the police for several weeks, Stephens was arrested on November nth. But, aided by the treachery of a warder, he broke prison before the trials and succeeded in escaping to America. * I allude, of course, to Rossa. CHAPTER V THE F.b/' and the " RISING OF 1857 ACCORDING to the design of its founder, the F.B.," or Fenian Brotherhood — a title which properly belongs only to the American branch of the conspiracy — was organ- ised to aid the " I.R.B/' at home in the struggle ^' for the liberation of Ireland from the yoke of England/^ Established in 1858, with a nucleus of forty members, forty regiments were enumerated in the Phoenix newspaper of November 19, 1859, as then connected with it in the different States. But its strength was only on paper. It made but little pro- gress until four years later, when the First National Con- vention was held in Chicago, under the Presidency of John O'Mahony. This was in November, 1863. At the second convention, in Cincinnatti, fifteen months later, O^Mahony announced that the effect of the Chicago meeting had been to extend the organisation nearly five-fold,^' and to bring in more money than was represented by the total receipts of all the preceding years. At the third annual convention of the F.B.'\ which met at Philadelphia on October 16, 1865, an envoy from Ireland reported himself with letters from Stephens, demanding instant help for the outbreak which was declared to be imminent, in spite of recent reverses. This news excited enthusiasm. To give effect to the policy thus indicated, the presence of a " financial agent in Paris was deemed essen- tial ; for bills for ;^3,ooo, which had been posted to the leaders in Dublin before the tidings of their arrest reached New York, had fallen into the hands of the Irish police. But John Mitchell, of 1848 fame, was the only man who could be trusted in such a position, and he was in prison for offences due to his zeal for the Confederate cause during the war. 28 THE ''F.B:' and the RISING'' OF 1857 29 A deputation from the congress was accordingly despatched to Washington to treat for his release. The delegates soon returned to announce the success of their mission ; and they further claimed to have received from President Johnson and Mr. Sev^ard a favourable hearing for proposals they had laid before them, to attempt a seizure of British territory in America — a statement the truth of which depends on the character of the men who made it, and this, after all, is not saying much for it. It may be remarked, however, in passing, that the Irish vote, which affects so seriously even our English statesmanship at home, seems to have been utterly demoralising in its influence on American politicians. A month later a further despatch was received from Stephens, announcing that his military council'' had defi- nitely fixed the last week of December for the outbreak. O'Mahony summoned his colleagues, and urged the issue of Fenian bonds,^ to be repaid by the Irish Republic " six months after the acknowledgment of the independence of the Irish nation." But General " Sweeny, the Fenian Secretary of War," had a raid on Canada on the brain, and divided counsels paralysed the conspirators. The news of Stephens' arrest was quickly followed by tidings of his escape ; and late in December the notorious F. F. Millen, the president of Stephens' military council " in DubHn, arrived to take command of the promised expedition for the liberation of Ireland. It was not till December 29th that this military council " decided, by a majority of one, to defer action for a time. During the next few weeks many Fenian agents arrived from America, and a number of Fenians from across the Channel gathered in Dublin. The authorities were further alarmed by discovering that arms were being freely dis- tributed among the disaffected. The gravity of the situation was serious ; and on February 17, 1866, a " Habeas Corpus ^ These bonds were printed in the style of bank-notes, and were in the following form : It is hereby certified that the Irish Republic is indebted unto ... or bearer, in the sum of one hundred dollars, redeem- able six months after the acknowledgment of the independence of the Irish nation, with interest from the date hereof inclusive, at six per cent, per annum, payable on presentation of this bond at the Treasury of the Irish RepubUc." These bonds were freely purchased at Fenian meetings in America. 30 THE ^*F.B/^ AND THE ^'RISING" OF 1857 Suspension Act was passed through ParHament, and received the Royal assent.^ The effect of the arrests was magical, and during the summer of 1866 the country was more peaceful than it had been for years. In America, on the other hand, the action of the Government exasperated the conspirators, and for a time the excitement was intense. But divisions and quarrels, and wild-cat schemes, reduced the organisation to impotence. Sweeny was still intent on designs against Canada ; and on May 31st a band of six hundred men actually crossed the Niagara river under O'Neill, and planted the Irish flag on British soil.^' Two days later, however, they " escaped '' back to American territory, and thus brought the first Canadian raid to a close. The activity of the O'Mahony party had taken a strange turn. Doran Killian, the secretary of the Fenian treasury, had been one of the deputation to the White House in the Mitchell affair, and his head was full of a design to make trouble between this country and the United States. With this end in view a steamer was purchased and despatched with a party of armed raiders to seize the island of Campobello, N.B. But the only problem left open to the raiders was, whether they would be captured by British or American forces ? They gave the preference to the Americans. This occurred early in April. A month later Stephens arrived. He landed in New York on May loth, and was warmly welcomed ; for it was hoped that his presence would heal the dissensions among the leaders. But his intolerable arrogance only widened the breach, Mitchell, who knew him well, had written from Paris to warn O'Mahony against him ; but O'Mahony was powerless, and resigned in his favour. The man was personally contemptible, and as a conspirator he was a fraud ; but as a demagogue his success was unquestionable. At his first great meeting in Jones^ Wood, New York, he announced his policy to be War in Ireland, ^ The statistics of the arrests under the Act may be of interest. The return which I prepared for Lord Mayo, who, in July, 1866, became Chief Secretary in Lord Derby's administration, showed that the total arrests up to the date of his taking office were 756. When the Act was renewed in August, only 320 prisoners remained in custody, and three months later this number had been reduced to 73. THE ^^F.B." AND THE RISING OF 1857 31 and nowhere else'' ; and he added, ^' As surely as I address you to-day, we shall take the field in Ireland this very year '' — a pledge which he repeated on every opportunity during the next five months. He declared that money alone was needed. He had two hundred thousand fighting-men in Ireland, fifty thousand of whom were drilled, ready to obey his summons. A tour he made through the New England States was rather a failure, and the movement was sensibly declining, when a new impulse was given it by the exigencies of American politics, and the eagerness of politicians to capture the Irish vote. This influence led to his obtaining a return of the Fenian arms which had been seized at Campobello, and of the steamer purchased for that expedition. But money came in very slowly, and the reckless personal extravagance of Stephens, who lived like a prince, made a serious drain upon the funds. The acknowledged receipts up to the previous May were 460,000 dollars, but of this sum the balance remaining was trifling in amount. It was plain that no military expedition to Ireland was possible. Stephens, nevertheless, maintained his popularity by the audacity of his public announcements. At a meeting in Jones' Wood on September 24th he repeated, with increased solemnity, his determination to take the field. The men in Ireland," he declared, ''are determined on fighting this year, and I am as fully determined on being with them, come weal or woe." A month afterwards he made his last public appearance in New York. On that occasion (October 28th) he attended another monster meeting in Jones' Wood, and delivered himself in the usual strain. He announced that Fenianism in Ireland was as strong as ever, and that within two months would be decided the great question of Irish independence. '' I speak to you now," he continued, '' for the last time before returning to Ireland. . . . There are two hundred thousand men in Ireland as brave as you are, who want to fight more than you do. . . . My last words are, that we shall be fighting on Irish soil before the ist of January, and that I shall be there in the midst of my country- men." This rhodomontade had a powerful effect on the con- spirators in Ireland, and led to such a renewal of Fenian activity as to create a sense of general alarm. But the Irish Government used once more their special powers under the 32 THE ^^F.B/' AND THE RISING" OF 1857 statute, and the arrest of ninety-seven local leaders and emissaries of the organisation sufficed to restore peace to 1 the country — a peace that remained undisturbed throughout the winter. When the sky clears, and the mercury rises, people do not throw away their umbrellas, though they may put them by. But without having even a barometer to warn them of an approaching storm — for as yet no Intelligence Department " had been organised — the Irish Government decided to part with the powers which had proved so admirable in checking disorder. When Parliament met on February 5, 1867, the Queen^s Speech announced the abandonment of exceptional legislation for Ireland. But this false step was promptly retraced. A Bill ^to continue the Habeas Corpus Suspen- sion Acf was introduced on the 20th. A week later, on March 5th, occurred the armed outbreak for which the Fenian conspiracy had been preparing for years. In the winter of 1866 Stephens met in New York a number of foreign soldiers of fortune — Cluseret, afterwards known to fame in connection with the Paris Commune, and others of lesser note — and to these men he repeated in private the ^ tissue of fable and falsehood by which he had already gulled his Irish dupes. But soon after he had thus obtained a promise of their services he found himself compelled to summon a meeting of the leaders, and to urge a postpone- ment of the movement which he had pledged himself to inaugurate within the year. At an adjourned meeting, held on December 21st, he was deposed for '^incompetency and dishonesty " ; and Kelly, who afterwards came to notice as the hero of the Manchester outrage of September, 1867, was placed at the head of the organisation. This last meeting precipitated matters in Ireland, for Kelly was as reckless as Stephens was timid. The exhausted treasury was replenished by the sale of the Campobello steamer. And on January 12th Kelly left for Europe with Cluseret. Godfrey Massey had sailed the day before with money to distribute among the Fenian officers who were here awaiting orders and supplies from America. On reaching London, Massey learned that a coterie of these men, weary of inactivity and disgusted with Stephens, had framed a schismatic directory " of their own with a view to action apart from the organisation in America. The abortive raid % on Chester Castle on February 11, 1867, and the abortive THE ^^F.B.'' AND THE RISING'^ OF 1857 33 outbreak in Kerry two days later, were the outcome of their plot. But in spite of this defection, preparations for the officially accredited movement were pressed forward. On Febru- ary loth Kelly and his confederates met in a Chenies Street lodging in London, and formally constituted themselves the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic/' At this same meeting a manifesto was adopted for issue ^^to the world/' as soon as the Irish Republic should be proclaimed. At a further meeting on the 24th the night of March 5th was fixed for the insurrection. On February 26th the detailed plans for the outbreak were communicated to the Fenian centres and officers in Dublin, and the plot was at once disclosed to the Irish Government by an informer. Most of the leaders, therefore, were caged in various Irish prisons when March 5th arrived. Cluseret was in Paris, and Kelly was safe in his Chenies Street lodgings in London. An account of the incidents which marked the rising " would add unduly to the length of these pages, but two of the most, important skirmishes may be worth recording. It should be premised that Dublin, Cork, Tipperary, Limerick, Clare, the Queen's County, and Louth were the only counties in which the public peace was seriously disturbed. The Connaught Fenians refused to move, because of the absence of the French officer who had been promised them ; and a ^' rising " in Ulster was never seriously contemplated. The hill of Tallaght seems to have been designed as the principal rallying-point for the Dublin Fenians. The force in charge of the barrack at that place consisted of eleven men ; and these were reinforced before midnight by the arrival of a sub-inspector from Rathfarnham, who volunteered for the duty. None of the insurgents had yet reached the hill ; but before long there was heard the tramp of armed men approaching by the Greenhills Road. Doubtless a fierce attack was looked for, but no sooner did the officer challenge the advancing party than they turned and fled, without a single shot being fired. After an interval, another party was heard approaching the hill on the Roundtown side. The order to halt and disperse was met by a volley from the Fenians ; but the moment the police returned the fire the rebels beat a precipitate retreat, many of them flinging away their arms to facilitate their flight. The police started 4 34 THE ''F,B:' and THE RISING" OF 1857 in pursuit, and succeeded in making numerous arrests. Among the prisoners were five wounded men, who fell under the single volley from the rifles of the constabulary. In the south, the town of Kilmallock was the scene of the most serious encounter that took place in connection with the rising." The police barrack, though strongly built of stone, was ill-fitted for defence, as it had no fewer than twenty-six doors and windows, and was almost entirely surrounded by walls, which afforded shelter to an attacking party. A head constable was in charge of the station, with fourteen men under his command. Late in the evening a body of Fenians had assembled under the leadership of an Irish American, named Dunne, and called at several houses, making demands for arms. During one of their visits a gentleman, the manager of a bank in the town, was fired at and seriously wounded for refusing compliance with Dunne^s requirements ; and the doctor who was sent for to attend him was shot dead on returning from the patients house. Warned by these outrages, the entire force of police remained under arms during the night. Shortly before six o'clock in the morning the Fenians, then about two hundred strong, surrounded the barrack and com- menced an attack. For three hours the fighting lasted, a well- sustained fire being kept up on both sides. The rebels held their ground with the greatest determination, and gave way at last only because of the arrival of a reinforcement of police. The sub-inspector^ in command of the district had started for Kilmallock on hearing of the first disturbance the night before. Reaching the town too late to join his men, he hurried back to Kilfenane, and returned with a party of eleven to relieve their beleaguered comrades. Approaching the barrack at the rear, the ring of their rifles was the first notice the rebels had of their presence ; and a single volley from so un- expected a quarter created a panic in their ranks. Taking advantage of the confusion, the police combined their forces, and a bold attack on their assailants ended the fray. The Fenian leader seized a horse from a stable hard by, and was the first to escape. The foregoing will serve to give a general view of the outbreak of 1867. The result of divided counsels, at a time when the conspiracy was in a great measure disorganised, ^ In the Irish Constabulary a sub-inspector is a commissioned officer , and head constable is a subordinate rank. THE *^F.B.'^ AND THE RISING OF 1857 35 it is not surprising that the movement proved so completely a fiasco. John MitchelFs estimate of the business was that *'the project was in itself wild, and could only be made to appear feasible by systematic delusion and imposture.^' And yet, wild though the project was, and seemingly contemptible, it is an important link in the chain of Irish agitation. For the Fenian demands of 1867 are the Nationalist ^' demands of the present day.^ ' See p. 103, post. V CHAPTER VI THE CLERKENWELL EXPLOSION WHEN the Fenian Rising occurred I was paying an after-circuit visit in the country, and a summons from the Attorney-General recalled me to Dublin. Some hundreds of the 'insurgents'' had been marched into the city in custody, and, after a very summary magisterial hear- ing, committed for trial for high treason. The duty entrusted to me was to select the cases which were worth a prosecution. The task was interesting ; and the method of procedure was simple. All the ^'natives'' among the prisoners petitioned for release, and their petitions were backed by clamorous appeals from their relatives. Now the Irish Attorney-General is, in the fullest sense, a member of the Government. And, moreover, he is Public Prosecutor ; for in this respect both Ireland and Scotland have long since reached a stage of civilisation that England has not yet attained.^ The proper official reply to the petitions, therefore, was that, as the accused were committed for trial, the matter was in the hands of the Attorney-General, and the Lord- Lieutenant could not interfere. And in the important cases this reply was sent. But the rank and file of the Irish Republican army consisted of '' corner boys,'' as streets loafers are termed in Ireland ; and to arraign such men by the score on a charge of high treason was out of the question. The law has not majesty enough to bear such a strain. So I posed as an amicus who wanted to help them. But how could I know that the boys would not disgrace me ? Could I be sure that they wouldn't take to Fenianism ' In England there is no Public Prosecutor. The Director of Public Prosecutions " deals only with a limited number of cases falling within certain definite categories. 36 THE CLERKENWELL EXPLOSION 37 worse than ever ? With extraordinary unanimity they all declared that they had been tricked into the business, and would never handle a gun again as long as they lived. I promised to do my best for them. A promise which I fulfilled by entering their names in a list of prisoners to be released on their own recognisances. If the prayers and benedictions of the mothers and sisters of the rascals failed to help me, the failure was not due to want of earnestness on their part. They gave proof of their sincerity by telling me all they knew about the Fenians and the Rising ; and in matters of this kind every trifling detail of information is useful. This task led to my being asked to undertake another, of a much more delicate and difficult kind, namely, to secure one of the more important prisoners as Queen^s evidence ^' at the approaching trials. It was rather a strain upon profes- sional etiquette, but a barrister may discharge any duty sanctioned by the leader of the Bar, and it was for the Attorney-General I was acting. Armed with plenary powers, I visited the gaol. It did not take long to discover that Godfrey Massey was incomparably the ablest and best informed of the prisoners. And I found, moreover, that his indignation was deep at the deceit and cowardice of Stephens, Kelly, and the other American leaders. I then took the Governor of the Prison into my confidence, and asked him to smuggle me into Massey^s cell, and to get me out again unobserved. It was possible, he said, only if I consented to go in during the warders' dinner-hour, and to remain till after locking-up time. This was an ordeal at best, and not without risk, for Massey was a powerful man, of a passionate temper, and in no amiable frame of mind just then. But I faced it ; and after half a dozen hours in his cell, I left Kilmainham Gaol in possession of the whole story of the ^' Insurrection plot.'^ A special Commission was appointed for the trial of the prisoners, and the most prominent of their number received sentence of death for high treason in the blood-curdling formula prescribed by the law — a survival of a barbarous age.^ Here, for example, is the official report of the sentence pronounced upon one of the leaders — ^^That you, John McCafferty, be taken back from hence to the gaol from which you came, and that you be thence, on Wednesday, the 12th of June next, drawn on a hurdle to ^ All the capital sentences were commuted. 38 THE CLERKENWELL EXPLOSION the place of execution ; that you be there hanged by the neck until you are dead, and that afterwards your head shall be severed from your body, and your body divided into four parts, v^hich shall be disposed of as Her Majesty or her successors shall think fit ; and I have only to add, may the Almighty God have mercy on your soul.'^ The Commission finished its labours before the end of May. The excitement soon died out. And, when September came, the sky was clear again, and the barometer was high. Peace reigned in Ireland. It was England^s turn, now, to experience a Fenian scare. On September nth, two men, supposed to be Irish Americans,^' were arrested in Manchester under the Vagrant Act. On the following Tuesday a police report was received in Dublin, that the informer Corydon had identified the prisoners as being the notorious Coloner^ Kelly, and a Captain Deasy, who had held a command in ^4he Rising.^^ Dublin Castle was en vacance at this time. All the principal officials were enjoying a holiday, well earned by many months of unusual strain. The Chief Secretary, though nominally at his office, was really at his home in Co. Kildare, some fifteen miles away. The only representative of the Irish Government actually in town was a recently appointed Solicitor-General. For, though I was installed at the Castle, and attended daily at a professional fee, I held no Government appointment, and had no execu- tive powers whatever. The Solicitor-General left town early that day, and I had no opportunity of seeing him in this Manchester business. But we met in the evening. We were both staying at Bray, Co. Wicklow ; and in conversation on the sea-front after dinner, I delivered my soul on ^^the situation.^^ Knowing the character of the conspiracy, and the importance of the man Kelly, I believed there was serious danger of a rescue, on the prisoners being brought up on remand next day. But my friend was in a serene, after-dinner frame of mind, and my efforts to alarm him were futile. But when we met at the Castle next morning the Solicitor- General told me that my words had robbed him of his sleep, and that he was going to Palmerstown to lay the matter before Lord Mayo. I remonstrated that time was precious, and that the Chief Secretary could do no more than I could do in his name, if I had authority to use it. He gave the THE CLERKENWELL EXPLOSION word, and I dispatched the telegrams which the disaster of the day rendered famous, warning both the Home Office and the Manchester authorities that special precautions were necessary in the case of the Fenian prisoners. The warning was neglected, and the prisoners were rescued at the cost of a police officer^s life. Lord Mayors keen and generous appreciation of my action in this matter drew me still further into Government work, and the Clerkenwell explosion of the following December expedited my fall.^ Two years before, an American Fenian named Ricard Burke settled in Birmingham as *^arms agent to the con- spiracy. He was a man of such mark in the brotherhood that, if Kelly^s arrest had resulted in a conviction, he would have succeeded him as C.O.'^ This man fell into the hands of the police on November 28 (1867), and was committed to the House of Detention at Clerkenwell. He himself was the author of the plot for his rescue. In this instance, the warning we sent to London was based upon information of the fullest and most explicit kind. The following is a copy of it : — ^^The rescue of Ricard Burke from prison in London is contemplated. The plan is to blow up the exercise walls by means of gunpowder ; the hour between 3 and 4 p.m. ; and the signal for ^ all right ' a white ball thrown up outside when he is at exercise.^' So accurately does this describe the event, that a change of the tenses would make it read as a record of what actually took place. But the amazing part of the story is that there was a full-dress rehearsal " of the plot the day before the actual explosion. On the afternoon of December 12th the barrel of gunpowder was brought to the place on a barrow. The white ball was thrown over the wall of the prison yard, as arranged. Burke fell out on the pretence of having a stone in his shoe, and retired to a corner of the yard, ^ That a man of my age was accorded a position of such responsibility and trust as that which I held in Dublin Castle at this time can be accounted for only in one way — that being my brother's brother I was credited with the qualities which made him the trusted adviser of the Irish Government in all matters of administration. An exceptional capacity for affairs is rarely combined with imperturbable amiability of temper, and I never knew a man in whom they were more conspicuously united. Though not many years my senior he was already reputed a Nestor in the councils of Dublin Castle. 40 THE CLERKENWELL EXPLOSION which, as was proved next day, was a perfectly safe retreat. But, for some unaccountable reason, the fuse when lighted failed to explode the powder, and the execution of the plot had to be deferred. On the following day the conspirators repeated their performance. Once again the cask of powder was rolled to the place agreed upon ; the white ball signal was given as before ; and the explosion followed. The prison authorities, however, had taken the precaution of exercising the prisoners in a different yard ; and thus the purpose of the plot was thwarted. But what about the poUce ? it may well be asked. The police were at hand, with elaborate instructions which they carried out to the letter. They were misled, however, by a glaring inaccuracy in the warning notice. They were definitely told that the wall of the gaol was to be blown up, whereas in fact it was blown down. This is not a clumsy joke ; it is the official explanation of the matter as given by the Secretary of State in Parliament with prosaic solemnity.^ The explosion and its consequences are now matters of history. The Metropolis was thrown into a state of panic. Terror took possession of society.'^ ^ Three days after the outrage the Home Office issued a circular caUing for the enrolment of special constables, as it was possible that, owing to the designs of wicked and evil-disposed persons, the ordinary police force might be found insufficient to per- form the duties required of them.^^ Within a month over fifty thousand specials ^' were thus enrolled in the Metro- * In answer to a question in the house of Commons on March 9, 1868, Mr. Gathorne Hardy, the Home Secretary, gave, in extenso^ the warning report, as set out supra, and narrated what was done in pursuance of it. His closing words were as follows : — Although the information that had been received was communicated to the officers on the spot, the cask was placed close to the wall without anybody supposing that there was any cause to apprehend mischief from it. It appeared that the mode of carrying out the design of which they had received information did not strike those who were set to watch the outside of the prison ; for the policeman Moriarty walked along by the side of the wall when the cask was there, and nearly all his clothes were blown off in consequence of the explosion. What their attention was apparently directed to was the undermining of the wall ; they thought it would probably be blown up from underneath, and had no conception that it would be blown down in the way it really was done." ^ These were Lord Campbell's words in the House of Lords on March 19, 1868. THE CLERKENWELL EXPLOSION 41 polis, and more than twice that number throughout the kingdom,^ for the panic spread to the provinces. In various tov^ns^ where the Irish were numerous, arms were supplied to the local police. Fenian scares abounded on every side. At Lord Mayors request I met him in London that week, and placed myself at the disposal of the Government. Amusement alternated with amazement in my mind at the state of things I found here. The teetotalers, their enemies say, throw off all restraint when they give way to a debauch ; and the same remark seems to apply to Englishmen when they give way to a scare. Even the Private Secretaries at Whitehall carried revolvers. And staid and sensible men gave up their evening engagements, and their sleep at night, to take their turn at sentry-go as special constables. The lives of many of them were seriously imperilled, but it was by London fogs and not by Fenian plots. In Ireland we kept our heads in presence of real danger from the machinations of the Fenian organisation. But the Clerkenwell explosion was not the work of the organisa- tion at all, but of a set of London Irish Fenians, whose calibre as conspirators may be gauged by the fact that they could not even keep their own counsel. Their plot was known in Dublin, even to persons who were not Fenians at all.- It may be further gauged by their own astonishment at the effects of the explosion. They meant to make a breach in the prison wall ; but they no more intended to wreck the opposite houses than to disestablish the Irish Church. The result of their work in the one direction was all too manifest. As regards the other, it needed Mr. Gladstone to enlighten them. It was their crime, he proclaimed in Midlothian, that brought that question within the sphere of practical politics. Even if his estimate of the business had been just, his words ' The exact numbers as given in books of public reference, were 52,974 in the Metropolis, and 113,674 throughout the kingdom. Lord Campbell moved for the return on March 19, 1868, but, though laid on the table of the House of Lords, it was not printed. The special constables were dismissed by an order issued on March 31, 1868. - In this class was our informant — a person whose only connection with Fenianism was help given, through kindness of heart, to some of the " boys " whom the police were searching for. In later years I occa- sionally received information from the same individual, and it was always designed to prevent the commission of crime. 42 THE CLERKENWELL EXPLOSION respecting it would have been none the less unjustifiable. For they could not fail to encourage the Fenians to commit further crimes of the same character. And I can testify that on every Fenian platform they have been used to that end. But in view of the actual facts of the explosion, his words were no less unwarrantable on other grounds. In plain truth, they were egregiously foolish, for, viewed apart from its deplorable consequences, the whole plot was utterly con- temptible, and might have been dismissed as a screaming farce. CHAPTER VII FROM 1867 TO 1880 THE secret history of the Fenian movement would, in every part of it, afford useful lessons for the present time. But, unfortunately, people have no love for lessons, and the story v^ould be neglected by those who need it most. The events of the next dozen years must, therefore, be dismissed with no further notice than is necessary to preserve the sequence of the narrative. Before Christmas, 1867, I found myself installed in the Irish Office in London. And in the following April I moved to the Home Office as adviser to the Secretary of State in matters relating to Fenian and Irish business. This was one result of the Clerkenwell explosion.^' There is no doubt, I may here remark, that the scare produced by that crime operated as an encouragement to the conspirators ; and the failure to convict the perpetrators of it further tended to cause a revival of the Fenian activity in London.^ Offers of information were received from all the prisoners ; and I was willing to interview them on the conditions on w^hich I had undertaken a similar duty in Dublin. But red tape was supreme in such matters here, and I refused to intervene. The most worthless and shifty of the lot was accepted as a witness, because he " squealed the loudest and promised the m.ost ; and with one exception the whole gang escaped. Michael Barrett's name will go down to history, not because ^ Various incidents occurred at this time to foster the Fenian scare, such, e.g., as the attempt to assassinate the Duke of Edinburgh in AustraHa. In his " Life of Lord Beaconsfield " (15th thousand, p. 210), Mr. Lewis Apjohn narrates that "on March 12, 1868, the Duke of Edinburgh was shot in the back by an avowed Fenian in AustraHa, and was hung for the offence." Having enjoyed the honour of H.R.H.'s acquaintance, I can assert that this is a mistake. The Duke of Edinburgh was not hung for that offence ! 43 44 FROM 1867 TO 1880 he was hanged for the Clerkenwell explosion, but because his was the last public execution in England. Meanwhile the conspirators continued to dream of an armed insurrection in Ireland. Michael Davitt was appointed to succeed Ricard Burke as arms agent/' and he dis- charged the duties of the office so zealously and well as to earn a conviction for treason felony and a fifteen years' sentence. Information of his doings was not lacking, but it was not till February, 1870, that we obtained evidence to justify his arrest. The London Fenians afterwards adopted a less costly method of obtaining rifles — they stole them. After the Saturday parades, hundreds of volunteers repaired to various public-houses for refreshments, and while they stood drinking at the bar, their rifles were sneaked.'' The War Office became as much concerned at these proceedings as the authorities, and I was asked to make special efforts to check them. For the sake of those who may read these pages only for amusement, I may record the following incident as illustrating the manner in which affairs of State are some- times decided. I got word one afternoon that several cases of the stolen rifles were stored in a certain private house in Soho. Sir Adolphus Liddell,^ the Under-Secretary at the Home Office, brought me to the House of Commons to submit the matter to the Secretary of State. Mr. Bruce ^ called in the Attorney- General, Sir J . D. Coleridge, and we had a conference in the Whips' room (now occupied by the post-office) in the corner of the members' lobby. Practising lawyers are generally practical men, but Coleridge was a philosopher and a doctrinaire. Sitting on a window-sill, with his legs dangling, and with uplifted finger, he discoursed on the British Con- stitution and the law applicable to the business, and argued against the practical view I took of it. Finally, I was made to write out at his dictation a set of directions for the police, as to what they might do, and might not do in the circumstances. When Mr. Bruce and the Attorney left us, I told Sir Adolphus Liddell what I thought of adopting Blackstone's Commentaries as our guide in dealing with a set of sweeps engaged in criminal con- ' At that date he was Mr. Liddell, but I will speak of him throughout by the name by which he is now remembered. ^ Afterwards Lord Aberdare. FROM 1867 TO 1880 45 spiracies. He sent in again for the Chief, and greeted him on his return with, Anderson says this is all d d rot.'' Mr. Bruce's face was a study. I assured him that, though the language was not mine, it expressed what I felt. " What would you propose to do ? '' he inquired. To which I gave the answer I have often made to Secretaries of State, " I will tell you, of course, if you ask me. But is it wise ? '' He took the paper out of my hand, tore it up, and with a kindly nod he left us again. Two hours later I sent down a note to say that the stolen rifles were safe at Scotland Yard. But how was it managed ? That is just what the public would like to know ; but just what it is better they should not know. For the public '' includes our friends the enemy," to whom infor- mation of this kind would be welcome. But to resume. To understand the subsequent develop- ment of the Irish Question,'' it is necessary to glance at the course of events in the American organisation. Taking advantage of the discredit which the fiasco of 1867 brought on the Stephens wing, the Canada party dispatched their Secretary for Civil Affairs " to negotiate an alliance with the leaders at home. They provided him with an able colleague, a man whose name I suppress, as he has since risen to fame as a Nationalist M.P. And as the outcome of their joint mission, a Supreme Council " was appointed to co-operate with the brotherhood in America. But having got all they could out of the Americans, the Council repudiated them and their projects. Thus foiled, the Americans devoted their attention to their favourite scheme, and the result was the 1870 raid on Canada ; a really formidable movement in its way, which Le Caron's services turned into a fiasco. To watch a frontier of a thousand miles was an impossible task. But Le Caron enabled me to supply the Dominion Government with the *'plan of campaign," and to indicate the precise spot at which the raiders would cross into Canadian territory. He took care, I may add, that the Fenian artillery" was rendered unserviceable. The interval between 1870 and 1878 was marked by a series of characteristic quarrels and plots. But in 1878 the different sections of the organisation became at last united, and it was decided to re-establish co-operation with the conspirators at home. John Devoy, of much fame in Fenian story, was the emissary selected for that purpose. Devoy 46 FROM 1867 TO 1880 soon found proof that the farming classes of Ireland could not be drawn into a purely political conspiracy ; and his report was to the effect that it was only by taking up the land question that Fenianism could secure their support. His views prevailed in New York, and in due time the New Departure/' as it was called, became the policy of the organi- sation. This movement found its prophet in Mr, Michael Davitt, than whom the Fenian conspiracy can boast of no more interesting personality. By an accident in a Lancashire cotton mill, he lost an arm in early life. He afterwards found employment as newsboy in a stationer^s shop in Haslingden, where he remained until called upon to take up his work as arms agent. When released on licence in 1878, he gave proof that even in a convict prison a man of principle and energy can find opportunities to educate himself and develop his character. He came to the front at once, and soon was recognised as the foremost cham- pion of the Irish peasantry in their land war. In a speech at Limerick in August, 1879, Parnell proclaimed the gospel of refusing to pay any rent at all if the amount which the farmers chose to offer was refused. And to give effect to this policy, the Land League was established a couple of months afterwards. The principle upon which the League was founded shall be stated in Davitt's own words. It was the com- plete destruction of Irish landlordism, first, as the system which was responsible for the poverty and periodical famines which have decimated Ireland; and secondly, because landlordism was a British garrison which barred the way to national independence.^' Let the reader keep these words in mind as he reads the sequel. Parnell crossed the Atlantic as the herald of the new movement, and in January, 1880, he entered on a campaign arranged and controlled by the most advanced of the Fenian leaders. The projects and aims of these men were now known to all the world. They had been brought to light by the Irish State Trials. The Fenian platform '' was the realisation of Emmet's dream, that Ireland should take her place among the nations of the earth." And this, not on the basis on which Norway was a kingdom, for an Irish republic was to be established. With full knowledge of these projects, and in a meeting convened FROM 1867 TO 1880 47 by the men who were pledged to the attainment of them, Mr. Parnell used these words : When we have under- mined EngHsh misgovernment, we have paved the way for Ireland to take her place among the nations of the earth. And let us not forget that this is the ultimate goal at which all we Irishmen aim. None of us, whether we are in America or in Ireland, or wherever we may be, will be satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which keeps Ireland bound to England.^^ This was the famous Cincinnati speech of February 23, 1880. In *4he new departure'' Fenianism made no sur- render to the Land League ; it merely assumed its name. CHAPTER VIII FROM 1880 TO THE KILMAINHAM TREATY THOUGH Secret Service work seems to have such a strange fascination for many people, I have always felt a decided aversion to it. I was drawn into it re- luctantly at first, and once and again I tried to shake free from it. In the beginning of 1880 that mood was strong upon me. When, in April, the change of Government occurred, and Mr. Gladstone succeeded Lord Beaconsfield as Prime Minister, I had received some tempting offers of both professional and literary work, and I was contem- plating taking chambers at the Temple. I refused, there- fore, to allow the Under-Secretary to introduce me in the usual way to the new Secretary of State. But, " the best laid schemes,^' &c. Not many weeks passed before Sir William Harcourt sent for me. He was aware, he said, of my services to Government in the past, and he hoped I would give him the same assistance I had rendered to his predecessors. I am bound to say that working for him was, on the whole, a pleasant experience. He was the ^' biggest man with whom I have ever had close personal deahngs in the public service, and notwithstanding his sharp and unruly tongue, he was at heart a thorough gentleman. He was always the same, moreover, whether sitting in his office chair at Whitehall, or in his armchair at Grafton Street ; and if I got on better with him than others seemed to do, it was because I always accepted freely the place he gave me, and met disagreeable words by some pleasantry, or boldly hit back at him. Once, and only once, as mentioned on a preceding page, did he go further than I could tolerate. My methods of dealing with informants was always a sore point with Sir William Harcourt. Anderson's idea of secrecy is not to tell the Secretary of State,^^ he once said 48 FROM 1880 TO THE KILMAINHAM TREATY 49 to one of his colleagues, fixing his eyes on me as he spoke. And it was quite true. The first Fenian who ever gave me information was murdered on his arrival in New York. I had given his name to no one but Lord Mayo ; and he assured me that he had mentioned it only to the Lord- Lieutenant, when sitting alone with him after dinner at the Viceregal Lodge. But there happened to be a servant behind the screen, and through him it was, as the DubHn police ascertained, that the information reached the Fenians. Never again would I give an informant's name to any one, and no man who afterwards gave me information was ever betrayed. It was easy to keep one's own counsel on such mat- ters when dealing with a Secretary of State on purely official terms. But Sir William Harcourt's treatment of me made it often most difficult. For when he received me as a friend, and kept me chatting with him, it might be for an hour at a time, he felt hurt at my reticence, and sometimes showed that he resented it. But when the life of an informant is involved, no amount of caution is excessive. And Sir William's impulsiveness made caution doubly necessary ; for an informant may be betrayed even by an imprudent use of his information. An instance of this recurs to me. At the time when it occurred, the Fenian organisation in London was governed by a triumvirate, and one of the three was in my pay. It fell upon a day that I communicated the result of one of their secret meetings, held the night before, to Sir William Harcourt and Sir Adolphus Liddell. The same afternoon the information appeared in an evening paper, and when I tackled the Secretary of State about it, he replied in the most matter-of-course way, that ^'he had given it to , as he wanted to take a rise of him ^' ; naming one of the Irish M.P.'s, who was supposed to be in the secrets of the conspiracy. The manner in which I got hold of that informant may be worth telling. When in 1880 Sir William Harcourt sought my help, I told him plainly that the attitude of the Govern- ment to political crime had always alternated between panic and indifference. In troublous times informants were eagerly sought for ; but when the danger was over, I was looked upon as a crank'' for urging that they should be kept in pay. At that moment I was out of touch with Fenianism at 5 so FROM 1880 TO THE KILMAINHAM TREATY home, and should need to begin again to angle for informa- tion. It is never very difficult to get inside an Irish conspiracy, and I v^as not long in finding men who could tell me a good deal of v^hat was doing. But my aim was to get at the head-quarters of the organisation, and this is not so easily accomplished. My chance came, however. The Fenians knew that knowledge of their proceedings was reaching Government, and one of the leading men determined to discover the leak. So with this end in view he wrote offering information, but stipulating expressly that he would deal only with the head of the department. The night I met the fellow, he fenced with me, and lied to me, for an hour, and ended by asking for his ^^expenses.^^ I have always held that a man who carries gold loose in his pocket must be either a millionaire or a spendthrift. But I was playing a part that evening, and I had my pocket full of sovereigns. I pulled out a handful, and threw half a dozen of them on the table. And then, checking myself, I picked them up again, saying, No, you haven^t earned them : you don't seem to know half as much about Fenianism as I do myself.'' His greedy look as the gold went back into my pocket showed me that I had him. So I gave him a couple of pounds, and told him not to come back till he had some- thing worth telling. A month later he was definitely in my pay. My first care was to make him procure the passing of a resolution that no active work should be done without the approval of the whole triumvirate ; and from that time I was able to control the organisation. The year 1880 was made memorable by the inauguration of ^'boycotting" — that dreadful system of oppression which made the League a terror to the law-abiding classes in so many parts of Ireland. In its inception it might have been easily checked ; but, as Mr. Morley's book tells us, Mr. Gladstone's objection to coercing those who were thus coercing their honest and peaceful neighbours, was a bar to action. It was not until the ordinary law" had been found inadequate, by the failure of the conspiracy trial of the leaders, that Mr. Gladstone was overruled by the Cabinet ; and when Parliament met in January, 1881, Mr. Forster's Suspects Act " was at once introduced by the aid of the Speaker's memorable coup d^etat^ Davitt was arrested on ^ The attempt to introduce the BilJ was met by organised obstruction. After the debate had lasted several days, Mr. Gladstone decided to force it FROM 1880 TO THE KILMAINHAM TREATY 51 the forfeiture of his licence, and the local leaders of the League were committed to gaol under the Act. This brought Miss Anna Parnell into the field ; and the formation of the Ladies^ Land League outmanoeuvred the Government. What the issue would have been it is hard to say, had not the course of events been decided by the historic duel between Parnell and the Premier. On October 7th, at Leeds, Mr. Gladstone delivered a fierce philippic against the Irish leader. ^' The condition of Ireland was hopeful/^ he declared. No labouring population in Europe had made such progress as the Irish in the twenty years preceding, but Mr. Parnell and his agitation stood between them and the prosperity which the Land Act would certainly produce. Mr. Parnell was a living proof that the state of things in Ireland was coming to be a question between law on the one side, and sheer lawlessness on the other. Mr. Parnell had dared to proclaim that if the crown of England was to be the link between the two countries, it must be the only link. But he warned him that the ^ resources of civilisation ^ were not yet exhausted.^^ ^ Will Mr. Parnell quail before the colossal force of the Prime Minister's invective ? So asked the Times, But Mr. Parnell was not the man to quail. His answer was given within eight and forty hours. In a speech at Wexford he branded the Premier's ^'harangue'' as ^'unscrupulous and dishonest/' and poured contempt and ridicule on his brave words." He compared them to the whistling of a school- boy on his way through a churchyard at night to keep his courage up. This was on October gth. The Cabinet met on the 12th, and as the result of a decision arrived at after a five hours' discussion, the Irish leader was arrested next morning, and lodged in Kilmainham Gaol under Forster's Act. Post hoCj was the comment of the Liberals ; propter hoc, the taunt of the Leaguers. And the Leaguer's reply was to issue the through by a continuous sitting. The debate was thus sustained during the night of Tuesday, February ist, but there appeared to be no sign of its ending when the Speaker resumed the chair next morning at nine o'clock. Acting on his own initiative, therefore, he interrupted Mr. Biggar, who was then addressing the Hous^, and at once put the question. ^ It is noteworthy that, in citing this speech, Mr. Morley makes no reference to the exceptional and advancing prosperity of the Irish people under the Union. ^2 FROM 1880 TO THE KILMAINHAM TREATY No rent manifesto. The rejoinder of the Government was to suppress the League. This was done on the i8th. A speech by Mr. James Lowther supphed Mr. Gladstone with a text for another phihppic against Parnell. The ex-Chief Secretary had declared that the party headed by Mr. Parnell commanded the support of the majority of the people of Ireland.^^ With what enthusiasm would Mr. Gladstone have hailed these words a few years later ! But the statement was intolerable at the moment when Mr. Parnell was caged in Kilmainham Gaol as a pestilent agitator, who was standing between the Irish people and their heaven- sent benefactor. *^ I utterly protest against it ! Mr. Gladstone exclaimed. I believe a greater calumny, a more gross and injurious statement could not possibly be made against the Irish nation. We believe we are at issue with an organised attempt to override the freewill and judgment of the Irish nation. . . . It is a great issue ; it is a conflict for the very first and elementary principles on which civil society is constituted. It is idle to talk of either law, or order, or religion, or civilisation, if these gentlemen are to carry through the reckless and chaotic schemes that they have devised. Rapine is the first object, but rapine is not the only object. It is perfectly true that these gentlemen wish to march through rapine to disintegration and dismemberment of the empire.^^ Brave words/^ truly ! But as the cynical Mr. Parnell must have thought, the whistling was becoming louder because the ghosts seemed to be drawing nearer. That day six months Lord Cowper was dismissed to make room for a Viceroy commissioned to govern Ireland on the lines of the Kilmainham Treaty.^ Mr. Parnell was released from prison, pledged to call off the pack who were committing outrages throughout the country, and to support Mr. Gladstone in Parliament in forwarding Liberal principles ; and Mr. Gladstone on his part undertook to adopt the programme of the Land League, by promoting what the League would regard as a practical settlement of the land question.^' What account can be given of a transformation scene so extraordinary ? Mr. Morley's book gives a part of the story. After describing the deplorable condition of Ireland in April, ^ Earl Spencer succeeded Lord Cowper as Lord-Lieutenant, in May, 1882. FROM 1880 TO THE KILMAINHAM TREATY 53 1882, he adds : ^' While the Cabinet was face to face with this ugly prospect, Mr. Gladstone received a communication^ volunteered by an Irish member, as to the new attitude of Mr. Parnell, and the possibility of turning it to good account. Mr. Gladstone sent the letter on to Forster, replying mean- while *in the sense of not shutting the door.''^ Mr. Chamberlain, he goes on to narrate, undertook to deal with the emissary " ; and, as the result, he reported to the Cabinet on the 25th, that Mr. Parnell was desirous to use his influence on behalf of peace.^' Events then moved rapidly," and on May 2nd the Cabinet accepted a proposal of Mr. Gladstone's to release the suspects and to allow Forster's Act to lapse. But is this an adequate explanation of Mr. Gladstone's amazing somersault ? Wise men, when beaten in fair fight, accept the situation ; but they do so as of necessity and with a sense of depression. The Cabinet consented to the Kilmainham Treaty ; but they did so with reluctance ; for it was not with a light heart that they allowed Mr. Forster to leave them. Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand, as Mr. Morley's narrative indicates, shared none of their misgivings or regrets. For their joint decision he must have had grounds of his own. He must have come under some influence to which his colleagues were strangers. What can it have been ? No hint of it is given in Mr. Morley's pages. But the secret escaped from Mr. Gladstone's own lips eleven years afterwards. Provoked by a taunt, in the course of the Home Rule debates of April, 1893, he inter- jected the following remark with reference to Mr. Parnell and his release from prison in 1882 : — From that date forward no hard word and no word of censure in any speech of mine respecting Mr. Parnell is to be found. On the contrary, I made a communication to Mr. Parnell through a friend of his, that from me he would receive no difficulty in pursuing the purposes he had in view which from that period I believed to be purposes beneficial to the people of Ireland." This extraordinary statement becomes still more extraordinary in the light of Mr. Morley's story. For he clearly implies that the M.P. ^' emissary " of April, 1882, tried in vain to elicit some response from Mr. Gladstone. His ponderous joke about Mr. Chamberlain " taking his life in his hand " in dealing with this ^' emissary," suggests that 54 FROM 1880 TO THE KILMAINHAM TREATY he was some wild Irishman with a shillelagh. But the M.P. in question was Captain O'Shea, whom any one of the Mini- sters might have met on the ground of social equality. And this adds great significance to the fact that the Premier refused to be ^' drawn by him in any way. ^^One of the strangest incidents in the Home Rule debates/^ Lord Ashbourne called it in a headed article " which he contributed to a London newspaper at the time. In that article he appealed to the acts and speeches of Mr. Gladstone's colleagues in proof that they were ignorant of his private bargain with the Irish leader. If it had not been a profound secret, Sir William Harcourt would cer- tainly have known of it. But that he did not know of it is rendered certain by his speech of December 7, 1885, when he declared that he would let the Tories stew in their own Parnellite juice/^ adding the words, and when they stink in the nostrils of the country, then the country will fling them, discredited and disgraced, to the constituencies.'' There can be no doubt that the bargain was a secret. And for eleven years it remained a secret. ^' Let the facts be realised,^' Lord Ashbourne urged. Mr. Gladstone, the Prime Minister of England, sends a ^ communication ' to the leader of the Nationalist party in Ireland, whom but a short time before he imprisoned, and accused of ^ marching through rapine to the disintegration of the Empire.' It is impossible to exaggerate the impor- tance of the positions held by the sender and the receiver. The ^ communication ' itself was of the highest significance, and of the greatest public moment. Why was it never made public until April, 1893 ? Did Mr. Gladstone tell his col- leagues at the time of the message ? If not, why not ? If he did, why was no public announcement made on this important subject ? '' The significance of Mr. Gladstone's announcement is, indeed, immensely increased, first, by the fact that what elicited it was a speech by Mr. Chamberlain, who had conducted the open negotiations with Captain O'Shea ; and secondly, by Mr. Morley's statement, already noticed, that throughout those negotiations Mr. Gladstone was always impatient of any reference to ^ reciprocal assurances ' or ^ tacit understanding ' in respect of the deaUngs with the prisoner in Kilmainham." But here is evidence from the lips of Mr. Gladstone himself that there were "reciprocal FROM 1880 TO THE KILMAINHAM TREATY 55 assurances" of the most definite kind, and an ''under- standing" that was by no means tacit." For no words could have been more explicit. Lord Ashbourne might well demand, Who was the friend selected for this communication?" It must have been some one who was unreservedly in Parnell's confidence, and some one with whom the Premier had immediate personal dealings. The mystery must remain unsolved, unless my private information of other days may afford a solution of it. Mr. Morley^s narrative brings me fresh proof that my informant was behind the scenes, and that his story was in the main correct. But there was one part of it which, at the time, I dismissed as a romance, albeit it was given me with definite details of place and circumstances. The real Kilmainham Treaty, I was assured, was not the work of Mr. Chamberlain and ''the M.P. emissary": the parties to it were the Prime Minister himself and Mrs. O'Shea. ^ The story may at first seem improbable, but no one who knew Mr. Gladstone will scout it. For one of his most striking characteristics was his readiness to give a patient and earnest hearing to any one who succeeded in interest- ing him. And when I read Mr. Gladstone's words in the Home Rule debate of 1893 — so definite in the main, so strangely vague on one important point — I recalled my inform- ant's story. And I recalled also some written words of Par- nelFs of two years before. When reproached with having used Mrs. O'Shea as an intermediary in taking a house for him at Eastbourne, his answer was, " I asked Mrs. Shea to conduct the negotiations, for the same reasons that I have charged her with the conduct of vastly more important matters and negotiations,^^ ^ ' Mr. Morley ignores Mr. Justin McCarthy's share in the treaty, though it has prominent notice in Sir T. W. Reid's " Life of Forster," and Mr. Barry O'Brien's Life of ParnelL" But Mr. McCarthy was not the " friend " of Mr. Gladstone's statement. ^ This matter arose in connection with a Hbel action against the Cork Herald in 1891, and the letter above quoted was published at the time. CHAPTER IX THE PHGENIX PARK MURDERS THE treaty was still a secret when the tragedy of May 6, 1882, changed once more the policy of this vacillating Government. On the morning of that day, Lord Spencer, the new Viceroy, and Lord Frederick Cavendish, the new^ Chief Secretary, arrived in Ireland, commissioned to hold out the olive branch to the miscreants of the League. That same evening Lord Frederick and Mr. Thomas Henry Burke, the permanent Under-Secretary, were murdered in the Phoenix Park, when making their way together on foot to their official residences. On my next visit to the Vice- regal Lodge, Lord Spencer called my attention to the fact that the scene of their murder was the only part of the main drive |of the park which was within view of the windows of his private sitting-room. In other lands some memorial of a tragedy of this kind would mark the scene where it was enacted ; and for a time a roughly drawn cross, scored upon the ground, served to indicate to visitors the spot where Burke and Cavendish were murdered. But even this will now be sought in vain. Every trace of it has been dehberately obliterated. The temper of the people would not suffer it. The men who were hanged at Manchester for the murder of Sergeant Brett are reckoned among the martyrs of the Irish struggle for hberty. But though the Government officials who fell in the Phoenix Park came by their death in that same struggle, they fell upon the wrong side. The lapse of years has not lessened my wonder at the lack of ordinary precautions by which this crime was made possible. For the authorities at DubUn Castle had ample warnings that murder plots were rife. Prominent officials were marked out for assassination, and once and 56 THE PHOENIX PARK MURDERS 57 again attempts to waylay them had been made by the very men who committed the murder of May 6th. ^ My brother^s Hfe was saved by what is popularly called "a chance. As appears from the evidence before the Special Commission, Egan, the treasurer of the Land League, wished to have him ^' put out of the way/^ He was methodical in his habits, and his habitual route from Green Street Court House to his office at the Castle was known to any one who cared to watch him. But on a certain day when within a stone^s throw of where the murder gang were waiting for him, he stopped and, retracing his steps, went round by the north side of Dublin. He had suddenly remembered some commissions which he had promised to execute for his wife. It was by a like chance^' that Mr. Forster escaped death at their hands. The gang actually stopped his carriage on the way to Westland Row Railway Station, but ^ey found that two ladies were its only occupants. When the details of the plot reached me, I asked Mr. Forster about his movements on the day in question. He told me he had driven to Westland Row with his wife and daughter to return to London by the Irish Mail. He wanted to know why I made the inquiry but I parried the question. I received a note next day asking me to call ; and when I saw him he showed me an extract from his diary which reminded him that on the evening in question he had travelled to Kingstown by an earlier train, dined at the St. George^s Yacht Club, and joined his wife and daughter on the steamer. I then gave him the full details of my informant's state- ment. His reference to it, when I met him the morning after the murder of his successor, I am not likely to forget. ' Lord Spencer escaped the assassin's knife. But his reception by the men into whose arms he wished to throw himself, may be judged by the following extract from a speech by Mr. T. M. Healy, M.P., reported in United Ireland, August 30, 1884 : " Lord Spencer had come to govern Ireland with impartial justice, but no more unfortunate and one-sided Lord-Lieutenant had ever afflicted the country. His con- duct had embittered the people. He had shielded criminals, rewarded scoundrels, and hung innocent men. He had served the English so well in Ireland, that he suggested he should be raised a step in the peerage with the appropriate title of the Duke of Sodom and Gomorrah." 58 THE PHOENIX PARK MURDERS Mr. Burke thus fell a victim to one of the many murder plots hatched before the Kilmainham Treaty was negotiated ; and, as Mr. Morley tells us, the assassins did not know Lord Frederick Cavendish." His death was altogether an accident. Well has it been said that Ireland seems the sport of a destiny that is aim- less.^' This is Mr. Morley's comment on the crime. In this brief sentence he frames with a master's hand a most grave indictment of Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy. To him the chance events of the passing day were what the throw of the dice is to a gambler. Mr. Morley treats that crime as though it was an incident which could not have been foreseen, and which necessarily turned Mr. Gladstone from the path which he had so lately entered. But it was only the last of a series — one more added to the terrible list of the Land League murders. And from the point of view of statesmanship it was of far less significance than many of the murders which had preceded it. For the assassination of Government officials could give no such indication of the state of Ireland as did the murder of a lady while returning home from church, or of humble peasants whose only offence was obedience to the law. The element which alone distinguished it from the earlier crimes was that the chief victim was a colleague and a friend. The existence of this particular murder gang and of their plots was already known to the Government. The assassination of Mr. Forster and Mr. Burke had been planned before the treaty was arranged, and Lord Frederick Cavendish's death was the merest accident. If, therefore, there had been any real statesmanship in Mr. Gladstone's administration, the Park murder would have been regarded either as proof that the Kilmainham Treaty policy was a blunder, or else as a further reason for pursuing it. There was much to be said for that policy before ; there was more to be said for it now. Here was a wholly unlooked for opportunity of putting Parnell to the test. Having regard to his denunciation of the Park mur- derers in Parliament on May 8th, if he had opposed the passing of a Bill limited to provisions adequate to bring them to justice, he would at once have proved his insin- cerity. But there is no reason to assume that he was insincere. On the contrary, we should assume that he THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS 59 would have fulfilled his bargain, by setting himself to put down the outrage-mongers of the League. The result might have been, perhaps, that he would have fallen a victim to the vengeance of his quondam followers. But on the other hand, he might have proved himself master, and have restored peace to the country. The moment was opportune. Before May 6th, hfe and property were insecure throughout the Ireland of the Land League ; but after the murder there was a lull, during which the forces of violence and disorder were absolutely still. The account which magistrates and police gave of the change was almost dramatic. Every man, whether a Government official or a boycotted farmer, became free to go about his business with perfect safety by day or by night. A peace crusade at such a time, by the President of the body which fomented the out- rages, might have proved successful. I do not imply that Parnell was the instigator of them, but no one will dispute that, while he was in Kilmainham, every act of violence and outrage was supposed and intended by the Leaguers to advance his policy. Hence the confidence he felt in his ability to fulfil his share of the treaty. In a word, either Mr. Forster^s policy or Mr. Gladstone's might have succeeded, if allowed unhindered scope and given a fair field. But a policy of drift and compromise was bound to fail. An incidental disaster does not lead a general to change his plan of campaign. But while, one day, devotion to academic doctrines about governing by ordinary law led the Premier to refuse a hearing to Mr. Forster ; the next, a chance reverse led him to fling these doctrines to the winds, and to promote a law so extraordinary as to astonish Mr. Forster himself. For Mr. Gladstone's Coercion Act^' of 1882 contained provisions unparalleled since the Union delivered Ireland from the misgovernment and tyranny of a native Parlia- ment. It provided for the trial of crimes of the gravest kind, including treason and murder, by a tribunal of three judges without a jury. It provided for magisterial inquiries into crimes when no accused person was made amenable — a machinery that availed to bring the Phoenix Park murderers to justice. And in addition to all this, it con- tained the most elaborate network of statutory provisions against combination, as distinct from crime, that the wit 6o THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS of man could devise. Indeed, if the Act had been strictly construed and enforced, the majority of the adult popu lation of Ireland would have been brought within its meshes.^ It is no wonder that Mr. Morley dismisses this amazing piece of coercion legislation with the briefest and most casual mention. The Park murder was indeed a hideous crime. But crimes still more hideous had preceded it. The victims, Mr. Morley tells us, were brutally murdered/* But to refer again to the crimes already noticed, not many weeks had passed since an Irish lady had been brutally murdered " in broad daylight on her way home from church. In the previous May a poor Galway farmer was '^brutally murdered'^ while bringing his children to Mass on a Sunday morning. And many others had been " brutally murdered while in humble positions discharging their duties to the State as really as were the Chief and Under-Secretaries. The fate of the poor Huddys is not forgotten in the West. Huddy was a peasant bailiff on Lord Ardilaun's estate in Mayo. He had lived there in peace for twenty years. On January 2, 1882 — four months before the murder in the Phoenix Park — he left home with a nephew to serve some processes. The men never returned, and their family could get no tidings of them, though their fate was known to all the neighbours. Three weeks later their battered corpses ' The 9th section provides that "every person who knowingly (a) is a member of an unlawful association as defined by this Act, or (b) takes part in the operations of an unlawful association as defined by this Act, or of any meeting thereof, shall be guilty of an offence against this Act.'* Then section 34 defines " unlawful association " to mean an association formed (a) for the commission of crimes ; or (6) carrying on operations for or by the commission of crimes ; or (c) for encouraging or aiding persons to commit crimes." And the section goes on to define "crime" as including "any offence against this Act." To understand the force of this, we must turn back to section 7, which provides that every person who "uses intimidation or incites any other person to use intimidation . . . shall be guilty of an offence against this Act." And, to complete this elaborate network of penal enactments aimed against combination and not against crime, " intimidation is defined to include " any word spoken or act done in order to and calculated to put any person in fear of any injury or danger to himself, or to any member of his family, or to any person in his employment, or in fear of any injury to or loss of his property, business or means of living." Owing to the unwillingness of the Irish Judges to undertake the duty, no Special Commission of Judges was appointed under the Act. THE PHGENIX PARK MURDERS 6i were discovered. They had been brutally murdered ; done to death like dogs. But no mere list of these crimes would convey an adequate impression of the horrors of the Land League rule in Ireland. In many districts terror reigned in every cottage home that refused allegiance to what was fitly called ^^the de facto Government.^^ But so long as the Irish were the only victims, Downing Street was philosophical and calm. It was not, I again repeat, until a friend and colleague was struck down that Mr. Gladstone awoke to a sense of the responsibilities and duties of a Government. This, at least, was the way the Irish read the facts. And the loyalists felt, as they feel to the present hour, that the executions which followed did not satisfy the claims of justice, but that, while the murderers hung upon the gallows, the Prime Minister ought to have been exposed beside them in the pillory. The Park murders were the work of the officials of the Land League, of which Parnell was the President and Davitt the founder. But their hands were clean. For while these plots were hatching, Parnell was under lock and key in Kilmainham, and Davitt was buried in a convict prison. And two days after the crime was committed, Parnell denounced it in frank, bold language in the House of Commons ; while to the honour of the founder of the League it ought to be recorded that the first use he made of his liberty on his release from prison was to call at Scotland Yard, to declare his readiness to help in bringing the murderers to justice. But the knives by which Cavendish and Burke were murdered were bought with money provided by the League, through the agency of Frank Byrne, the Secretary of the League. And by Byrne they were kept for a time in the office of the League — one of the rooms rented by the Irish ParHamentary Party in Palace Chambers, Bridge Street, Westminster. Frank Byrne^s wife it was who carried them to Ireland. The scoundrel Carey, to whom she handed them, knew her well ; and the one touch of sentiment in his evidence was his refusal to identify her. As soon as the authorities began to unravel the plot, Frank Byrne and the other officials of the League fled to France. The League afterwards supplied money to enable them to cross the Atlantic. It was to Byrne^s sister that Egan, the Treasurer — 62 THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS who himself became a fugitive from justice — entrusted the ;^20o paid for this purpose. I have good cause to remember the night that the money reached London. A bitter v^inter night it was, in February, 1883. I was going to bed, when one of my satelhtes came to report the matter to me. I drove at once to Grosvenor Square, to place the business in the hands of my friend who then ruled at Scotland Yard. He left his bed to see me. I was far more competent to, &c., &c., than he ; he'd send orders to the Ofhce delegating his powers to me for the occasion. Wouldn^t I, &c., &c.^' To use an Irish phrase, Howard Vincent could talk a bird off a bush. No one could refuse him anything. In a weak moment I consented. And so keen was I that I went out with the officers whom I ^^put on the job.'' If I had possessed official authority, I might have got that money. But many of the Scotland Yard officers know more law than some men who live by the practice of it ; and a knowledge of law is apt to make people timid. Their desire to help me was as great as when I afterwards became their official chief. But I was not their chief, and that made all the difference. So when I got back home, at three o'clock in the morning, I had taken nothing but the worst cold I ever had in my life — a cold from the effects of which I am still suffering. My knowledge of Sir WiUiam Harcourt led me to keep out of his way next day. But I had to face him in the evening, for I was invited to a party at 7, Grafton Street. I went late thinking that the presence of Lady Harcourfs guests would bar an opportunity for " talking shop.'' Vain hope ! He tackled me the moment I appeared in the drawing-room, without even taking me aside. ^^Why had I not seized that money ? " I pleaded that the law was against me. The Bah ! " with which he turned away from me made me feel that I had fallen grievously in his esteem. But to resume. The Phoenix Park murder was instigated by officials of the Land League. ^ Of this I obtained clear ' Working behind the scenes, I promoted an agitation for an audit of the Land League funds, but no audit was ever obtained. There was a nominal audit, indeed, by Mr. John Dillon, M.P., Mr. Matthew Harris, M.P., and Father Sheehy, a priest. But it was a transparent sham. No attempt was made to test the genuineness of vouchers, or the application of the money covered by them. During the three years ending October, 1882, the receipts acknowledged by Egan amounted to nearly a quarter of THE PHGENIX PARK MURDERS 63 and cogent proof. Was it known to Parnell ? I can only say that he was one of many whose opportunities of knowing everything were vastly better than mine. The charge against him is not that he himself either directly planned or perpetrated outrages and murders, but that he either connived at them, or that, warned by facts and statements, he determined to remain in ignorance.'^ These words, spoken by Mr. Forster in February, 1883, might be written across the cheque which, in that very month, Mr. Parnell sent to Frank Byrne at Westminster — a remittance which enabled him to leave the country, and escape the gallows. Conclusive proof of their truth was afterwards supplied, when the documents of the Kilmainham Treaty were dragged to light at the Special Commission. How could Parnell promise to stop the commission of crime ? It was because, as Mr. Gladstone declared in memorable words, Crime dogged the steps of the Land League.^' Being well aware that the crimes were the work of the paid officials of the League, Parnell believed that he could influence and control these men. These documents are damning evidence not only against Parnell, but against the Premier. It was no wonder that Mr. Gladstone feared the production of them, and com- missioned Sir William Harcourt to negotiate their destruc- tion.^ What may have been the contents of those which were actually destroyed in compliance with his request is a matter of conjecture ; it was by accident that any of them escaped. No reference to these matters will be found in Mr. Morley^s book. It was for him a personal triumph when Mr. Gladstone became a convert to the views he has always held about Ireland, and he is silent respecting everything that discredits them. This moreover, leads him to do injustice to one than whom I have known few abler men in public life, and none more upright. Having enjoyed Mr. Forster's confidence in an exceptional degree, I can aver, from personal knowledge, that his work in Ireland was embarrassed by that want of the Premier's sympathy and support to which Mr. Morley's narrative bears testimony. a million sterling — the exact amount was £2^^,820 — of which four-fifths came from America. And of this total over ;£ioo,ooo has never been accounted for (see p. 79, post). ' See Captain O'Shea's evidence at the Special Commission. 64 THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS And my surprise was not that he resigned when he did, but that he remained in office so long. He generally got his way, but it was after a struggle ; and action which might have succeeded if taken promptly often came too late. ^ ' And though Sir William Harcourt was no enemy to strong measures, yet, for some reason or other, he and Mr. Forster did not get on well together. I'd rather you didn't mention this to Forster." " It might perhaps, be as well not to say anything of this to Sir William Harcourt." Admonitions of this kind from one or other of them made my position at times a delicate and difficult one. CHAPTER X THE IRISH NATIONAL LEAGUE 'HP^HE Irish National League was established at a con- I ference in Dublin on October 17, 1882 — the anniversary ot the suppression of the Land League. An altercation which occurred at the meeting seemed to indicate that while certain leading Parnellites wished to give prominence to the Fenian platform/^ Davitt was being drawn away from it by his desire to help the peasantry. As the result, however, the Fenian influence prevailed, and Land Law Reform was relegated to the second place, National Self-Government being forced to the front. Not local self-government : that was expressly included in the programme, but it was made altogether subordinate. And the significance of the prominence thus given to the demand for self-government in the fullest sense, depended on Mr. Gladstone's reference to the subject in his speech upon the Address on February 9th. ^' Of one thing I am well convinced,^^ he declared, that neither this House of Commons, nor any House which may succeed it, will at any time assent to any measure by which the one paramount central authority necessary for holding together in perfect union and compactness this great Empire, can possibly be in the slightest degree impaired.^^ And the plain meaning of this statement was made still plainer by the concluding sentence of his speech, which was as follows : — " We are most favourable to the introduction, rightly understood, of principles of local government into Ireland ; but as to the purpose hon. members have in view, they cannot take the first step — they cannot establish one foot of ground upon which to address their argument to the House of Commons — until they have produced a plan by 6 65 66 THE IRISH NATIONAL LEAGUE which it is distinctly set forth by what authority and machinery they mean to divide between Imperial and local questions, so as to give satisfaction to members of this House upon its first and most prominent duty, namely, that of maintaining the supremacy of the Imperial authority for every practical object relating to the interests and purposes of this great country.^^ The daring programme of the League was the answer to this challenge. The proceedings of the Convention were public, and prudence was studiously observed. It is to America that we must look, therefore, for a fuller insight into the real character of the movement. And here a brief retrospect is necessary. The new departure'^ had been adopted in August, 1881, at an unusually secret meeting of the secret Fenian organisation, held in Chicago. In pursuance of the scheme then adopted, a public Irish National Convention was summoned for the following November. The first signature to the circular issued for that purpose was that of Patrick Ford of the Irish World newspaper, the founder of the infamous skirmishing fund of which so much was heard in those years. Early in 1881, moreover, this man had, in the columns of his paper, proclaimed the object of that fund to be the promotion of incendiary fires and dynamite outrages in this country. According to the newspapers, the other signatories were a number of prominent American Fenians, and Mr. T. P. O^Connor, M.P., and Mr. T. M. Healy, M.P., who were in the United States at the time, and who attended the Convention. It appears, however, from their evidence at the Special Commission, that these gentleman were the blind dupes of a plot to identify them with the proceedings of the American Fenian movement. In other words, they claimed a fooPs pardon for their action. At this Convention it was that the Irish Land League of America was established. Of the second ^'annual Conven- tion,^^ held in the following year, I need not speak. But to the third annual Convention, held in Philadelphia in April, 1883, I wish to call special attention. For at this meeting the fugitives of the Dublin murder conspiracy were present, and the League was reconstituted on the lines laid down at the Dubhn Convention of the preceding year. Adequate steps were taken, I may add, to keep the new movement entirely under the control of the " Clan-na-Gael," THE IRISH NATIONAL LEAGUE 67 as the secret Fenian organisation was then called. As Brennan, the quondam secretary of the suppressed Irish Land League, expressed it, They must continue on the lines in which they had started, till the last vestige of landlordism and foreign rule — the twin gaolers of the Irish race — are swept out of the country/' The call for the Convention, which was signed by Egan and two of the Clan-na-Gael leaders, declared the main object of the congress to be, to make ^'efforts to recover for our motherland the God-given and inalienable right of national independence,'^ and with this view ^4o blend into one organisation all the Irish societies of the United States and Canada, the new organisation to be affiliated with the Irish National League of Ireland, of which Charles Stewart Parnell is the President/' The men of this Convention were the same Clan-na-Gael leaders who had arranged and financed Parneirs campaign three years before, and by whom his famous last link " Cincinnati speech was treasured as a watchword. But every Clan-na-Gael lodge was ostensibly a mutual benefit society," with a public name ; and in compliance with secret instructions, every delegate was thus accredited as the representative of a recognised society. The leaders thus secured the control of the Convention, while keeping their secret organisation entirely out of sight. The chair was taken by the notorious Alexander Sullivan of Chicago, the Fenian ^' boss." According to the official report," he read a message from Parnell, advising moderation, as he said, to enable us to continue to accept help from America." The message added, I have perfect confidence that by prudence, moderation, and firmness the cause of Ireland will continue to advance, and though persecution rests heavily upon us at present, before many years have passed we shall have achieved the great objects for which through many centuries our race has struggled." Now the struggle of many centuries " does not point to a repeal of the legislative union with Ireland, neither would it be ended by any scheme of Gladstonian Home Rule. It reaches back to a remoter past, and its aim is the realisation of ParnelPs memorable words at Cincinnati, None of us will be satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which keeps Ireland bound to England." And the meaning put upon the language of this message 68 THE IRISH NATIONAL LEAGUE by those who heard it, is made clear by the words in which Sullivan ended his brief opening speech — In the spirit in which Robert Emmet died, we live. In his words, we are ^ determined upon delivering our native country from the yoke of a foreign and unrelenting tyranny,^ and ^ to place her independence beyond the reach of any power on earth.' One of the first acts of the Convention was to send a cablegram to Parnell, greeting him as their esteemed and honoured leader,*' and promising "hearty support to his platform and policy.'' The proceedings throughout were engineered by caucus meetings of the Clan-na-Gael, and all went smoothly, in spite of attempts made by the dynamiters to give trouble. If these men had been allowed a hearing, Parnell would have been unable ^'to accept help from America." So they were silenced by formal promises, privately given, that the good work" they had in hand would not be neglected. Londoners can testify how faith- fully these promises were kept. Alexander Sullivan, the head of the Clan-na-Gael, whose discreditable antecedents were described by Le Caron at the Special Commission, was appointed President of the new League. His election was a pretty piece of by-play. When his name was proposed, he "obtained the floor, and declined being a candidate.'* But, in accordance with the game arranged at a secret meeting the night before, the Convention insisted on putting his name on the list. And, of course, he was elected by a large majority. Again, however, he "firmly declined the honour," but yielded at last to the entreaties of Mrs. Parnell, the mother of their " honoured and esteemed leader," who urged him " in elegant languagbs^to accept the post. The promises given to the outrage-mongers at this Con- vention were faithfully kept. A secret circular was issued directing the institution of " schools for the manufacture of explosives." And another followed it, containing the assurance that " most important measures were being organised and put in progress." This referred to the mission of the dynamiter, Gallagher, and his confederates, who were already in this country upon the infamous errand which earned for them life sentences of penal servitude. At the second annual Convention of the Irish National League, which was held in Boston in August, 1884, the Secret Fenian organisation was again supreme ; and when THE IRISH NATIONAL LEAGUE 69 Alexander Sullivan, the head of that organisation, refused re-election as president, his place was filled by the appoint- ment of Patrick Egan. The M.P/s who represented the Irish parliamentary party on this occasion were Mr. Sexton and Mr. W. E. Redmond, the brother and colleague of the present leader of the Nationalist party in Parliament. And they heard their quondam friend of the Land league described by his proposers as that patriotic, that heroic exile for the sake of Mother Ireland.^' The cause of his exile has been explained in these pages. The following extracts from their speeches at the Conven- tion, taken from the official report,'^ may fitly bring this chapter to a close. After referring to the miscreant Alexander Sullivan as a man who does honour to the race from which he sprung/^ and a man of whom any race might be proud,^^ Mr. Sexton used these words : ^' We are now approaching the verge of a settlement which . . . will render it impossible for any Government any longer to delay or to defeat our claim for national independence,'^ And here is the concluding r sentence of Mr. W. E. Redmond's address : Come what ) may, we will work as long as we have life for the consum- mation of that object for which our fathers worked far more bitterly than we may be called upon to work, until we have made Ireland a nation, and given her a harp without a crown.'' CHAPTER XI THE DYNAMITE CAMPAIGN HE spring of 1882 seemed to promise me another opportunity of escaping from Secret Service work. For I was aware of the Premier's attitude toward Mr. Forster and his poHcy, and of the communications which ended with the Kilmainham Treaty. And I began to look forward to a hoHday such as I had not enjoyed for years. But the Phoenix Park murders changed all that, and when Colonel Brackenbury^ was appointed to office at Dublin Castle, as Under-Secretary for Police and Crime, he called on me at Whitehall to claim my help. I refused his appeal, and adhered to my refusal when he returned a second time to press it on me. But I had to give way at last. He convinced Sir WiUiam Harcourt that it was essential to have me to represent his department in London ; and to the pressure thus brought to bear upon me I was obliged to yield. My official relations with Colonel Brackenbury were alto- gether pleasant, unmarred by a hitch of any kind. But his tenure of office was unfortunately brief ; and the years that followed brought me a good deal of worry and not a little anxiety. London Fenianism, though more formidable than in 1867, was a negligible quantity, for I had the organisation practically in my pocket.^' But the dynamite plots of that era were cause for grave concern. O' Donovan Rossa has some events in this line to his credit, though his own estimate of his share is grossly exaggerated. But the dynamite crusade of the great Clan-na-Gael organisation of America was formidable — a crusade that dated from the Chicago Convention of 1881, at which the New Departure policy of working in union with the Parnellites was formally adopted. This organisation it was which dispatched Gallagher and ' Now General Sir Henry Brackenbury, G.C.B. 70 THE DYNAMITE CAMPAIGN 71 his confederates, who were convicted, and received Ufe sen- tences, in May, 1883, and Mackay Lomasney, who was blown to pieces in attempting to wreck London Bridge on December 13, 1884 — the anniversary of the Clerkenwell explosion of 1867. Some one may ask, perhaps, why was it, if the designs of a criminal conspiracy can be checked in the manner I have indicated in these pages, that the schemes of the dynamiters were not thwarted ? Many things may be said upon this. The dynamite outrages are remembered, but it is probably forgotten how many of the criminals were brought to justice. No fewer than thirty-two of these miscreants were convicted and sentenced to long terms of penal servitude, seventeen of them receiving life sentences. Then, again, the public knew nothing of the many plots that were foiled. Twq of these I single out for mention because of their peculiar heinousness. A Fenian, who was arrested with bombs in his possession, and who earned a life sentence in 1884, had planned the destruction of the Par- liamentary leaders on both sides of the House of Commons. His intention was to fling a bomb upon the table while the House was in session. After his conviction one of his bombs was exploded experimentally, in order to gauge what its probable effect would have been ; and Sir Vivian Majendie assured me that no one sitting near the table could have escaped a terrible death. Another plot, the full history of which I will not at present disclose, was still more horrible. It included another attempt upon the House of Commons, but it was specially aimed at Queen Victoria's Jubilee cele- bration in Westminster Abbey in 1887.^ I would say plainly, moreover, that it was not until the Government had been roused by the earlier crimes of the dynamite era that measures were adopted adequate to cope with this branch of the conspiracy. The uniformed police upon the streets can deal with ordinary law-breakers, but they are wholly incompetent to grapple with the crime plots of professional criminals. And the attempt to deal with crime of the kind here in view, under ordinary law and by ordinary methods, is the merest trifling. Thanks to Sir William Harcourt, however, ^ The credit of baffling and entirely preventing the execution of that plot belongs to Mr. James Monro, C.B., at that time Assistant-Commissioner of Police at Scotland Yard. 72 THE DYNAMITE CAMPAIGN we are not dependent on ordinary law. We now enjoy the protection of a measure which, to borrow the jargon of the Irish controversy, may be described as a Coercion Act" of drastic severity. I refer to the Explosives Act, 1883. This statute has made dynamiting dangerous. And if it be combined with counterplot work of the kind necessary in coping with organised crime of any sort, its operation becomes absolutely deterrent. But in England the spirit of the law is too often sacrificed to its forms. The rules of the prize ring are held to apply to the struggle between the law and those who break the law. Everything must be done openly and above board. A legitimate principle in regard to crimes that are committed openly and above board, but utterly inapplicable to crimes such as these. For a mine can be reached only by a counter- mine. The dynamite case of 1896 will serve to illustrate my words. Fenian emissaries were despatched from New York to carry into effect a formidable outrage plot. Under ordi- nary law and '^English methods" the miscreants might have come here with perfect impunity, but the use of proper means brought us a knowledge of their projects, and the ^' Coercion Act " was adequate to deal with them. Edward Bell, the only member of the gang who crossed the Channel, was arrested, and though his conviction was assured, the discovery that the prize ring " rules had not been observed led to an abandonment of the prosecution. Apart from the special question here at issue, the details of the case are not without interest. When I wrote to the Secretary of State, reporting the arrest of the accused, and informing him of the means by which it had been obtained, he formed the opinion that the fact of a confederate having given information to Government was a bar to a prosecution. And he remained unmoved by the clear proof I gave him that the informant had done everything in his power to check and thwart the execution of the plot. But as I had already applied to foreign police forces to deal with the other members of the gang, and extradition proceedings were contemplated, he decided to lay the matter before Lord Salisbury. Sir Matthew Ridley brought me with him to Walmer (September 19th), and stated the whole case in full detail to Lord Salisbury, adding that as I entirely dissented from the THE DYNAMITE CAMPAIGN 73 view he had formed of it, he wished me to have a hearing. Never did a judge of the Supreme Court hear a case with more judicial calmness. I possess a photograph of Lord Salisbury in the precise attitude in which he listened, first to Sir Matthew Ridley and then to me, without indicating even by a gesture the direction of his thoughts. And then he gave his decision, which was unreservedly in my favour. The case accordingly went on, and the accused was com- mitted to the Old Bailey. The evidence was clear and complete, and when the prisoner was brought into court on the second day of the trial, he stood forward to say that he wished to withdraw his plea of not guilty. But the law officers had come to know that the prize-ring rules had been violated, and the Solicitor-General intervened by rising to announce the withdrawal of the prosecution. It was not till some time afterwards that I had an opportunity to tell him that the facts which led him to take that course were well known to the prisoner himself, and that his decision to plead guilty to the charge was the result of a bargain to which I was a party.^ When BelFs legal adviser discovered that there were traitors in the dynamite camp, he called to warn me that, if the case was pressed, the defence would be that his client was the victim of an agent provocateur. I assured him that I feared no disclosures, and advised him to ^' pump his cHent before he tried a game of that kind. In the afternoon of the first day of the trial he returned to ask me, in strict confidence, whether I would promise the prisoner a light sentence if he pleaded guilty ? But of course I could do nothing unless he allowed me to tell the law officers of his visit, and this he would not hear of. I added, however, that if Bell would accompany his plea of guilty with some expression of regret, I would confidently promise to obtain an early remission of any sentence passed on him. I never violate a confidence, and though an hour after he left me I was summoned to a consultation in the case, ' In the minute which Sir Matthew Ridley made upon my letter, after our visit to Walmer, he said, desire to place on record my appreciation of the promptitude and skill displayed in this matter by the police, and my full approval of Mr. Anderson's action." I must add that, while the case fully deserved this commendation, the chief credit was due, not to me, but to a gentleman whose name has not come before the public in relation to Secret Service work, but to whom the public owe much in relation to duties of that character. 74 THE DYNAMITE CAMPAIGN the law officers had no hint of all this till some time after- wards.^ Of course the withdrawal of the charge against Bell put an end to all hope of taking proceedings against his con- federates, and they promptly escaped to America. I had traced them to Rotterdam and Amsterdam, and the steamer in which they left was called the Wenkerdam. One character- istic of the Parisian accent that is so much cultivated by English people is the vulgarism of accentuating the final syllable of words ; and at times I felt tempted to give vent to my feelings of annoyance at the collapse of this dynamite case by repeating these names aloud in the Parisian fashion. This reference to the Bell case is a digression which breaks the sequence of my story. But a mere chronological narra- tive would be foreign to the purpose of these pages ; and though the years between the Phoenix Park murder and the Parnell Special Commission were full of incidents that might be worth telling in another connection, they need not be included here. One of the most important events in the Fenian annals of that period was the '^Jubilee plot/' to which allusion has already been made.^ Some details of it were brought to pubHc notice by the Select Committee appointed in 1888, with a view to amend the regulations for the admis- sion of strangers to the House of Commons. - The evidence in that inquiry disclosed that a leading Fenian named F. F. Millen came to Europe with a number of subordinate agents to carry out a fiendish scheme of dynamite outrages, and that one at least of the Parnellite members was in close touch with these men, though it was not averred that he was privy to their designs. But the fullest public disclosure ever made of the infamous character and aims of the American Fenians was supplied by a murder trial in Illinois in the year 1889. An Irish doctor practising in Chicago, Cronin by name, was expelled from the Clan-na Gael in 1885 at the instigation of Alexander Sullivan. He thereupon joined a rival organisa- tion formed by seceders from the parent body. Three years later a reunion was established at a joint convention held in ' And Sir Matthew Ridley knew nothing of it when, in the House of Commons debate on January 20th, he answered Mr. Healy's taunts about my " operations." ^ See p. 71, ante. THE DYNAMITE CAMPAIGN 75 Chicago. At that meeting Cronin turned the tables on Sullivan by preferring grave charges against him of mis- appropriating funds, and neglecting the dynamite emissaries who had been sent to this country from time to time. These charges were referred to a trial committee/' of which Cronin was a member. Sullivan secured an acquittal, but the proceedings intensified his hostility to Cronin, and he was still further incensed against him by his persistent efforts to have the evidence published. As the outcome of the quarrel, an elaborate plot was hatched for the murder of Cronin, and it was carried into execution in May, 1889. A coroner's jury found a verdict of wilful murder against Sullivan and the actual assassins, but the charge against Sullivan was abandoned. The others were brought to trial and convicted. For my present purpose the special importance of the case is due to the fact that among Cronin's papers were found the records of this evidence given in the Fenian trial inquiry of the year before, and this document was freely used by the prosecution to explain the motive for the murder. The first witness examined in that inquiry was a man who had taken part in three of the London dynamite outrages, and the last was the widow of the man who came by his death in the explosion at London Bridge. This man, Lomasney, had been joint delegate with Sullivan to the Fenian convention of 1884, and was one of his special alHes. The widow was nominally in receipt of a pension from the Clan-na-Gael, but the payment of it had been irregular, and she had been left in want. Other witnesses described their fruitless efforts to obtain money for the unfortunate relatives of the dynamite convicts, and for the defence of emissaries of the organisation who were still awaiting trial. The evidence, as a whole, was a hideous disclosure of diabolical wickedness and shameful fraud on the part of the Fenian leaders. And it afforded proof, which could not be challenged, that the miscreants of the principal dynamite outrages in this country were the paid emissaries of the movement which, on its public side, owned Mr. Parnell as its esteemed and honoured leader.'' CHAPTER XII THE SPECIAL COMMISSION ON an earlier page I used the word romance in de- scribing the Irish sections of Mr. Morley^s ^' Life of Mr. Gladstone.'^ But that expression would be inadequate to characterise the chapter on The Special Commission.^' No one need quarrel with him for exposing the folly — a much stronger word would not be inapt — of Lord Salisbury's Government in forcing through Parliament the statute under which the Commission was appointed. But when he attri- butes the action of Ministers to unworthy motives, he betrays himself as the party politician undisguised. And a like remark applies to his strictures upon the conduct of the Times in bringing charges of the gravest kind against the Parnellites. As Mr. Gladstone said, ^4he making of those charges was either an act of incredible baseness, or it was the performance of a public service ; ^ and no fair-minded man will hesitate in choosing between these alternatives. And thoughtful men will not share Mr. Morley's estimate of the tribunal. The suggestion is grotesque that a Parlia- mentary Committee would have been either as impartial or as competent. Indeed, it would have been a farcical pro- ceeding to refer the issues involved to any committee of the kind. When Mr. Parnell decided not to appeal to a jury, a commission of judges became the only practical alternative. Therefore the decision to make him the offer of such a tribunal was not only fair, but in all respects admirable. Forcing that tribunal upon him was a blunder. But this false step was taken, not in furtherance of a base party intrigue, but under a mistaken sense of duty. Sir William Harcourt once refused to let me refer a certain matter to one of his colleagues, because, he said, he was ' Speech of May ii, 1887, at Hampstead. 76 THE SPECIAL COMMISSION 77 ^*one of those conscientious people that you can't count upon.'' The sort of people he meant were those who act on principle " in matters that lie outside the sphere of morals — a phase of folly that leads not only individuals but Govern- ments into trouble. Mr. Morley objects that the accused had no voice in the composition of the tribunal. But accused persons are not generally allowed to select their judges. The objection, moreover, is purely academic, unless, indeed, it is a veiled attack upon Sir James Hannen and his colleagues. But, he exclaims, for the first time since the Great Re.- bellion, judges were to find a verdict upon the facts oi crime j and he repeatedly comments on the absence of a jury. His admiration for juries, however, is not shared by those who have practical acquaintance with their ways. And he himself supplies the refutation of his words ; for, in his vindication of Mr. ParnelFs refusal to appeal to the ordinary tribunals, he compares a jury trial to the hazards of a cast of the die." ^ He forgets, moreover, that Mr. Gladstone's ^'Coercion Act" of six years before, provided similar tribunals for the trial of the wretched men whom Mr. Parnell's agitation inveigled into crime.^ Then as to the procedure. Mr. Morley complains that, Instead of opening with the letters, as the country ex- pected, the accusers began by rearing a prodigious accumula- tion of material," involving the Parnellites in an interminable inquiry and inordinate expense. What ^4he country ex- pected " was that at the earliest possible moment Mr. Parnell would have come before the judges to denounce the letters, and to traverse the incriminating charges. That is the course which an honest man, strong in the consciousness of his innocence, would adopt. A guilty man, on the other hand, might hold back in hope of benefiting by the chances of a trial. It was neither the Government nor the Times^ but Mr. Parnell himself, who was responsible for the order of procedure. We all know the story of the Irish juryman who, on addressing the judge from the public gallery, was told to go to his proper place in the court, and at once made for ' Vol. iii. p. 393. And the second paragraph of p. 394 indicates that it was Mr. Morley himself who prevented Parnell from appealing to a jury. 2 See p. 59, ante. 78 THE SPECIAL COMMISSION the dock. If, as Mr. Morley complains, the ParnelHtes were virtually in the dock/' it was by their deliberate choice that they occupied that position. The proprietors of the Times expected to be put upon their defence, as they would have been if the Irishmen had appealed to a jury, or if they had obtained a Parliamentary Committee. So little were they prepared for the action forced upon them, that their leading counsel did not attend the preliminary meeting of the Commission. And it was in their absence, and on the motion of Sir Charles Russell, that the order of proceedings was arranged. What makes the procedure the more significant is the fact, disclosed when Pigott absconded, that before a single one of the Times witnesses had been heard, the defence had obtained from that wretched man a confession of the forgeries. The inference is natural, that this was purposely kept back until the case for the Times had been disclosed. A dramatic incident in the course of a criminal trial some- times leads the thoughtless to acclaim the occupant of the dock as a popular hero ; and the great master of Nisi Prius tactics who conducted Parnell's defence judged, no doubt, that a cotip de theatre about the letters would divert public attention from the other issues. The success of the coup was indeed phenomenal. But we can now review the whole matter dispassionately, and Mr. Morley exaggerates the power of his brilliant pen if he imagines that he can make us regard the Parnell of the Land League as an impersonation of injured innocence. Nor can we forget at his bidding that, save for the iniquity of the forged letters, the Times charges against the Irish leader were entirely in the spirit of Mr. Gladstone's denun- ciations of him prior to the Kilmainham Treaty. His glowing periods, moreover, will not avail to make us ignore the gravity of the charges which the judges held to have been established by legal evidence. By legal evidence I say advisedly, for the fact that the proceedings took the form of a quasi criminal trial deprives the Commissioners' report of the effect which Mr. Morley claims for it. The judges expressly decided that the letters were forgeries ; but in regard to the other charges which they dismissed, their decision was no more than a legal acquittal. Indeed, the investigation of those charges under the limitations imposed by the law of evidence in a criminal THE SPECIAL COMMISSION 79 trial was a mere waste of time. If legal evidence had been available, the poUce would have taken action long before ; and where the police failed to make out a case, it was not likely that the Times would succeed. Let me illustrate my meaning. The judges say, e.g.^ ^' We find that Mr. Parnell did not make any remittance to enable F. Byrne to escape from justice.^' What the Times averred was that an opportune remittance from Mr. Parnell in January, 1883, enabled him to escape to France.'^ The allegation of fact here was not in dispute, but the innuendo was incapable of proof. And I will only say that if in January, 1883, Mr. Parnell was ignorant of Byrne^s connec- tion with the murder plots of the preceding year, his igno- rance was wilful. I had knowledge of it myself, and he had means of information vastly superior to mine. These remarks apply equally to other findings of the Court. Take the following, for instance : We find . . . that the Land League did not pay or organise the Invincibles, nor did the respondents or any of them associate with persons known by them to be employed in the Invincible conspiracy.'^ I can only say that the men who brought me knowledge of the work of the Invincibles, obtained that knowledge in the office of the Land League ; and I assert as a fact that the money of the Land League was at the disposal of the murder gang. That the decision of the judges was no more than a legal verdict of not guilty is made clear by their complaint that the books of the English secretary to the Land League were not produced, albeit their production was promised ; and that no particulars were afforded them of the expenditure of not less than ;^ioo,ooo of the Land League funds. No, the books were not produced, and for excellent reasons. They were in the office of the League in Palace Chambers when the preliminary meeting of the Commission was held on September 17, 1885. But before October 22nd, when the judges opened the actual inquiry, they had been dispatched to France. At this distance of time accuracy is of no importance, but as a matter of fact, the actual date at which they were sent across the Channel was the night of October loth. Mr. Morley describes the events in Ireland during the Land League period as a revolution ; and this perhaps may not only afford a clue to ParnelFs conduct, but it may explain 8o THE SPECIAL COMMISSION a strange omission in Mr. Morley's narrative. Revolutionists cannot afford to be fastidious about means and measures, and their apologists are apt to deal lightly with their misdeeds. And yet we might have hoped that the hateful cruelties and hideous crimes of the Land League movement would have drawn from such a moralist as Mr. Morley some expression of indignant censure or of generous distress. But he seems to have exhausted his vocabulary of invective in denouncing the Tories and the Times. The expense of the inquiry must indeed have been enor- mous ; and where the money came from is a secret which has never been revealed. As regards the Times, the facts are not in doubt ; but what about the Irishmen ? No one imagines that they personally had either the will or the capacity to find the cash. And the Land League funds had been depleted by the expenditure of huge sums on projects which have never been disclosed, and which presumably would not bear the light. ^ Where, then, did the money come from ? Did the Reform Club contribute ? Or was there a secret subscription among members of the party ? =^ When the proceedings before the Commission took the turn they did, the Treasury Solicitor might well have been instructed to intervene. But the Times was left to make out its case unaided. There is no foundation for Mr. Morley's suggestion that the Government was behind the prosecution. The Government stood neutral, and the affair became a forensic tournament. And a most unequal struggle it was. For the qualities which have won for Lord Alverstone respect and confidence of a kind, and in a measure, that all Chief Justices of England have not enjoyed, were very different from those which made his opponent the acknowledged leader of the Common Law Bar, and the shrewdest tactician of his generation. And Sir Charles Russell was unceasingly upon the alert to use all the subtleties of the law of evidence to check the eliciting of facts ; while Sir Richard Webster, on the other hand — though, of course, it was as a private barrister, and not as Attorney-General, that he appeared — conducted his ' See p. 62, ante. It is not clear from the judges' report whether the amount unaccounted for was ;^i78,ooo or only ^^100,000. Mr. Morley makes the significant statement that, the day after the report was issued, Mr. Gladstone had a meeting with the lawyers in the case." THE SPECIAL COMMISSION 8i case throughout as though he was prosecuting for the Crown. Therefore it was, no doubt, that he accepted Pigott as his witness. Counsel representing the Crown are expected to lay everything before the Court, no matter what its tendency ; but in private practice no competent barrister would have called the man into the witness-box. For it was known that the other side had been tampering with him for months, and the obvious course would have been to treat him as a hostile witness, and to claim the right to cross-examine him. And if that course had been adopted, Pigott would have stated upon oath, what he asserted vehemently to the last, that the facsimile letter was not his handiwork. My information about such matters was seldom in fault, and I have recently found proof that it was right. The letter in question was penned by a journalist named Arthur O'Keefe, who was one of ParnelFs fellow prisoners in 1882, and who was sometimes employed by him as an amanuensis. Having regard to ParnelFs denials, I will not assert that the letter was genuine. I leave it an open question. But if it was a forgery, it was concocted for the purposes, not of the Tillies^ but of the extremists among the Land Leaguers, who were both scared and exasperated by ParnelFs public denunciations of the murder.^ That letters of the kind were in existence was a common rumour at the time. Even the Daily News professed to have knowledge of them. And no one who reads what Mr. Morley tells of ParnelFs visit to Hawarden, and of the account he afterwards gave of his conference with Mr. Gladstone, will scout the suggestion that he may have written what is here attributed to him. There was one element in that strange ^ The following is the text of the facsimile " letter, which appeared in the Iwtes of April 18, 1887 :— " 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 F. Cavendish's death, I cannot refuse to admit that Burke got no more than his deserts. " You are at liberty to show him this, and others whom you can trust also, but let not my address be known. He can write to House of Commons. " Yours very truly, " Chas. S. Parnell.' 7 82 THE SPECIAL COMMISSION personality of which Mr. Morley takes no account, but which cannot be ignored if we are to judge his acts aright ; and after this lapse of time there can be no impropriety in noticing it. Great wits are sure to madness near allied.^' These words, which are not altogether inapplicable to their author, suggest an explanation of much that seems most strange in the life of Charles Stewart Parnell. In this connection I might appeal to his amazing super- stitions. An unlucky colour distressed him intensely. An ^' unlucky'^ number filled him with dread. No peasant of a bygone generation was more the slave of silly superstitious fears of this kind. His habit of midnight prowling, his renting houses under assumed names, and other like ways and deeds, gave rise to sinister suspicions of one kind or another. But all such suspicions were baseless. The man was eccentric. He lived apart from his fellows. He lived alone. And this is an element which lends the deepest pathos to the event w^hich wrecked his public career. A seemingly impassable obstacle barred companionship with the only friend whose companion- ship he prized, the only person upon earth, perhaps, who unreservedly possessed his confidence. A man of another mould would have accepted the position, and gloomily hugged his loneliness. But his masterful will could never brook obstacles of any kind. Possibly, too, he was misled by precedents. For Irish patriots had been used to err as he erred. But times had changed, as Parnell learned to his cost. And yet it was only those who were behind the scenes who can realise how near he was to weathering the storm and beating down all opposition. The recklessness which afterwards marked his words and acts have been attributed to indignation that men who were not without sin themselves had been prominent in stoning him. But this explanation is inadequate. There is a point at which an unhinged mind gives way, and in ParnelPs case that point had been reached. During his closing year, indeed, he merited to the full the pity which he would have scorned. And if we understand aright that strangely picturesque personality, we shall deal generously with his memory, and take a kindlier view of his last sad lapse and his tragic end. CHAPTER XIII WHY I WAS NOT A WITNESS THE preceding chapter is in the main a criticism of Mr. Morley^s story of the Special Commission/^ But the cynic may think, perhaps, that my own story would be more to the point, and especially an explanation of my faiUng to appear as a witness. This I have never had an opportunity to give till now. I must premise that Le Caron^s evidence was my only point of contact with the case for the Times, And I say this emphatically, because I find that there are people still who credit Mr. Labouchere^s statements that I sent police officers across the Atlantic to tout for evidence against the Parnellites. The allegation was unequivocally denied by the Secretary of State in Parliament, and by the Chief Commissioner of Police in a letter to the Times; but, giving the lie to both Mr. Matthews and Mr. Monro, Mr. Labouchere repeated it still more definitely in the House of Commons. I was naturally indignant, and I determined to bring him to book. But I could take no action on words spoken in Parliament. The course I adopted, therefore, was to give the facts to the editor of the World; and, as I expected, Edmund drew Henry in the par.^^ columns of Truth, Mr. Labouchere declared in his paper that he was fully prepared to prove that Inspector Jarvis of my department had been to a town named Del Norte to interview the Land Leaguer Sheridan in the interests of the Times, This was exactly what I wanted. Inspector Jarvis had, in fact, been in America at the time indicated. But to have undertaken a mission outside the duty I had entrusted to him was a grave breach of discipline. So I directed his superintendent to bring him before me on the report and the charge having been preferred, I adjourned the case 83 84 WHY I WAS NOT A WITNESS to give the incriminated officer an opportunity to clear himself. In due time Mr. Wontner, the solicitor, called on me to say that, on Jarvis's instructions, he had commenced an action against Mr. Labouchere, and that Messrs. Lewis and Lewis now wished to compromise it : would I be content if the defendant paid all costs, and allowed judgment to be entered against him ? *^ Certainly not,'^ I replied ; the matter before me is the conduct of an officer of my department, and if the case is settled out of court, the settlement must be on terms that will veto all suspicion of collusion. The matter ended by Mr. Labouchere's paying the costs, plus ^loo for damages, and inserting an apology in Truth,^ Apart from the Le Caron disclosures, I repeat, I had nothing to do with the Times case. And my share in the business would probably have excited no notice had Le Caron been allowed to tell his story in his own way. But his evidence had to be extracted piecemeal by question and answer, as in a criminal court and with Sir Charles Russell on the pounce'^ when any question infringed technical rules originally framed to shield a prisoner on trial for his life. There is no reason to think he told lies,^^ is Mr. Morley^s comment on his story. As I have already said, Le Caron was truthful in a special sense. His statements were generally free even from that sort of bias which very few of us can shake off, which possibly marks these pages in spite of my efforts to be scrupulously fair, and which betrays itself throughout Mr. Morley's narrative. Mr. Morley goes on to say, ^' He was perhaps a good deal less trusted than he thought, for he does not appear on any occasion to have forewarned the police at home of any of the dynamite attempts that four or five years earlier had startled the English capital.^^ Is this an insinuation that Le Caron played us false by concealing his knowledge of dynamite plots ? If the words do not mean that, I am utterly unable to understand them. But when thus construed, they appear ^ The head of the "C.I.D.," if fit for his place, knows a great many things which people think are going on under cover. And I knew who it was that had fooled Mr. Labouchere in this business. He employed the same agent to obtain a statement w^hich it was expected would be embarrassing to Ministers ; but when obtained, it reflected mainly on the Opposition leaders. So it did not appear in Truth. Mr. Davitt got hold of it, however, and its publication in the Labour World created a mild sensation. WHY I WAS NOT A WITNESS 85 SO discreditable to their author that I dismiss the sentence as an insoluble enigma. General warnings of the dynamite plots, he gave me re- peatedly. And it is noteworthy that the first of these warnings came from the Fenian Convention of 1881, to which he carried the appeal to the Fenian leaders, which Parnell had entrusted to him in the House of Commons interview of the preceding May. His letters told me that, though the word was never used either on the platform or in the official records of the meeting, dynamite was in the air, and permeated all the speeches. There it was that he first met Dr. Gallagher, the dynamite emissary of 1883, and Mackay Lomasney, who was blown to pieces in his attempt to wreck London Bridge in the winter of 1884. But details of the dynamite plots could have been obtained only by par- ticipating in them, and a man in Le Caron's position must have taken such a leading part as to become in the fullest sense an agent provocateur. If the matter warranted such a digression, I might point to speeches of the Liberal leaders to prove that Le Caron's information was thoroughly trusted, and to events which prove that the confidence placed in him was thoroughly deserved. But there can be no stronger testimony to his trustworthiness than the fact that the prolonged and searching cross-examination to which he was subjected at the Special Commission served only to set up his credit as a witness, and to lead the judges to accept his evidence even when it conflicted with ParnelFs, as in regard to the House of Commons interview. Upon this I have something to say anon. It was on February 7 (1889) that my name was first brought into the case. The newspapers of the 8th informed me that in cross-examination by Sir Charles Russell, Le Caron had mentioned my giving him back his letters. I went at once to Sir Richard Webster, and asked him to make me his next witness. He was at the moment going into Court, and delayed only to express his approval and gratifi- cation, and to ask me to write him a letter that he could show to Sir Henry James. That night I sent him a partial statement of the evidence I wished to give, and it was briefed to counsel, a printed copy being sent to me. The Court did not sit again until the 12th, and on that day (Tuesday) I went down expecting to be called. But Sir 86 WHY I WAS NOT A WITNESS Richard Webster told me that Sir Henry James objected to my giving evidence, and asked me to return at 6.30 for a consultation. At the hour named I met him and Sir Henry. The Attorney-General wd.s entirely in favour of calling me, but Sir Henry was as strongly opposed to it. His personal regard for me, he said it v^as, v^hich influenced him : I had no idea what a cross-examination by Sir Charles Russell would mean. I replied that I was not the least afraid of any amount of cross-examination by Sir Charles Russell. Turning to Le Caron's evidence about certain facts, which he said he had reported to Government in 1881, he asked, What would you say, for instance, if asked whether you actually received that information ? My answer would be ' Yes,^ I repHed, I remember it perfectly.'^ And then suppose Russell asked you what action you took upon it, what would you say ? I should appeal to the Court," I replied, that I ought not to answer that question ; as it really means * What instructions did I receive from the Secretary of State upon Le Caron^s information ? ^ Sir Richard Webster looked amused and gratified by my re- joinder, but Sir Henry James only repeated his forebodings about the perils of a cross-examination. The conversation ended by his saying he would like to talk the matter over with the Attorney-General, and they asked me to come back next day before the sitting of the Court. When I returned on the Wednesday morning, I found that neither of them had changed his opinion, but it was Sir Henry James^ view that prevailed : they did not mean to call me at present.^' To the last I expected to be called, but the summons never came. The action I took in the matter, as recorded in my opening chapter, disposed of my private reasons for wishing to come forward, and I had no longer any desire to force my evidence upon the Court. For the case was damaged beyond repair by the supreme blunder of accepting Pigott as a witness for the Times^ and all the after proceedings were but the fizzle of a damp squib. But everything I have since learned has served to deepen the conviction I formed seven- teen years ago, that if that case had closed with Le Caron^s evidence, confirmed by what I had to tell, the result of the Special Commission would have been very different from what it was. The pith of Le Caron^s evidence, to quote Mr. Morley^s WHY I WAS NOT A WITNESS 87 phrase again, was his interview with Parnell in the Library corridor of the House of Commons. Did you make any report of it ? Sir Charles Russell asked him. And his answer was, I did, immediately after the interview.^' Had my evidence been taken, I should have told that, on leaving Parnell, Le Caron drove at once to my house, and repeated to me all that had occurred. And with my notes of his narrative in my hand, I should have confirmed in every detail his statements in the witness-box at the Special Com- mission. If in view of all this the reader expects me to solve the mystery why I was not a witness at the Special Commission, he will be disappointed. The more I review the circum- stances, the more impenetrable does that mystery become. CHAPTER XIV LE CARON AND HIS EVIDENCE Le Caron^s interview with Parnell was not of his own seeking. He was in London with Egan during the early part of May, 1881, and he left for Paris with him on the 13th of that month. The first letter I had from him during his stay in France told me that before leaving London they had a general conference/^ at which, he said — It was decided that Egan should return with me to the United States, if able to get some one to take his place here during his absence, it being very much desired to have a thorough understanding before the August Convention. Egan is sending detailed outlines to Devoy and Ford. It may seem a wild idea, but I assure you it is a fact. All they ask is ^ no opposition to, and co-operation with, the Land League,' which in turn agrees to devote its means and energies to promote the cause of Irish independence. You will understand that there is every reason why, for the present, this should not leak out. Secrecy is enjoined upon all, myself included.^^ Another letter, written in Paris on the 17th, contained the following : Parnell writes to Egan to be sure to tell me that he wants to have a talk with me before I leave.^^ And on the 23rd I had a note, posted in London, to say he would call upon me that night, after the interview. In his evidence, Le Caron stated that on going to the House of Commons on the evening in question, he first saw Mr. J. J. O'Kelly, M.P., that presently Mr. Parnell joined them, and that, after O' Kelly withdrew, Parnell continued the conversation with him alone. Here is his account of the object of the interview as explained by O' Kelly. He suggested that, on my return, I should use my in- fluence with my friends upon the other side to bring about LE CARON AND HIS EVIDENCE 89 a little coercion on their part in order to bring the organisa- tions into Hne on this side of the water. He said that we were all working for one common object.^^ When O'Kelly left them, Parnell enlarged on this. And he asked Le Caron to see John Devoy, on his return to New York, to enlist his co-operation in the scheme, and to ask him to come over to Paris, where Parnell would meet him. He was also to bring the matter before Alexander Sullivan and WilHam J. Hynes. There need be no misunderstanding,^^ Parnell declared, we are working for a common purpose — the independence of Ireland." And he added an expression of his belief in an appeal to arms for that purpose. All this Le Caron repeated to me in fuller detail within half an hour of his leaving Parnell in the House of Commons. Parnell told him that if the Clan-na-Gael would give him ;^200,ooo, this sum, added to what the Land League could raise, would suffice to enable him to bring about an armed revolt. He had estimated the strength and the distribution of the garrison in Ireland. He mentioned incidentally that he had sent agents to South Africa to encourage the Boers. And he hinted that it might be possible to make trouble in India. These latter points had passed from Le Caron's memory when he gave his evidence at the Commission. Le Caron was a man of the world and a cynic. Accus- tomed to American political oratory, he had discounted Parnell's speeches upon Fenian platforms. But when he came to me that night, he was impressed by the belief that the man was terribly in earnest, and really meant business. As he afterwards ^wrote in the book which tells his life- story — ^^The interview had proved a startling one for me. I pondered over the manner and the method of my late companion, to discover, if I could, any incident in the course of our hour^s talk which would materially affect all that he said. But there was none. The manner of the League chief had been grave and impassive, as was his wont ; he had been business-like all through ; there was no uncertainty, no indistinctness in his utterance. He had certainly made a plunge, but it was a plunge taken with all deliberation and premeditation." In his evidence before the Special Commission, Mr. J. J. O^Kelly, M.P., admitted that he was a sworn Fenian in Ireland during the sixties ; that when he went to America 90 LE CARON AND HIS EVIDENCE in 1871, he became a member of the Clan-na-Gael, and in course of time took an active part in the movement ; and that it v^as as an official of that organisation, with money suppHed by the treasurer for Fenian purposes, that he returned to Ireland in 1879, some six or seven months before the General Election, at v^^hich he was returned to Parlia- ment as a supporter of Mr. Parnell. This immensely increases the signilicance of the interview ; for O' Kelly would naturally have informed his chief of the character and aims of the Fenian organisation. And he was by no means the only man among ParnelPs lieutenants who had gone through the mill of the criminal conspiracy, and who could have given the Irish leader information of all its secrets.^ Did Parnell cherish the insane dream that with ^^200,000 of Fenian money he could meet the military forces of a nation that has since spent ;^200,ooo,ooo in crushing the Boers ? Parnell was no dreamer, but he remembered Mr. Gladstone's words, that the explosion of a barrel of gun- powder in Clerkenwell, by a few Irish tailors and cobblers, brought the Irish Question within the range of practical politics ; '' and it was not a very wild supposition that the use of a little gunpowder in Ireland would give a powerful fillip to the movement thus begun. My only other comment on the story is to record the fact that within six months of the date of this conversation, a new scheme for procuring rifles for use in Ireland was started by the ^^Revolutionary Directory.'' But Parnell was then in Kilmainham. Still more incredible the statement may appear to be that help was given to the Boers. But it was true. In 1880, the Chairman of the Boers' Committee at Amsterdam visited both Egan and Parnell. And as the result of his visits to them, three officers, selected by him on his return to Amster- dam, were dispatched to the Transvaal by the Land League. In reply to a demand for an audit of the Land League funds, received from New York in the following year, Egan appealed to these facts, specifying the expenditure involved, as proof that no audit could with safety be allowed.^ Mr. Morley dismisses this House of Commons interview ^ On his arrival in England, the day after Parnell's death, he started at once for Brighton, and was admitted to the death chamber. This fact indicates a close relationship. ^ See p. 80, ante. LE CARON AND HIS EVIDENCE 91 by suggesting that the spy talked the Fenian doctrine of physical force, and that Mr, Parnell Hstened/' But this bespeaks not only prejudice, but ignorance of salient facts. The interview was not, as he supposes, an isolated incident. It was an important step in the Parnell movement. A glance back to an earlier chapter will explain its significance,^ The compact of the New Departure was that the secret organisation of oath-bound Fenians should join forces with the Parliamentarians. The Fenians were not expected to abandon their aims, nor even to vary their methods, but merely to dissemble for a time, and give a tacit support to the open movement. But the conspirators at home were thwarting ParnelPs work by active opposition. Hence the need of Le Caron^s help. Hence the appeal made through him, first to John Devoy, the apostle of the New Departure, and then to Sullivan and Hynes, the Clan-na-Gael leaders who were fathering it. It would have been futile for Parnell to have asked a leading Clan-na-Gael man to undertake such a mission without giving him the assurances he did. Indeed, it might have done positive harm ; for Devoy was an active Fenian of an advanced type, and Sullivan and Hynes were bitter and unscrupulous advocates of force. He was bound, therefore, not merely to listen, in case ^' the spy talked the Fenian doctrine,^^ but to give clear expression to that doctrine himself. It was necessary, in fact, to bring Le Caron to the very state of mind in which he visited my house that night. If we want to know the real Parnell, we must look to what his biographers and friends have written of him, and not to Mr. Morley's pages. When he entered Parliament, Mr. Barry O^Brien tells us (and his statement is confirmed by the authorities he cites), his whole stock of information about Ireland was limited to the history of the Manchester Martyrs. He could talk of them, but he could not talk of anything else.'^ He took the Fenian view of their crime, for he was a Fenian at heart. The same competent authority tells us also that ^'he rode into power on the shoulders of the Fenians.'' For without the help of the Fenians no man could lead the Home Rule movement.'' The Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain was started by a member of the Fenian '^Supreme Council," and '^it was always under the control of the Fenians." And so when ^ Chapter VII., see especially p. 40, aiite. 92 LE CARON AND HIS EVIDENCE Parnell talked treason and war on Fenian platforms ^^he spoke the faith that was in him.'' What distinguished him from the working Fenians was his extraordinary ability and his no less extraordinary ignorance. For, again we are told, ^'he was ignorant of pubHc affairs, and he read no books.'' And again, ^'he hated England before he entered the House of Commons, and his hatred was intensified by his Parliamentary experience." Intense un- reasoning hatred of England was, in fact, the ruling passion of his political life. Such was the real Parnell, as contrasted with the mythical Parnell of Mr. Morley's book. And such was the man to whom Mr. Gladstone wished to entrust the destinies of Ireland.^ I must not omit to notice that events which followed in America afford definite confirmation of Le Caron's statement. The August Convention," referred to in his Paris letters, quoted some pages back,^ was the annual meeting of the Clan-na-Gael. It assembled in Chicago on August 3, 1881, and remained in session for a week. Egan was unable to attend, but he sent, as his representative, one John O'Connor, an active and trusted agent of the conspiracy, whose many aliases embarrassed me at times. The formal approval given to the New Departure at this convention, as mentioned in a previous chapter, was the result of Le Caron's mission. And in furtherance of it the following resolution was adopted : — It is the sense of this Convention that both branches of the Revolutionary Directory should devote themselves to the work of revolution ; and if such bodies cannot give their approval to pubHc movements that are intended to promote the political and social regeneration of Ireland, when they are supported by a large proportion of the Irish people, they will at least refrain from antagonising them." This resolution of the Clan-na-Gael in Chicago was the echo of what took place in the Library corridor of the House of Commons on May 23rd. * No one can turn back to Mr. Morley's book after reading what Parnell's personal and political friends have said about him, without a sense of impatience, bordering on indignation. He does not seem to have read any books of the class of Mr. Barry O'Brien's " Life of Parnell," Mr. William O'Brien's "Recollections," Mr. T. P. O'Connor's Parnell Movement," &c., &c. His pages are not history but a political romance by a philosopher with a hero and a fad. « P. 88, ante. LE CARON AND HIS EVIDENCE 93 I cannot close this Le Caron chapter without some further personal references to this most interesting man. In his book, already quoted, he speaks of my unceasing care for his personal safety. To that care his safety was largely due, for he was one of those extraordinary men who seem incapable of fear, and therefore indifferent to danger. This sometimes led him to do reckless things. But he knew only of dangers due to his own folly. I had the greatest difficulty at times in using his information without betraying him. The matter of the Parnell interview was one of many instances of what I mean. An article from Davitt, in the Nineteenth Century of March, 1890, drew from Le Caron a letter to the Times^ in which, referring to that interview, he said, The written record has been in possession of the Government since the night in question.^^ But the Government did not receive the record as promptly as he supposed ; else he might not have been alive in 1889 to give evidence at the Commission. I have seldom been in a more embarrassing position. For Sir William Harcourt had a hint that some- thing of the kind had occurred, and if I had given him the facts immediately, enough would certainly have leaked out to betray Le Caron. So the course I adopted was to let a month pass, and then to tell the story as received from my principal American Fenian informant — a way of putting it which had the merit of being strictly true. Though I had been in communication with Le Caron for so many years, and had seen him from time to time on his occasional visits to England, I never really knew him until he settled in London during the illness which ended fatally on April i, 1894. With all his cynicism and coldness of manner, he was a remarkably attractive man. The doctor who attended him — a stranger called in by chance — became his devoted friend. He came to see me about him, to urge the importance of having a consultation such as was beyond Le Caron^s means. I appealed to an old friend of mine, whose chief pleasure in life, I beheve, was doing kindnesses : I mean the late Gilbart Smith, of Harley Street ; and no sooner did he visit Le Caron than he became a warm ^' Le Caronite.^^ Others in the same way fell under the charm of his personality. I visited him frequently at this time, and thus it was, I repeat, that I came to know him. At first we used to talk LE CARON AND HIS EVIDENCE over his adventures ; and when his illness grew upon him, and he was bed-ridden, we often spoke on subjects of which I will make no mention here. He seemed absolutely un- sullied and unspoiled by the strange vicissitudes of his life- story. I came to esteem him very highly, and what is more germane to the subject of these pages, I became increasingly impressed by his very remarkable respect for truth. CHAPTER XV THE CASE FOR HOME RULE THE origin of this book is explained in its opening pages. It is intended to be a story without a moral/^ The time seemed to have come when the events dealt with in Mr. Morley^s Irish chapters might be reviewed as matters of history ; the Home Rule controversy seemed to have passed out of the sphere of practical politics.^' But just as, in nature, the changing skies sometimes belie all meteorological forecasts, so the political atmosphere has recently changed with extraordinary suddenness. The Irish Question is with us once again, and the preceding chapters, which but yesterday would have had a purely academic interest, are now germane to one of the most important of the practical problems of the day. It would be the merest affectation to ignore this. And therefore, while I refuse to come down into the arena of party politics,^ I have altered and added here and there, in order to bring the book into line with the events of the day. And in conclusion, I propose to discuss the grounds upon which Home Rule is commended as a solution of the Irish controversy. I do not impugn the integrity of those who advocate it, nor will I impute to them unworthy motives. The question is not whether they are honest and sincere, but whether they are right ? And it is my wish to deal with this question in the spirit in which thoughtful men will review it a generation hence. And first, it may be well to seek for an explanation of the ' During all my official life I kept clear of party politics, never having even voted at a parliamentary election, until Mr. Gladstone issued his historic appeal for a majority to make him independent of the Parnellites. 95 96 THE CASE FOR HOME RULE eagerness — the bitterness, I might say — with which so many Irishmen desire to sever the union with Great Britain. Any attempt to account for this by present-day grievances is futile. Not only do the four and a half milUon inhabitants of Ireland enjoy the same rights as the thirty-seven milhons of Great Britain, but they exercise a wholly disproportionate share of political power. And the agricultural classes of that country derive special benefits from the State, to which the peasantry of Great Britain are strangers. In every respect, in fact, the balance of advantage is on the side of the Irish. Why, then, the intense antipathy to England, which alone accounts for the agitation for Home Rule ? The answer to this question is not doubtful. The hatred of England, which was the ruling motive in ParnelFs political career, which betrays itself in the acts and words of the pre- sent parliamentary leaders, and which burns in the breasts of multitudes of the Irish people, is a legacy from evil days long past. There are two sides to most questions, and the philo- sophical historian has something to say in vindication of Cromwell's policy, and in palliation of the penal laws. But when he comes to review the legislation by which every Irish industry was deliberately and systematically ruined, nothing can be urged either to lessen or to cloak its infamy. Every class was affected by it. And it not only impoverished the people, it demoralised them. The record of it makes an Irishman's blood boil ; and no language can be extreme in denunciation of it. And in the case of men whose minds are inflamed and embittered by brooding over these evil memories of the past, every proof that Home Rule would prejudice the greatness, and possibly endanger the safety, of England, only serves to supply them with an additional motive for insisting upon the demand. What then should be the attitude of statesmanship toward such a problem ? What the view of that broad- minded common sense which is our best guide in all affairs of ordinary life ? A certain man did my great-grandfather a shameful and cruel wrong. Were I to ask whether I am not justified in hating and seeking to injure his great-grandson, I should be regarded as vindictive and evil-minded. I should be told to let the dead past he, and instead of brooding over the wrong, to dismiss it from my thoughts. Why then should not this same advice be deemed wholesome and wise in the case here THE CASE FOR HOME RULE 97 in view ? And if history will accord to Mr. Gladstone his fall meed of praise for refusing to listen to the tale of the ancient wrongs of Ireland, while lending a willing ear to every demand for the redress of present injustice, will it not condemn with unsparing severity his later policy of inflaming passion and hate by appeals to a past which all good men and all wise men would wish to be forgotten ? But the passion and the hate are real. And do they not give proof that the Legislative Union has been a failure ? Let us test this by the facts. It is a matter of course that those who had most to lose were the greatest sufferers from the infamous laws by which Ireland was impoverished. There- fore, speaking generally, and dealing with classes of the population, as distinguished from individuals, it was the Protestants who were the principal victims. Naturally, therefore, the Protestants were the most hostile to England. It was the Protestants who gave irresistible force to the agitation that led to the establishment of Grattan^s Parlia- ment. And from the Protestants came the most powerful opposition to the Union. With reference to this anti- Irish commercial legislation, I quote the following from Mr. Swift MacNeilFs valuable handbook on the subject : — It afflicted every Irishman, whether at home or abroad, with a sense of intolerable wrong, and created that passionate resentment towards England which has been transmitted to succeeding generations. ^ One of the most obvious con-\ sequences,^ says Mr. Lecky, ^ was that for the space of about/ a century Ireland underwent a steady process of depletion,^ most men of energy, ambition, talent, or character, being / driven from her shores.^ ^ If the ambition of an Irishman/ lay in the paths of manufacture and commerce, he was almost compelled to emigrate, for industrial and commercial enter- prise had been deliberately crushed.^ This legislation, it must be remembered, fell most severely on the Protestant population of Ireland, although, of course, it grievously affected every class, and, indeed, every member of the com- munity. Twenty thousand Puritans left Ulster on the destruction of the woollen trade. ^ Until the spell of tyranny was broken in 1782, annual shiploads of families poured themselves out from Belfast and Londonderry. The resent- ment they carried with them continued to burn in their new homes ; and, in the War of Independence, England had no 8 98 THE CASE FOR HOME RULE fiercer enemies than the great-grandsons of the Presbyterians who had held Ulster against Tyrconnel.' ^ But what is the present attitude of the Protestants of Ireland towards England and the Union ? There are a few Protestant Home Rulers, no doubt ; but in this twentieth century they are so few that they might rank as freaks.'' Resentment caused by the disestabUshment of the Irish Church brought recruits from the Protestant ranks to the standard raised by Isaac Butt, himself a Protestant. Parnell was a Protestant. And some three or four of Mr. Redmond's lieutenants are Protestants. But Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill evoked hostile petitions, signed corporately and with practical unanimity, from every Protestant community in Ireland. Nor is this all. As Mr. MacNeill indicates, no section of the Protestants suffered more from English tyranny than the Presbyterians. And moreover, in respect of some of the features of the Penal Laws, Presbyterian sympathy was with the Roman Catholics and against the Anglicans. It is not strange, therefore, that the Irish Presbyterians were the most stalwart and bitter of England's enemies. And yet, while in 1886 the vast majority of the Irish Presbyterian ministers were politically Gladstonian Liberals — the excep- tions were perhaps about a score — there were but three dissentients to their Church's protest and appeal against Mr. Gladstone's policy. The question came up again in 1893, when Mr. Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill was before the country. In the General Assembly of that communion, as we all know, the elders sit and vote with the ministers ; and the elders, like the ministers, were almost all political followers of Mr. Gladstone. And yet in the Assembly which met in March of that year — one of the largest ever convened — Mr. Glad- stone's Home Rule Bill found only four supporters ; and, after debate, a resolution condemning it was carried by a unanimous vote. How, then, can it be said, in face of such facts as these, that the Union is a failure ? Here we have large, prosperous, and powerful classes of the population — the very classes, moreover, that were the greatest opponents of the Union — ^ " English Interference with Irish Industries," pp. 56, 57. The sentences marked as quotations are from Lecky and Froude, the exact references being given by Mr. MacNeill. THE CASE FOR HOME RULE 99 now united, thoroughly and enthusiastically united, in favour of the Union. But I would guard against the inference, as mischievous as it is false, that in regard to this Home Rule question there is a cleavage between the Protestants and the Roman Catholics of Ireland. The Home Rule vote depends entirely upon the lower strata of the electorate, of whom, in three of the four Provinces, the vast majority are Roman Catholics. If the franchise were raised to a level which would exclude the ignorant masses, the Home Rule majority would disappear. It is not a question of creed, but of education and material prosperity. Here again, of course, there are exceptions, and they are more numerous, perhaps, than among the Protestants. But exceptions should be disregarded in deahng with a great question of this character ; and taking Ireland as a whole, it is indisputable that all that is most intelligent and prosperous in the community is in favour of the Union, and opposed to Home Rule.^ And this fact warrants the belief that other classes, now hostile, will yet be won over to the side of the Union. This hope may be entertained with special confidence in the case of the peasants who have so recently become owners of their farms. Is it not reasonable to expect that, having thus obtained for the first time ^^a stake in the country,^^ they will come to share the views of the propertied classes,^^ to which, in their humble way, they now belong ? When, therefore, we consider the present state of Ireland, with an adequate knowledge of its past, are we not justified in maintaining that the pohcy of Pitt, so far from being a failure, has proved a signal success ? I have already exposed the falseness of the prevalent belief that the need of what is called coercion in Ireland is due ^ I met my friend Lord Morris one afternoon while the last Home Rule Bill was before Parliament, and he carried me off with him to the lobby of the House of Commons. There he was at once surrounded by a group of old acquaintances, including some of the NationaUsts. To them he put the challenge, *' Can you give me the name of any man of eminence in any profession or calling in Ireland who is in favour of Home Rule ? Take the barristers, the doctors, the merchants, the traders, the gentry — name any leading man among them who is a Home Ruler." It was but an exaggerated statement of an incontrovertible fact. With a very few exceptions, even the Home Rule members are the merest *' carpet- baggers." Men of weight or substance cannot be found to champion the Nationalist demand. loo THE CASE FOR HOME RULE in any way to the Union. If a country ought to be governed on the principles on which we manage cricket and football clubs, and rules must be observed, no matter how they operate, then it must be acknowledged that our efforts to govern Ireland have failed ; and all that can be said is, that the failure did not begin with the nineteenth century ; for, in this matter, Westminster will compare favourably with College Green. But upon the general question here involved much remains to be said. Common sense should save us from the absurdity of supposing that a law which is intended to suppress crime is objectionable because it is coercive^ for coercion is the aim of the entire criminal code. The only practical question, therefore, in such a case is not whether the law is coercive, but whether it is necessary ? And as the most elementary function of a Government is to protect the peaceful and law-abiding, it fails in its primary duty if it does not make the coercion adequate to that end. For a Government that refuses to resort to coercion in dealing with law-breakers, forfeits every claim not only to the respect but to the allegiance of the community. Therefore, I repeat, when a Government seeks increased powers to enable it to discharge this primary duty, the only legitimate question is, whether the enactment asked for be necessary, and if necessary, whether it be adequate. The question whether it is ordinary^' or ^'extraordinary'^ may be left to the philosophers. Coercive it must be if it is to be effectual. But what is the meaning of ^'ordinary law'' ? It cannot mean the exist- ing law, for that would imply a veto upon all new legislation against crime. I presume, then, that it must mean a law which is in keeping with the spirit of the existing law. But this is so vague that it can best be dealt with by a test case. Here, for example, is a specially characteristic provision contained in the coercion " code now actually in force in certain places — It shall be lawful for any constable to take into custody without a warrant ... all persons whom he shall find between sunset and the hour of eight in the morning, lying or loitering in any highway, yard, or other place, and not giving a satisfactory account of themselves." Now this clause is not a part of the general law of the land, its operation being Hmited to certain areas ; and THE CASE FOR HOME RULE lOI perhaps it may seem to be out of harmony with the spirit of the general law. Any one living in a district to which it applies is apparently liable to be carried off to a police-station by any young constable who chooses to think he is loitering. In a word, it is marked by some of the worst features of what is called a Coercion Act.'' All this must in fair- ness be conceded. And yet, if what I have urged be well founded, such a law might legitimately be put in force in any part of Ireland where the community needs such pro- tection. But, some one will indignantly exclaim, It would not be tolerated in England for a single hour.'' To which I make answer, that it has been tolerated in the Metropolis of England for at least two generations. It is not quoted from the Irish Coercion Act" at all ; it is a part of the coercion code known as the Metropolitan Police Acts — a coercion code the operation of which explains in a measure the extra- ordinary fact that in this, the largest city in the world, life and property are safer than in any other of the world's great centres of population. Peculiar circumstances make ex- ceptional laws necessary in the Metropolis ; and a similar remark applies to parts of Ireland. But this does not prove that the British Constitution is a failure ; neither does it prove that the Union is a failure. And we all know that if at any time the forces of disorder should in any measure get the upper hand in London, a more stringent ^' Coercion Act " would be promptly obtained and put in forces. Or if, under the influence of philosophical theories, or rhetorical clap-trap about coercion " and ordinary law,'' the Government of the day failed of its duty in this respect, it would be sternly called to account. Indeed, if Parliament were in session, such a Government would not survive for a week. But the unfortunate loyalists of Ireland have no political power, and so, when their interests are involved, the theories and the clap-trap prevail. My purpose here is, not to defend any particular ^'Coercion Act," but to expose the error and folly of the popular outcry against legislation of that character. Under the influence of this outcry an attitude of criminal apathy is apt to be main- tained toward outbreaks of violence in Ireland, of a kind that in England would be suppressed promptly, and at any cost. And then, with the swing of the pendulum, there follows some extreme measure, resort to which is made 102 THE CASE FOR HOME RULE necessary by the preceding neglect of the ordinary duty of a Government. In the time of the Land League, for example, the Govern- ment remained passive, while all law was being defied in Ireland, and the law-abiding were being outraged and terrorised. Then Mr. Forster was allowed to make the attempt, with inadequate means, to grapple with the evil. And when the crisis was over, and the danger past, an extra- ordinary statute, which would have prevented nine-tenths of the appalHng crime of the League, was rushed through Parliament in a spirit of passion and panic. And folly reached a climax when this Coercion Act was made a stalking-horse for Home Rule. When the Dutch farmers of the Transvaal gave proof of their sturdiness and bravery on the battlefield, it was not strange that even in England there were many who wished them success in their struggle for independence. But to hold that a wild, mad orgy of violence and crime, as cowardly as it was hideous, gave proof that the peasantry of Ireland ought to have self-government — this may be statesmanship, but to common men it seems worthy of Bedlam. One more word upon this subject. There is not a sane man in Ireland, of any creed or party, who does not know in his heart, whatever he may profess with his Hps, that no Irish Parliament could govern that country without coercion.'^ Mr. Michael Davitt tells the story that in the course of a conversation with Parnell as to how the Home Rule Parliament would set to work for the reformation of the country, he asked the question, Suppose you were Prime Minister to-morrow morning, how would you begin I think, Davitt,^^ was ParnelPs reply, I should begin by lock- ing you up.^^ Many a true word is spoken in jest. And suppose the Irish Parliament began to coerce'^ the loyalists ? What, then, would be the attitude of the Imperial Parliament ? For no one need imagine that the grant of Home Rule would relieve the Imperial Parliament of the incubus of Ireland. The Irish question would merely assume a new phase. Mr. Morley^s narrative makes it plain that if the first Home Rule Bill had become law, and Mr. Parnell had been Prime Minister in Ireland in i89i,the events of that year would have raised an Irish ques- tion of a more difficult and dangerous kind than any we have THE CASE FOR HOME RULE 103 known for a century — a conflict of the kind which menaced the safety of the kingdom in the days of Grattan^s ParHa- ment.^ And the wit of man could not frame a Home Rule scheme which would avert such a conflict. For what the Nationalists demand is national self-government.^' They regard the government of Ireland by the Imperial Parliament as a usurpation. How long, then, would an Irish Parliament sub- mit to the control of the Imperial ParHament ? For control is merely a euphemism for ^' government.'' How long would the craving for a separate and independent Parliament be satisfied by a legislative body " which would be neither separate nor independent, but thoroughly subordi- nate to the Imperial Parliament ? ^ Educated and prosperous Ireland demands the maintenance of the Union. But no section of the community would be satisfied with any compromise between absolute equality under the Union, and complete independence. The Nationalists are perfectly honest in this matter. For while they avow their readiness to accept such a compromise to-day, they declare as plainly that they cannot bind those who will come after them. Home Rule is merely the confidence trick " on a huge scale.3 'See *'The Irish Parliament," by Mr. Swift MacNeill, M.P., chap. iii. 2 When addressing his constituents at DunfermUne on December 29, 1905, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was asked " Whether he was in favour of granting a separate and independent ParHament for Ireland." And he replied, " No ; neither the one nor the other. Any legislative body for Ireland that I have ever voted for was to be in subordination to the Imperial Parliament " (the Times, December 30, 1905). 3 The Irish Nationalists are no fools, but can the same be said for their British allies, who imagine that the grant of Home Rule would rid them of " The Irish Question " ? Under Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule scheme Ireland would probably occupy as much of the time of the Imperial Parliament as at present ; and the danger of a conflict between the two Parliaments would be constant. CHAPTER XVI MR. GLADSTONE AND HIS POLICY MR. MORLEY^S ^^Life of Gladstone'^ is a great monu- ment to the greatest Englishman of his generation. But multitudes will join in deprecating the prominence with which the author^s political opinions are obtruded in its pages. The manner in which the Home Rule controversy is pre- sented in the later portion of the book destroys the perspective in which the generation now growing to manhood should be taught to view Mr. Gladstone's career. His sudden change pi front upon the Irish Question was so extraordinary that fQ^vtn among his friends there were not a few who whispered that his head was giving way, while it led others to mutter doubts whether lust of power had not corrupted his heart. But the moment the hand of death removed him from the arena of faction, all this was forgotten, and without a dissen- tient voice men of every party joined in a tribute of national i homage to his memory. I While, therefore, the Home Rule campaign could not be ignored in such a biography, it might well have been treated in the spirit which ruled during the days of public mourn- ing that ended with his burial in the Abbey. And Mr. Morley has done a grievous wrong to his memory by waving over his grave the labartim of a bitter conflict. His doing so, moreover, seems all the more unpardonable in view of the fact, disclosed in the recent electoral struggle, that the majority, even of Mr. Gladstone's former colleagues, repu- diate both the intention and the wish to revive the definite Home Rule scheme, either of 1886 or of 1893. And this fact suggests a tribute to his personal influence, which Mr. Morley's political bias has obscured. To him Mr. Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule is only a further proof that Home Rule is just and right. But with most of 104 MR. GLADSTONE AND HIS POLICY 105 us ^' the people is not a synonym for ^' the mob.^' And respect for the popular voice is not limited to the contents of the ballot-boxes in which Irish peasaiKS and Land Leaguers and moonlighters cast their votes. We luke account of the opinions of the educated classes in 'hat country, and of the overwhelming majority of the English electorate. And when the question is raised, how it was that Mr. Gladstone won such a large measure of support for his later Irish policy, we find the answer in the fact that he wielded a magician's power over men.^ And his power depended, not merely on the qualities which raised him above his fellows, but no less on the intensely human sympathies that bound them to him. The range and grasp of his mind were not more extraordinary than was the readiness with which he could instantly turn away from affairs of the highest and most engrossing nature, to give a hearing to any one who was in earnest about anything. Many incidents which illustrate this appear in his biography. And, egotistical though it may seem, I cannot refrain from adding my own petty quota to the list. When our affairs in Egypt and the Soudan were exciting attention throughout Europe I met him at a country house. He came into the library one morning with a file of Foreign Office papers, which so engrossed him that, as he sat down at the table at which I was writing, he seemed wholly unconscious of my presence. Having finished his perusal of them, he had just taken up his pen, when another of the guests entered the room and, producing a Homer, brought a certain passage in the Odyssey to his notice. Mr. Gladstone discussed that passage as though neither Egypt nor the Foreign Office had any existence. And the moment he was left alone again, he resumed his pen, and wrote an official minute of grave importance about Egypt. ^ Still more egotistical is what I am about to add. I learn ' Mr. Bright's words are worth quoting here : If Mr. Gladstone's great authority were withdrawn from these Bills, I doubt if twenty members outside the Irish party in the House of Commons would support them" (Letter of May 31, 1886). ^ How do I know its purport ? His minute was perfectly legible on the blotting-pad he used. Is it any wonder that I refused to trust the lives of my informants to Ministers of State ? But I was no stranger to State secrets, and I kept that secret to myself. io6 MR. GLADSTONE AND HIS POLICY from Mr. Gladstone's diary — quoted in the Life — that December i8, 1889, was devoted to reviewing and reconsider- ing the whole Irish Question, with a view to discussing it with Parnell on his historic visit to Hawarden, which began that afternoon. And yet, on that very day, Mr. Gladstone found leisure to read a book of mine, and to write me a sympathetic letter, giving me some valuable criticisms and suggestions.^ As has been said a thousand times, but for the spell of that marvellous personality Home Rule for Ireland would never have taken practical shape in English politics. And yet, notwithstanding his unrivalled power of swaying the minds of men, Mr. Gladstone's seven years' campaign failed to win a single convert among the educated classes in that country. ^ It behoves us, then, to dismiss every personal element from this controversy, and to review dispassionately the grounds on which this most revolutionary measure is commended to us. The following summary of them is based on Mr. Glad- stone's speeches and Mr. Morley's book: — . (i) That coercion is the only alternative policy to Home Rule. (2) That the Legislative Union has proved a failure. (3) That the Union was forced upon Ireland by corrupt and disgraceful means. (4) That self-government is a right inherent in a nation. (5) That Ireland demands the enjoyment of that right. Of these theses the two first have been already dealt with. What is called coercion is not a ^'policy" at all, but merely the discharge in an exceptional way, rendered necessary by exceptional circumstances, of the primary duty of govern- ment. And both the duty and the discharge of it would be unaffected by transferring the seat of government to Dublin. The alternative to Home Rule is the policy which has already won over to the side of the Union all that was ' I have on other occasions had proof of Mr. Gladstone's courtesy and kindness in letters about my books. But in this instance there was no reason for his writing to me at all ; for he was aware that the book was sent to him by my publishers without my knowledge. And to me the most extraordinary part of it was that, as in the case of every other communication I ever received from him, both letter and envelope were in his own handwriting. 2 The Irish petitions against the Home Rule Bill of 1893 had five times more signatures than the petitions against the Bill of 1886. MR. GLADSTONE AND HIS POLICY 107 formerly most hostile to the Union, and all that is most intelligent and prosperous in Ireland to-day. And as regards the third point, one of the stupidest blunders of this controversy is that of judging Grattan^s ParHament and Pitf s methods in the light, and by the ethics, of the present day. The Union was brought about by the corrupt means usual in a corrupt age. But statesmanship will take sides with common sense in refusing to be swayed by academic questions of this kind, when dealing with the practical problems of the twentieth century. Without a statute of limitations^^ civiHsed society would be impossible, and sensible men may be pardoned for turning with impatience from all this sentimental nonsense about a past that is now remote.^ But, we are told, every nation has an inalienable right to self-government. This is one of those abstract propositions that delight a debating society. Let us accept it for the sake of argument, and passing on to our last thesis, grapple with the question, In what sense is Ireland a nation ? The sea forbids the Union, Grattan exclaimed, and his words did not lack meaning when he uttered them. For a century ago Dublin was practically further from London than is New York or Alexandria to-day. At the end of a long and wearisome stage-coach journey, the traveller found a miserable berth upon a wretched little sixty-ton cutter, which carried him across the channel if the wind happened to be favourable. An ordeal the crossing must have been at its best, and old books describe its dangers and its horrors when the skies happened to be cruel. But nowadays we breakfast in London and dine in Dublin, the channel being bridged by vessels that defy the elements. ''Not quite,'^ some one may murmur, ''the vessels are admirable, but the sea is still the same.'^ Are we then to hold that a cure for sea-sickness would solve the Irish problem ? If so we ought surely to give the twentieth century a chance before deciding that the problem is ' In his "Irish Parliament," my friend, Mr. Swift MacNeill, M.P., quotes with approval Mr. Lecky's words, that "the Irish ParHament was in truth a body governed very constantly by corrupt motives, though probably not more so than the English Parliament in the time of Walpole." Grattan's Parliament, with all its faults, was more representa- tive of all that was best in Irish national life than any Home Rule Parliament would be to-day. In its treatment of the Roman CathoHcs, it was far more enlightened than the English Parliament. io8 MR. GLADSTONE AND HIS POLICY insoluble. A small poundage, moreover, upon the millions sunk in Irish land would give us a railway under the twenty miles of sea between Port Patrick and the Antrim coast. And, apart from railway trains and steamboats, the telegraph and the telephone have destroyed distance altogether. To hold that the Irish are a nation because they live upon an island is, in these days of electricity and steam, the merest betise. What, then, is the meaning of this phrase, the Irish nation ? Does it mean that the Irish are a distinct and homogeneous race ? If so we may aver that if there be one point on which we shall all agree in a controversy where so much is disputable, it is in the answer we shall give to that question. For one of the most serious difficulties in the Irish problem depends upon the fact that the population of Ireland is not homogeneous, or, in other words, that there is no Irish nation. And racial differences, instead of disappearing as they tend to do in other lands, are maintained and accentuated by religious strife. This is not understood in England, where Protestants and Roman Catholics have learned to live side by side in peace. But in England Roman Catholicism has been tempered and moulded, not only by mocjern civilisation but by the genius of the national character ; whereas the Popery of the Irish peasant is the religion of the Dark Ages.^ And the typical Maynooth priest, who is the son of a peasant home, is the minister of that evil cult. The educated classes in Ireland live together on terms of social intercourse and private friendship. But mediaeval superstition, and the spirit it engenders, are utterly revolting. Hence the want of sympathy that exists between the educated Irish ^^CathoHc" and his co-religionists, not only of the peasantry, but of the lower clergy. Hence the seemingly aggressive character of Irish Protestantism. If, then, we are to consider the Home Rule question apart from ethnical problems and sea-sickness, it resolves itself into this, that Ireland is entitled to legislative independence because the majority of the electorate demand it. But if this principle be accepted in the case of Ireland, it must apply equally to Scotland and Wales, and, indeed, to any of the ancient divisions of the Heptarchy. When addressing a meeting in Aberdeen in the days before his perversion, Mr. Gladstone urged this with striking force. If/^ said he, the doctrines of Home Rule are to be estab- MR GLADSTONE AND HIS POLICY 109 lished in Ireland, I protest, on your behalf, that you will be just as well entitled to it in Scotland. And protest on behalf of Wales, where there are eight hundred thousand people who — such is their sentiment of nationality — speak hardly anything but their own Celtic tongue — a larger number than speak it in Ireland — I protest on behalf of Wales that they are entitled to Home Rule there.'' What this demand means is, that our present system of popular franchise, revised a generation ago on arbitrary and somewhat fanciful lines, and framed for purposes altogether within the constitution, may be used to destroy the constitu- tion. Pass a Redistribution Bill, and the Home Rule majority would be sensibly reduced. Raise the franchise to the level at which it stood before the last Reform Act, and that majority would disappear. So long as we have an hereditary Second Chamber, the present popular franchise may be admirable for the purposes of party government within the constitution. But if a measure be proposed which thus violates the constitution, society becomes resolved into its elements, and the intelli- gence and wealth of a community are entitled to a collective voice without reference to the ballot-boxes. And that a Home Rule Bill does violate the constitution may be illustrated by the fact that, if we had a Supreme Court on the American model, such a Bill, though passed by Parliament, would be vetoed by the Court. Suppose, as is very possible, that some future Reform Bill gives manhood suffrage, limited to persons actually residing in the constituency. With such a franchise the M.P.'s for the City of London would no more represent the interests which make the City what it is — in a word, the real City — than the NationaHst M.P.'s now represent the real Ireland. But under our constitution the real City could still rely upon Parliament as a whole. And it is certain that the merchant princes of London would never be told that the carpet- baggers so elected by the office-keepers and caretakers, and the tradesmen of the back streets, were alone entitled to speak for the City.'' Yet that is precisely the treatment with which the prosperous and educated classes in Ireland are threatened. And the injustice becomes all the more flagrant, because of the very peculiar circumstances of that country. His appreciation of this it was, no doubt, which led Mr. no MR. GLADSTONE AND HIS POLICY Morley to say some twenty years ago : " I, for one, will never be a party to placing a minority and the property of a minority at the mercy of a majority.'^ ^ But tempora mutanturj &c. This is precisely what Home Rule would do. Entirely in the same spirit was Mr. Bright^ s decision to oppose the Home Rule Bill of 1886. I cannot consent/^ he declared, to a measure which is so offensive to the whole Protestant population of Ireland, and to the whole sentiment of the province of Ulster, so far as its loyal and Protestant people are concerned. I cannot agree to exclude them from the protection of the Imperial Parliament.^' ^ Having regard, then, to the nature and circumstances of the Irish minority, which is irreconcilably opposed to Home Rule, the statement that ^'Ireland demands Home Rule^' is to mistake theories for facts. And we may now go a step further and maintain that, even were it otherwise, the issue would have to be decided, not on academic theories at all, but on thoroughly practical lines. For with nations as with men, when life and safety are in peril, theories count for nothing. Were a united Ireland to speak with united voice upon this subject, the problem would be precisely analogous to that which brought about the American Civil War. If Ireland from sea to sea were hostile to England, England would not dare to accede to the national demand.^' It is only because a powerful minority is friendly to England that any Home Rule scheme can be entertained. And to make the friendship of the minority a reason for betraying them would be an act of unutterable infamy. ^ I take this from a letter which appeared in the Times of January 13, 1891. As it is signed "A." I may add that I was not the writer of it. 2 Letter to Mr. Gladstone of May 13, 1886. CHAPTER XVII CONCLUSION : AN ALTERNATIVE POLICY HE preceding chapter, it may perhaps be said, is based on misrepresentation and error. Home Rule, we shall be told, has nothing in common with a demand for separa- tion, such as that by which the Southern States provoked the American Civil War ; it merely claims for Ireland the right of local self-government. It proposes to delegate to a thoroughly subordinate Parliament the power to deal with affairs which are purely Irish, the Imperial Parliament main- taining its control, and supplying a court of appeal in case of any action which is either tUtra vires or unjust. Was there ever a device more certain to prolong all the troubles of [the Imperial] Parliament . . . than the proposal to dole out to Ireland . . . that which she does not want, and which if she accepts at all, she will only accept for the purpose of making further demands?^' In these prophetic words, spoken twenty years ago, Mr. Gladstone scouted the proposal which is commended to us to-day by the men who pretend to be administrators of his policy. It would settle nothing. And what it would unsettle no one can forecast.^ This sort of Home Rule is not wanted by the Unionists,^' and it will not satisfy the Nationalists.^^ The Irish are ^ " Gas and water Home Rule," as it has been contemptuously termed, of course may come. But this I need not discuss. Suffice it to say that, if and when it comes, prosperous and cultured Ireland — the real Ireland — will claim to be treated apart from Mr. Morley's Ireland — the Ireland of the League. If my parable about the City of London (p. 109, a7ite) should ever be realised, the great commercial interests of the City will not be relegated to the sort of men who will then represent the City in the House of Commons. And to place the material interests of Ireland in the power of the representatives of the ignorant masses of the people would bring about a commercial ruin as complete as that which resulted from the infamous laws of other days (p. 97, ante). Ill 112 CONCLUSION : AN ALTERNATIVE POLICY seldom agreed on any great public question, and the una- nimity with which both parties have repudiated Devolution ought to be an ^'end of controversy'^ here. The Irish National League supplies an authoritative statement of the ^'Nationalist'^ demand; and in the '^platform" of the League, national self-government holds the first place. Local self- government is included, but it is wholly subordinate.^ But, it will be answered, Ireland " means the voice of the majority of the electorate, expressed in the proper constitutional manner by their Parliamentary representatives. This, of course, reopens the questions dealt with in the pre- ceding chapter. And moreover, down to the present hour, the Nationalist " members have declared their aim and goal to be ^'the restoration of national self-government" for Ireland. Yes, it may be said, but this must be construed in the light of their acceptance of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893. might suppose that Mr. Morley's graphic account of Parnell's repudiation in 1890, of his explicit pledges of 1886, would suffice to show the folly of basing a great revolutionary change on such a foundation as this. Such pledges ought in honour to bind the men who give them. But they cannot bind those who come after them. 2 With perfect honesty, and with his usual clearness, Mr. Parnell himself thus gave expression to this in 1885 — ''They could not ask for less than the restitution of Grattan's Parliament. They could scarcely, under the con- stitution, ask for more. But no man had the right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation ; and while they struggled to-day for that which it might seem possible for them to obtain, they might struggle for it with the proud consciousness that they were doing nothing to hinder or prevent better men who may come forw^ard in the future from gaining better things than those for which they were now struggling." 3 These words still stand. In an earher chapter I have shown the kind and measure of ^' coercion" that was needed ^ See p. 65, ante. ^ At a meeting of the Nationalist Parliamentary party in Dublin City Hall on February 10, 1906, the following resolution was proposed by Mr. John Redmond, M.P., chairman of the party, seconded by Mr. John Dillon, and carried unanimously : " That this party, as its first act, reiterates the demand of the Irish nation for the restoration of National self-government" (Times, February 12th). 3 Speech at Cork, January 21, 1885. CONCLUSION: AN ALTERNATIVE POLICY 113 to suppress the demand for '^better things/' even in the halcyon days of Grattan's Parhament.'' And if Grattan's Parliament" were restored, not many years would pass before the same demand would be revived by a new National League/' and enforced by a new Fenian conspiracy/' In connection with this question there is a passage in Mr. Morley's narrative which is worthy of being separated off, and placed in the strongest Hght. On his way back from Ireland in December, 1890, he broke his journey at Hawarden ; and an extract from his diary describes what passed between him and Mr. Gladstone on this occasion. Here are his words : — The bare idea that Parnell might find no inconsiderable following came upon him as if it had been a thunderclap. He listened, and catechised, and knit his brow." Mr. Gladstone asked, What do you think we should do in case (i) of a divided Ireland, (2) of a Parnellite Ireland ? " To which Mr. Morley replied, It is too soon to settle what to think. But, looking to Irish interests, I think a Parnellite Ireland infinitely better than a divided Ireland. Anything better than an Ireland divided, so far as she is concerned." Let us note what this means. When, as Mr. Morley records on this same page, the Parnellite M.P.'s quarrelled in " Committee Room 15," and broke into two sections, Ireland was ^'divided"; and, to quote his words again, he and Mr. Gladstone recognised the horrors of dissension in Ireland." But so long as the Parnellites stood together, there was no dissension in Ireland, no disunion. It mattered nothing that on the other side was arrayed every class and every interest that made Ireland solvent and great — educated Ireland, professional Ireland, mercantile Ireland, Protestant Ireland. All this counted for nothing so long as the Parnel- lite majority were at one. Were this matter not so serious, were these utterances not so pestilently mischievous, the scene might well excite an Irish sense of humour. We picture to ourselves the greatest statesman of his time, and an eminent political philosopher, sitting together, like a pair of small schoolboys astride their favourite hobby, and imagining it to be a real horse. But all the humour of it is lost in a feeling of burning indignation that the best interests of Ireland should thus be contemptu- ously ignored, sacrificed to political theories and fads. 9 1 14 CONCLUSION: AN ALTERNATIVE POLICY In a conversation with Mr. Morley, before he became a Minister of State, I met his argument that Ireland must be granted self-government, by asking the question, And what kind of government will it be ? To which he promptly replied, ^' The worst government in the world ; but that does not affect the principle/^ I recalled to mind the case of a friend of my family long ago, who gave cold baths to his children on principle/' One of the children survived, and if the others would have been at all like him, this generation is the poorer for their fate. To act on principle outside the sphere of morals is the part of — well, it is the part of people who are not philosophers. The common sense and love of justice which mark the English character are displayed in Mr. Bright's memorable letter to Mr. Gladstone, of May 13, 1886, quoted at length in Mr. Morley's book. It ends with these pregnant words : — For thirty years I have preached justice to Ireland. I am as much in her favour now as in past times, but I do not think it justice or wisdom for Great Britain to consign her population, including Ulster and all her Protestant families, to what there is of justice and wisdom in the Irish party now sitting in the Parliament in Westminster.'' Yet another passage in Mr. Morley's book claims special prominence here. Unless Ireland is to have absolute inde- pendence, a condition precedent to the consideration of any Home Rule measure is, as Mr. Gladstone declared in 1882,^ that its advocates shall devise a plan by which it is dis- tinctly set forth by what authority and machinery they mean to divide between Imperial and local questions." No such scheme has ever been formulated. Underlying it is the crucial difficulty," as Mr. Morley calls it, of ^^the Irish repre- sentation at Westminster." It was that difficulty which wrecked the Home Rule Bill of 1886. In the light of the experience gained by that failure, the problem was under anxious consideration during the seven years which preceded the second attempt of 1893. And yet, as Mr. Morley tells us, a Committee, consisting of the elite of the Cabinet, to whom the Bill of 1893 was referred, attempted in vain to deal with it. Three courses presented themselves. But, while Mr. Gladstone's proverbial three courses usually led into the open, these three courses all ended in a hopeless maze. And the makeshift scheme, which was the best they * See p. 65, ante. CONCLUSION: AN ALTERNATIVE POLICY 115 could devise, had to be abandoned as soon as ever it came to be discussed in the House of Commons. Here are Mr. Morley's words — Each of the three courses w^as open to at least one single, but very direct, objection. Exclusion, along with the exac- tion of revenue from Ireland by the Parliament at West- minster, was taxation without representation. Inclusion for all purposes was to allow the Irish to meddle in our affairs while we were no longer to meddle in theirs. Inclusion for limited purposes still left them invested with the power of turning out a British Government by a vote against it on an Imperial question. Each plan, therefore, ended in a paradox.^^ ^ These words refer, it is true, to the events of 1893 ; but they have been penned to-day, and penned by the greatest living champion of the movement. And the inexorable conclusion to which they lead is, that the wit of man cannot devise a Home Rule scheme under which Ireland will not be either entirely subordinate to England, or entirely inde- pendent. Subordination Ireland would refuse with united voice ; independence England will never grant. Never, at least, save during some period of temporary lunacy. For nations, like men, seem to be liable to fits of madness. If reason ruled in the political sphere, Mr. Morley^s book would be a death-blow to the Home Rule craze. Or if any one still clings to the belief that Home Rule may be granted without destroying the integrity and endangering the safety of the Kingdom, that delusion should be dispelled by the latest authoritative statement of the demand. In his place in Parliament, not long ago, Mr. J. E. Redmond, M.P., speaking as the accredited leader of the NationaHsts,^' used these words — They regarded the government of their country by this Parliament as a usurpation ; they denied the validity and disputed the moral binding force of the Act of Union. They demanded self-government, not as a favour, but as a right ; they based their demand, not upon grievances, but upon the inherent and inalienable right of the Irish nation to govern itself. They declared plainly that they would rather be governed badly by their own Parliament, than well by that assembly." And he added — If he believed that there was the smallest reasonable ' Vol. iii. p. 498. ii6 CONCLUSION : AN ALTERNATIVE POLICY chance of success, he would have no hesitation in advising his fellow countrymen to endeavour to end the present system by armed revolt/^ ^ Home Rule was formerly claimed as a remedy for Irish grievances unredressed. But now, since no grievances remain^ national independence is demanded as a right ; and the demand is backed by unveiled threats of an appeal to arms. In this same speech Mr. Redmond declared that they would prefer absolute separation to the present system of government by the Imperial Parliament. The loyalists of Ireland would possibly prefer absolute separation to the sort of government for which he clamours. Rather than be governed badly by their own Parliament/^ not a few of them might well claim to retain their British citizenship. For then they would have the right to appeal, through British consuls, to the power of Britain to protect them. What answer shall be given to this most insolent demand ? Can any sensible man — can any rational man — suppose that at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of this country, to make ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind ? These words are Mr. Gladstone's. And their force is immensely increased by the fact that the Home Rule he had in view when he uttered them was not a blatant demand for independence, but merely the mild and modest scheme which was championed by Isaac Butt. The special danger at this moment is not Home Rule legislation, but Home Rule administration ; governing Ireland as it would be governed under an Irish Parliament ; govern- ing, that is, in the interests, and according to the wishes and sentiments, of the political agitators and Maynooth priests, and the ignorant masses whom they control and dupe. Governing Ireland according to Irish ideas it is called in the jargon of the controversy. This evil system was never described more aptly than by Sir William Harcourt. If,'' said he, ^' they were to govern Ireland according to ^ The Times, April 13, 1905. The character of the speaker lends weight to these words. Not only is he the leader of the Nationalist " party, but personally he differs from most of his colleagues in two respects, namely : First, he is a gentleman, and never indulges in coarse or offensive lan- guage ; and, secondly, he is a sensible man who avoids the style of oratory which the Americans call " flapdoodle." If all Parnellites were men of the type of Mr. J. E. Redmond, Home Rule might not spell disaster. But such men are few, and they would soon be pushed aside. CONCLUSION: AN ALTERNATIVE POLICY 117 Irish ideas, he feared they would find themselves reduced to the consequence of not governing Ireland at all/' And yet there is one element omitted here. It is suppHed by the letter of an Irish peasant who, on emigrating to America, found himself in the middle of an Irish colony in New York. This is a real free country/' he wrote, everybody does what he Hkes, and if he doesn't, then begorra ! we make him do it." This combination of licence and tyranny was characteristic of the Land League rule, and a Home Rule Parliament would perpetuate it. Sir William Harcourt went on to say — and his words are specially important at the present moment — He had always regarded Ireland as a part of Her Majesty's dominions — as an integral fraction of a united Empire — and if that be so, Ireland, Hke all other parts of the dominions of the Queen, must be governed, not accord- ing to Irish, but according to Imperial ideas. Imperial ideas were exactly opposite, so far as he could judge, to Irish ideas, for Imperial ideas prescribed the duty to administer equal justice to every class of Her Majesty's subjects." If for a single generation Ireland were governed thus, according to Imperial ideas, "the Irish Question" would disappear. But the new panacea of the doctrinaire politician is government in the interest of those who happen to be in a majority at a Parliamentary election. There is but one secret in governing Ireland, as in governing any country, and it is to govern for the good of the whole people."^ This is the Imperial conception of government. And this is the policy of the Union. But in the past that poHcy has never had a fair trial. The ascendancy of privileged classes has been tried. The far more evil ascendancy of the agitator and the mob has had its day. At times disloyal and noisy men have been petted and promoted, and the quiet and law- abiding have been neglected and discouraged. Brief intervals, there have been, of government of the kind which is habitual on this side of the Irish Channel, where good citizens are always helped, and sedition-mongers are suppressed. But a change of ministers has soon led to a change of policy, and there has been no continuity of administration. My special acquaintance with both DubUn Castle and the Home Office has given me exceptional opportunities of ' These words are Isaac Butt's ; they were adopted by Mr. Redmond in his speech quoted on p. 115, ante. ii8 CONCLUSION: AN ALTERNATIVE POLICY appreciating the difference between government on that side of the channel and on this.^ In England administration is marked by that healthy kind of favouritism which encourages the well-behaved child, and the obedient and efficient soldier ; whereas in Ireland the evil favouritism which prevails is like that of pampering the tartars of the nursery, and the turbulent and ill-conditioned men of a regiment. As Mr. Froude once wrote to me, Ireland is governed on the principle of handing over the control of the ship to the mutinous portion of the crew. And yet in spite of all this, the Union has won its way. Its success, indeed, within living memory, has been extraordinary. When I left Ireland, some forty years ago, I could not have dreamed that I should live to see such amazing demonstra- tions of loyalty and friendship to England, as the great Unionist Conventions of 1892. While the men of Mr. Morley's Ireland — politicians and priests and peasants and paupers — were clamouring for separation, thousands of the elected representatives of every element that is stable and strong in Irish life came together to protest against the creation of a Parliament for Ireland, and to declare un- alterable determination to uphold the Union. Never before in the history of Ireland had there been anything like it. Men of all classes and creeds, and every interest which entitles Ireland to the proud position she now holds in the government of the Empire, stood together in perfect unity, and spoke with one voice. Even sheep are weighed as well as counted ; and the men who, when judged by any test except a poll, are best entitled to speak for Ireland, are all enthusiastically loyal. Is it right and wise to insult or to ignore them ? Is there no risk of forcing them into the rebel camp ? The part of statesman- ship is patiently but firmly to carry out the pohcy which has produced these wonderful results, the policy which formerly claimed Mr. Gladstone as its ablest and most uncompromising champion, the policy which, till Mr. Gladstone abandoned it, had the support of pubHc men of every name and party in Great Britain. ' I was greatly struck by this when I first came to Whitehall. And I was amazed to find that continuity of administration was unaffected by a change of Government. When Mr. Bruce came to the Home Office in December, 1869, he announced to the heads of departments that all was to go on as before, as he assumed that everything which Mr. Hardy, his Tory predecessor, had done was right. UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.