A history of Ireland in the nineteenth century : being a supplement to Haverty's History of Ireland

A

>TORY OF IRELAND

I NINETEENTH CENTURY;

fl Supplement to fiauertp's mstorp of Ireland.

BY

DILLON COSGRAVE.

Dublin:

JAMES DUFFY & CO., LTD.,

15 WELLINGTON QUAY.

1906.

PREFACE.

In attempting the task of giving an account of the HISTORY
OF IRELAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, in continuation of
the well-known work of Martin Haverty, I must acknowledge my
indebtedness to the following amongst other sources of informa-
tion : — The Histories of Ireland, by M'Gee a.nd Mitchel ; the
Historical Works of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy ; A. M. Sullivan's
New Ireland ; Mr. T. P. O'Connor's Parnell Movement ; the
Recollections of Mr. T. 1). Sullivan and of Mr. William O'Brien ;
Mr. R. Barry O'Brien's Life of Drummond and Life of Parnell ;
Mr. John Morley's Life of Gladstone; the Annual Register ;
the Dictionary of National Biography ; Haydn's Dictionary
of Dates ; Thorn's Directories and the newspapers of the period,
especially the Freeman's Journal. But several items of informa-
tion are derived from the miscellaneous reading of many years.

While I cannot expect that the opinions given here will be
equally acceptable to men of all political views, I have at least
endeavoured to secure accuracy in the facts narrated.

The example of Macaulay's History of England may be
pleaded in justification of the practice of occasionally illustrating
the text by fragments of popular ballads in notes.

I desire to express my thanks to the Rev. George O'Neill,
S.J., F. R.U.I., for his kindness in correcting the proof-sheets
and for many valuable suggestions.

I must also express my obligations to Mr. T. W. Lyster and
his assistants for their courtesy in facilitating my researches in
the National Library.

D. C.

2060566

768 FROM THE UNION TO

Houses of Lords and Commons, who, for the most part, migrated to
London. This exodus of the wealthiest people in the country had had a
ruinous effect on the trade of Dublin. In 1803 another insurrectionary out-
break occurred. It was confined to Dublin, although the plans of its pro-
moters included some of the home counties of Ireland. The central figure in
this attempt was a brave and generous young Irishman named Robert
Emmet. He was a younger brother of Thomas Addis Emmet, the United
Irish leader. He had been expelled from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1798,
after a memorable visitation held by Lord Clare and Dr. Duigenan. Even
then Emmet held the extreme opinions on Irish nationality for which he
ultimately died. This visitation is mentioned in the autobiography of
Thomas Moore, whose poems, written in the first half of the nineteenth
century, commemorate nob only Emmet, but the struggle for emancipation,
which they materially helped, and every phase of Irish national feeling.
Moore's immortal verse, which marks every pulsation of the heart of the Irish
people, will never willingly be let die by them. While a student in Trinity,
he was united in the closest ties of friendship with Emmet, but, while one
went to London to pursue his calling of literature, the other went to France
and interviewed Napoleon.

The early years of the century were the years of the Titanic struggle in
which the armies of France, led by the greatest soldier and king of men of
modern times, were overcoming all the nations of Europe, putting down and
setting up kings, and changing all the ancient landmarks of the world. It is
little wonder tfiat the oppressed people of Ireland, deprived of their legislature
and their independence by force and fraud, and treated like helots on
account of their faith, looked with secret hope towards Napoleon as a possible
liberator. He really had a large army in these years encamped at Boulogne
for the invasion of England, and Nelson's victories alone prevented the
fulfilment of this project. The chain of martello towers around the Irish
coast is a standing memorial of the genuineness of England's alarm at this
time. Ireland, too, was filled with a large military force.

In spite of such surroundings Emmet went on with his plan. He had two
or three arsenals in the old streets on the south side of Dublin. His p'an was
daring enough in all conscience. It was to seize Dublin Castle, the seat of
Government, by a bold and sudden stroke. Had the details been better
cairied out it might have succeeded ; and he would undoubtedly have found
a powerful auxiliary in the seething discontent of the p3ople of Dublin, who
had seen their beautiful city, the metropolis of a nation, transformed into the
chief town of a province. It has been admitted by members of the Castle
government of that day that the secret of Emmet's attempt was better kept
than that of most other Irish conspiracies. Bat the secret was certainly in great
danger when an accidental explosion occurred in the magazine at Patrick
Street, on Saturday, the 16th of July. On that day week the final attempt
was made. Emmet and his principal followers issued from Marshalsea Lane,

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 760

where his headquarters were and his principal magazine,* and entered the
main thoroughfare of Thomas Street in the evening. Here a disorderly
crowd soon assembled, and Emmet found his influence overborne. Instead
of a rebellion a mere street riot ensued. Lord Kil warden, a humane judge,
happened to be passing in his carriage. He received a thrust of a pike and
was mortally wounded. Some accounts say that he was taken for another
judge, Lord Carleton, who was unpopular, but others say he was murdered by
a man named Shannon, who had some private grudge against him. Horrified
at this crime and at his powerlessness to control the tumult, Emmet with-
drew and fled to Butterfield Lane, Rathfarnham, where he had rented
a farmhouse under tne name of Ellis. From that he took his way to the
Wicklow mountains, where the brave outlaw, Michael Dwyer, who had
maintained his independence in spite of all attempts to capture him, for the
whole five years, since 1798, had been in correspondence with him, and had
intended to aid his insurrection. Enimet had spent all his private fortune
in his hopelessly daring scheme for freeing his country from servitude. His
courageous servant, Anne Devlin, the niece of Dsvyer, left behind in Butter-
field Lane, although subjected to threats, and even put in the greatest physical
danger, refused to give any information of her master's movements.

There is no doubt that he might have fled from Ireland, but his own
imprudence sealed his doom. A romantic interest has always attached to
Emmet owing to his affection for Sarah, the daughter of John Philpot
Curran. This great and honest Irishman continued, up to his death in 1817,
his opposition to the Union statesmen and principles, and his advocacy of the
claims of his Catholic fellow-countrymen. Emmet came into the suburbs of
Dublin to arrange a meeting with Miss Curran, but was arrested on the 25th
of August by Major Sirr in the house of a Mrs. Palmer at Harold's Cross.
The manner of his betrayal has remained as complete a mystery as the
position of his grave. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death on the
19th of September.! His speech upon that occasion is a splendid memorial
of his great abilities and the purity of his motives. He died bravely on the
following day. He was taken from Kilmainham along the northern line
of the Dublin quays, to Thomas Street, the scene of the disturbance. [Here,
outside St. Catherine's Church, & gallows had been erected on which he was
executed, as were several of his followers. Thomas Russell, the United
Irishman, who was also involved in Emmet's plans, was executed in Down-

* The magazine was in the present Marshal Lane, behind 137 Thomas Street, to which
•it had been removed from Patrick Street.

f It was discovered, but not until after the death of Leonard M'Nally, one of
Emmet's counsel, publicly an avowed United Irishman, that this man disclosed to the
Government all the information against Emmet of which he stood possessed, including the
contents of his brief. He was in receipt of a Secret Service pension at the time of his
death. He had, for almost thirty years, been systematically betraying the secrets of the
United Irishmen known to him, either iu his capacity as counsel or as a member of the
.United Irish Society.

770 FROM THE UNION TO

patrick. The memory of Emmet is one of the most cherished possessions of
the Irish people, and must ever remain so while unselfish^ patriotism is
admired.

In 1804, Pitt became Prime Minister again. But this time his Govern-
ment was frankly hostile to the Catholic claims, for he had promised the
King that he would never again annoy him by bringing them forward. It
was during his Ministry, nevertheless, that the question of emancipation
again began to force itself to the front. In 1805, Henry Grattan entered
the Imperial Parliament as member for Malton. At the General Election
in the following year he was returned at the top of the poll for the city
of Dublin, which he continued to represent until his death. The remainder
of Grattan's career was devoted to pressing the claims of the Catholics to
emancipation. In this he was ably seconded by William Conyngham Plunket,
who entered the Imperial Parliament at the same time. The Catholic Com-
mittee at this time was led by its old pre-Union heads— the Earl of Fingall,
Edward Byrne of Mullinahack, and, above all, John Keogh of Mount Jerome.
Pitt died on the 23rd of January, 1806, and his place was taken by his great
rival and opponent, Charles James Fox, who had always been friendly to the
people of Ireland. This great man opposed the Union in the Imperial Par-
liament. He had a mere handful of supporters. Since the Union he had
supported Catholic Emancipation. Much was expected of him, and doubt-
less he was disposed to act generously to Ireland, but he died on the 13th of
September, 1806, only a few months after Pitt.

The new Piime Minister, Lord Grenville, was a Whig and a colleague
of Fox. He instructed the Chief Secretary, Elliott, who had succeeded
Pitt's Chief Secretary, Long, to communicate with the Catholic leaders as
to a Bill making them eligible for posts in the army and navy. After it had
passed the Commons, George III. objected to it, and required Lords Gren-
ville and Grey to sign a pledge that they would not in future bring forward
any measure favourable to the Catholics. This they refused to do, and a
new Ministry was formed, of which the Duke of Portland was head, and
afterwards Spencer Perceval. The Duke of Eichmond was sent in 1807
to replace the Duke of Bedford, Fox's Lord Lieutenant, and remained six
years. For the first year the Chief Secretary was the Hon. Arthur Wellesley,
afterwards famous as Duke of Wellington. He had been a member of the
Irish Parliament, and had afterwards become distinguished as a soldier in
India, where his elder brother, the Marquess Wellesley, was Governor-General.
He was called away from the Chief Secretaryship on receiving the command
in the Peninsula in 1808, aud his place was taken by his brother, Wellesley-
Pole. It may be mentioned here that there were four General Elections
between the Union and the concession of Catholic Emancipation. The latter
was the test question in Ireland in all of them.

The Catholic Committee was prosecuted in 1811 for holding a General
Assembly, which was a breach of the Convention Act. Some of its members

THK DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 771

were imprisoned, and it was afterwards re-established as the Catholic Board.
From 1811 to the end of the reign the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV.,
was Regent, as the King his father had again become insane, as had hap-
pened before in 1789. Early in the session of 1812, Spencer Perceval, the
Premier, was assassinated in the Lobby of the House of Commons by Belling-
ham, a disappointed Russia merchant. He was succeeded by the Earl of
Liverpool, who held office for the long period of fifteen years, by far the
longest Premiership of the nineteenth century. The Lords Lieutenant during
his term of office were Earl Whitworth, 1813-7. Earl Talbot, 1817-21, and
the Marquess Wellesley, 1821-8. The first Chief Secretary of this period
was Robert Peel, then, like his predecessor, Arthur "Wellesley, an uncompro-
mising opponent of the Catholic claims, but destined, like him, to change his
views ultimately under the pressure of Irish agitation. Agitation may be
said, as a political weapon in Ireland, to date from this time, and its first
successful exponent was Daniel O'Connsll, of whom we shall have much to
say presently. His ''aggregate meetings" were the force that won Emanci-
pation. A motion in favour of the Catholics, proposed by Canning in 1812,
and by Grattan in the following year, raised the question of the Veto, or the
right of the State to pronounce a prohibition in the appointment of Catholic
Bishops. Amongst the Catholic body there was some difference of opinion
on this question. Lord Fingall and the Catholic aristocrats generally were
in favour of the Veto; but almost all the priests and Catholic laity of Ire-
land were against it. Ten Irish Bishops, constituting the Board of Maynooth
College, had pronounced in its favour in 1799 : but now twenty-three of the
Bishops of Ireland pronounced against it. Only three dissented. The firm
attitude taken up by the Catholics of Ireland on this question was largely
due to the commanding influence of Daniel O'Connell, and his most zealous
supporter amongst the Irish Bishops was Dr. Daniel Murray, coadjutor to
Dr. Troy, Archbishop of Dublin, and in a few years more his successor.
Pius VII., a prisoner in France in the earlier stages of this controversy, was
represented at Rome by Monsignor Quarantotti. This prelate, in 1814,
addressed a Rescript to Dr. Poynter, Vicar- Apostolic of London, commending
the Veto. But the Catholics sent first Father Hayes, a Franciscan, and after-
wards Drs. Murray and Milner, representing the Bishops, to Rome. Pius VII.
received them kindly, and refused to support Monsignor Quarantotti in his
attitude on the question. Thus the majority of Irish Catholics triumphed at
Rome, as they triumphed afterwards at Westminster, owing to the firmness of
Daniel O'Connell. To keep the Irish Catholic clergy in some state of subjec-
tion to British influence, as for instance, by subsidizing them, as recommended
by Lord Macaulay, and as embodied in the Bill of 1825, which failed to pass
the Lords, has always been a favourite project of British statesmen. But since
their defeat on the Veto this project has never been seriously in danger of
succeeding. The Catholics of Ireland, clergy as well as laity, would scout
any such suggestion.

772 FROM THE UNION TO

Lord Fingall and the other Catholic leaders, well-meaning but timid and
unenterprising men, lost influence owing to their support of the Veto, and
O'Connell, chiefly owing to his energetic opposition to if, became from this
time to his death the recognized leader of the Irish people. Daniel
O'Connell was born at Carhen House, near Cahirciveen, Co. Kerry, on the
6th of August, 1775. He was nephew and heir to Maurice O'Connell, of
Derrynane, a Kerry gentleman of considerable property ; but he did not
come into this inheritance until he was fifty years old, for Maurice O'Connell
died almost a centenarian in 1825. He was sent to school at his uncle's
expense, and it is remarkable that he attended at Cove the school of the
Rev. Dr. Harrington, the first priest who ventured to keep a school in Ire-
land after the relaxation of the Penal Laws. He was afterwards educated
at St. Omer's and Douai, and some of the scenes of the great upheaval in
France which he witnessed here instilled into him that horror of Jacobinism
and revolutionary movements which distinguished him in after life. He was
called to the Bar in 1798, on the 19th of May, the very day of the tragic arrest
of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and in 1800 began his life-long career of opposi-
tion to the Union by delivering a speech against that measure at a meeting of
Dublin Catholics in the Royal Exchange. He soon attained a foremost place
in his profession as a member of the Munster Circuit, and in a few years
no great case in Ireland was complete without Counsellor O'Connell. In 1802
he married privately, for he feared it might not be acceptable to his uncle, his
second cousin Mary, daughter of Dr. Edward O'Connell, of Tralee. It may
be mentioned here, as a slight illustration of his immense personal influence,
that at a later period all four of his sons, Maurice, Morgan, John, and Daniel,
were members of Parliament in their father's lifetime. In truth the timid
aristocratic vetoists had no chance of standing up against a man of such
transcendent oratorical powers, extraordinary readiness of resource, and com-
manding personality. He was called and was, in fact, the uncrowned King
of Ireland. He understood the Irish people, and exercised a sway over them
which is unique in their history. The story of the Irish National movement
for the next thirty years is synonymous with the life of O'Connell.

O'Connell's ablest lieutenant in the Emancipation movement was the dis-
tinguished orator, Richard Lalor Sheil. He did not always agree with
O'Connell as to details, but he co-operated heartily with him, and was on
terms of the closest friendship with him until his death. The Catholic
question was somewhat overshadowed in importance in the Imperial Parlia-
ment about this time by other events which occurred outside the United
Kingdom. The second American War came to an end with the great victory
gained by the Americans at New Orleans on the 6th of January, 1815, after
the conditions of peace had been settled, but this news had not reached the
combatants. The American leader, General Andrew Jackson, was of Ulster
Presbyterian extraction. Many Ulster Presbyterians had emigrated to the
United States, especially to New Hampshire. Thousands of Irish Catholics-

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 773

had already settled in the Republic, and a steady stream of Irish emigrants
continued to flow into America until the famine of '47 swelled this stream
into a great river. The Irish could no longer look to Napoleon as a deliverer,
for he had fallen at Waterloo on the 18th of June, 1815. The annual motion
in favour of the Catholics went on with varying fortunes until in January
1820, George III. died, and was succeeded by his eldest son, the Prince
Regent, as George IV.

But some other deaths occurred in these years with which Irishmen
were more concerned than with that of the mentally afflicted, narrow-
minded, and prejudiced old sovereign. Curran, as has been already
mentioned, died in 1817, and in the preceding year the brilliant Whig
orator, Sheridan, also an Irishman and a supporter of the Irish cause.
In 1820, Grattan, though very ill and even aware that he was dying, for he
gave directions for his funeral, determined to proceed to London, to plead
once more in Parliament for his oppressed Catholic fellow-countrymen. After
a conference with O'Connell he set out. He intended to be in Parliament on
the 4th of June, but died early that morning in London. He declared to his
son when dying that he maintained to the last his opinions in favour of the
independence of Ireland and the freedom of the Catholics. His parlia-
mentary coadjutor, Plunket, still continued his efforts on behalf of the Catholics.
The fall in prices consequent on the cessation of the great European War
caused much distress and disturbance in Ireland. In the middle of this
period of trouble the new King, George IV. visited Ireland. It was the first
visit of an English Sovereign to Ireland since the time when James II. and
William III. were there carrying on war against each other; and it was
indeed the first visit of an English Sovereign of an avowedly friendly character.
But here all praise of the parties concerned must cease. The King landed a
few days after the death of his unhappy consort, Queen Caroline, from
whom he had been long separated, and with whom his relations had been
most unfortunate. He was received in Ireland with the greatest enthusiasm,
but no good came of the visit, and none could have come. Thomas Moore,
who had in the previous year written his noble elegy on Grattan, celebrated
it in some of his satirical poems, some of the wittiest of which, as his Ode on
Corn and Catholics, were written about this time. It elicited from Byron
also the bitterly satirical Irish Avatar. Contemporary Irish feeling may be
gathered from the ludicrous mock-lament on the King's departure, Oh Wirra-
sthnie, in which the decay of Dublin, after twenty-one years' Union with
England, is significantly shown.*

* You praised each city street, and square :

It's a pity people don't live there.

Oh wirrasthrue ! oh wirrasthrue !

But quality lived there one day,

Before the time of Castlereagh ;

Like you and him, they're gone away.

Oh wirrasthrue ! oh wirrasthrue !
The novels of Charles Lever tell the same story of the effect of the Union on Dublin.

774 FROM THE UNION TO

In 1822 the Royal Irish Constabulary force was founded. In the end of the
same year, the 1 4th of December, a bottle was flung into the box occupied by the
Marquess Wellesley, the new Lord Lieutenant, at the Theatre Royal, Dublin.
Lord Wellesley was known to be friendly to the Catholics, and the Dublin
branch of the Orange Society thought that such sentiments should be resented.
The mob was organized, but although some Orange artisans were arrested,
there was no conviction. All Conservatives in Dublin except the Orange
Society disavowed all connection with this outrage. Since that time the
Society has never been of much account in Dublin, although it is still a
force to be reckoned with in Ulster.

On the 12th of August, 1822, Lord Castlereagh, who had become Marquess
of Londonderry by his father's death in the previous year, committed suicide
at his residence in Kent. Thus tragically was ended a career which had
had much success for many years. As Foreign Secretary he played a
large part in the affairs of Europe, and directed the Grand Alliance
which overthrew Napoleon. It was probably in order to be free to play so
grand a part upon the Imperial stage that he helped to destroy the liberties
of his own country.

In 1823, on the motion of O'Connell, the great Catholic Association was
founded. As regards the victory of Irish Catholics on the Emancipation
question, this was the beginning of the end. The meeting was held in
Townsend Street Chapel, Dublin, and Lord Killeen, the eldest son of the
Earl of Fingall, presided. He disapproved of his father's timid policy, and
became during the rest of the agitation a warm supporter of O'Connell. The
Catholic Association discussed and settled all points of interest to Catholics,
even the purchase of a new cemetery for Catholics near Dublin, which led,
after a few years, to the foundation of Glasnevin Cemetery. But it was the
establishment in 1824 of a monthly penny subscription called the Catholic
Rent that made it really a power in the land. This system, proposed by
O'Connell, brought the organization into every parish in Ireland, and raised
up a powerful combination which became a source of alarm both to the British
Government and the Orangemen. Instead of an annual motion in Parlia-
ment promoted by a few aristocratic Catholics, there was now an immense
and enthusiastic popular movement directed by a leader of tremendous
energy who was universally supported and beloved. Some of the large
revenues of the Association were expended on a Catholic Press, some on
defending Catholics in the courts ; large annual grants were voted to Catholic
poor schools and for the education of missionary priests for America. As no
career but commerce had been open to Catholics for a century under the Penal
Laws, some of them attained great wealth, and it is said that about 1800 the
Catholic leader, Edward Byrne of Mullinahack, and some other Catholic
merchants were the richest individuals in Dublin. But the multitudinous
popular penny told even more than the generous contributions of such men
in the finances of the Catholic Association.

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 775

The Government became so alarmed at the progress of the agitation that
in 1825 the Association was suppressed by Act of Parliament. But a leader
of O'Connell's legal ability was invaluable to the Irish people at this time. He
simply renamed his society the New Catholic Association, and thus evaded the
Act. In this year the Duke of York, next brother and heir presumptive
to the King, declared that he would never as King consent ta Catholic
Emancipation. He seems to have inherited the prejudices of his father,
George III., on this question. But he never came to the throne, for he
died two years later, in 1827, and the heirship passed to the Duke of
Clarence, who was less illiberal. Parliamentary Committees inquiring into
the condition of Ireland sat at this time. Many witnesses from Ireland were
examined, but the most notable was the famous Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildare,
already well known as a writer in Ireland by his signature, J.K.L., James of
Kildare and Leighlin. The extent of his learning and his ability and con-
fidence in answering impressed favourably even his strongest opponents.
Wellington on being asked, "Have you been examining Dr. Doyle1?" is said
to have answered, "No, he has been examining us." In the following year,
1826, a General Election took place, and the Catholic Association made its
power felt in every corner of Ireland. In the counties of Waterford,* Louth,
Armagh, and Monaghan, Protestants of the intolerant type were defeated
and those returned who were in favour of Catholic Emancipation. In many
other constituencies, too, O'Connell used his great organization to influence
elections in its favour, and the tenant-voters, who, of course,, were always
liable to be evicted for voting rather as they wished than as the landlord
did, were emboldened to act courageously in that time of open voting, when
they saw the immense far-reaching power of O'Connell and his Catholic
Association.

Early in 1827, Lord Liverpool died, and was succeeded as Premier by
George Canning. This really great statesman never forgot his Irish origin.
Although a Tory, he had always supported the Catholic claims, both by
speech and vote, and there can be little doubt that he would have intro-.
duced a Catholic Relief Bill. But he died on the 8th of August, having
held power, like the great Whig statesman Fox, in 1805, only for a few
months. Thus Ireland for the second time in twenty-one years was deprived

* Here the Liberal Protestant, Mr. Villiers Stuart, and Lord George Beresford, the
reactionary, were contrasted in a ballad, for which the singer was imprisoned :—

"Now passing by very nigh

Villiers Stuart heard him talking ;
He told the King 'twas no such thing,

And said he'd send Lord George a-walking.
His blood did rise to hear such lies

Told about the priests and people ;
But he '11 oppose ould Ireland's foes,

And hang them on the highest steeple."

776 FROM THE UNION TO

of her hope?, when on the verge of fruition, by the death of a friendly
British statesman. The advent to power of a really liberal Conservative like
Canning caused the greatest consternation in the ranks of the Irish bigots
and Orangemen. They did not wish that seven-eighths of the Irish popula-
tion and the handful of Catholics in England, many of whom were Toriesr
should be granted equal rights with them. The next Lord Lieutenant, the
Marquess of Anglesea, a brave soldier, who had lost a leg at Waterloo, after a
short experience of Ireland espoused the side of the Catholics, and was the
first to prohibit the annual Orange procession in Dublin on the 12th of July.
The year 1827 was the time of what was called the New Reformation.
Theological controversies were the order of the day. The most famous
Catholic clergyman in these displays was Father Tom Maguire, a Leitrim
parish priest, and the most famous Protestant was the inappropriately-named
Canon Pope. But little good was done by these controversies, and the
Catholic Bishops soon prohibited their clergy from, joining in them. Some
great landlords were zealous promoters of the New Reformation. One
Orange nobleman in the County of Down, the Earl of Roden, assembled all
his tenants, and to show his veneration for the Bible, had all the other books
in his library thrown into a lake in his demesne. But Lord Farnham. an
equally enlightened County Cavan proprietor, went farther than anybody.
He spared no efforts to make Protestants of his Catholic tenants. He found
eviction a most powerful polemical argument. But those who know the
depth of faith of the poor Catholics of Ireland will not be surprised to learn
that even such drastic methods made few or no converts.*

The Catholic cause was championed by many of the most brilliant pens
of that day. Not only Irish Catholics like Bishop Doyle, Thomas Moore,
Thomas Furlong, Sheil, and O'Connell, but liberal-minded Englishmen and
Scotsmen like Sydney Smith, the poet Campbell, Jeffrey, and Cobbett wrote
in its favour. Sheil wrote articles in French in the Parisian press. Even
before Emancipation was granted the Catholics of several Continental coun-
tries and of the United States and of the British Colonies had wriitenr
spoken, and subscribed in favour of Irish Catholic rights.

Early in 1828, a petition from Irish Catholics was presented to Parlia-
ment asking for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts enacted against
the Protestant dissenters. But this year brought also the crisis of the agitation,
the Clare Election. The short Administration of Lord Goderich had succeeded
Canning's. In January 1828, the Ptel and Wellington Cabinet came into
office. The Duke of Wellington was Premier and Robert, afterwards Sir Robert

* Lord Farnham's zeal did not pass uncommemorated by the satiric ballad muse of
Cavan : —

"Come all you heretics by faith forsaken,
Who sell your sowls for a pound of bacon,
Come listen unto me one and all,
And I '11 sing yez a song called Farnham Hall."

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 777

Peel, Leader of the House of Commons. Both had always been opposed to the
concession of the Catholic claims. In May the supporters of Canning left
the Government, and in June Vesey Fitzgerald, member for Clare, was
appointed to a position in the Ministry necessitating his re-election. The
Catholic Association at once determined to oppose him as a supporter oi
the Peel and Wellington Government. The Association first asked Major
M'Namara, a Liberal Protestant, a Clare gentleman of property and a noted
fire-eater, who had acted as second to O'Connell in his duel with D'Esterre*
in 1815, to contest the county. Major M'Namara replied a very short time
before the nomination day, declining to stand against his friend Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald was personally very popular in Clare ; he was a very able man,
and his father had been an honest and uncompromising opponent of the
Union, who could not be bought. Still the fight was for the Catholic faith,
and the Clare people put that in the first place. So did the Catholic Associa-
tion. At the last minute a most daring and original idea occurred to O'Connell.
Why should not he be the candidate] The veteran Catholic leader, John
Keogh, had always declared that to elect a Catholic to Parliament was the
right way to precipitate the question. At seven o'clock in the morning of
Sunday, the 22nd of June, Sir David Koose, meeting in Nassau Street
Patrick Vincent Fitzpatrick, a friend of O'Connell, recommended him to
induce O'Connell to act upon Keogh's advice, which he did. The most
intense enthusiasm prevailed in Clare on the receipt of the news of this
decision. O'Connell wrote his address on the 24th of June in the office of
the Dublin Evening Post, and had it issued. He soon followed it to Ennis.
He was supported by the best fighting men of his organization. The word
is to be taken literally as regards some of them, such as the O'Gorman
Mahon, a young gentleman of property in Clare, an ardent O'Connellite
and a noted duellist. Besides him there went to assist O'Connell in the
contest his friend Sheil, Thomas Steele, a Protestant gentleman of Clare,
John Lawless, editor of a Belfast Catholic newspaper, and Father Tom
Maguire, the controversialist. The great landlords of Clare were almost to
a man with Fitzgerald. The tenants were as universally with O'Connell,
but they had to vote openly, and thus show courage, and even heroism, in
opposing their landlords, who had the power and, in some cases, the will to •
evict them. Universal attention and interest were concentrated on the Clare
election, the polling in which took place on the 5th of July. Every thinking
man in the United Kingdom felt that a crisis had been reached.

*On the 1st of February, 1815, Captain D'Esterre, a member of the old Tory Cor-
poration of Dublin, who thought himself personally alluded to in some strictures of
O'Connell's on that body, fought a duel with him at Bishopscourfr, Co. Kildare, then the
seat of Lord Ponsonby, and now of the Earl of Clonmel. D'Esterre was the challenger.
O'Connell unfortunately wounded him mortally, an occurrence which he always deplored.
He publicly announced that he would never again accept a challenge, and settled an
allowance on D'Esterre's widow.

778 FROM THE UNION TO

The county is one of the largest in Ireland. It was appropriate that
it should be the scene of this election, for it is the most Catholic county
in Ireland, that is, the one whose population contains the smallest percentage
of non-Catholics. No doubt this is largely due to the circumstance that
the Clare people are the most purely and typically Celtic. Clare is Irish
Ireland in the highest degree. No foreign race, not even the Normans, ever
gained a footing in this county, which is cut off from the rest of Ireland by
the broad River Shannon, by Lough Derg, and by the wide estuary of the
Fergus, on which Ennis, the chief town, is situated. In 1828 the Clare
people had to be addressed in Irish as well as English. A very large number
knew Irish only. Even now a large number of them speak Irish and some
only Irish. There are some remarkable traits of character in the Clare
people, and in this election their whole demeanour and behaviour was most
orderly and dignified. They felt the greatness of the crisis, and showed
that they were worthy of the momentous part they had to play in the history
of Ireland.

Much of the practical work of the election was in the hands of the
priests. This continued to be a feature of O'Connell's movements during
his lifetime. In the election that won Catholic Emancipation it was appro-
priate, and even necessary, that it should be so. This was before the estab-
lishment of the National Education system. The priest was often the only
educated man in the parish. His flock had complete confidence in him, for
they knew he was devoted to them. The forty-shilling freehold voters still
existed, and were almost all for O'Connell. Under the influence of the
clergy, in the wave of enthusiasm which swept over Clare, old feuds were
forgotten and private injuries were forgiven in the determination to sink all
personal considerations, to stand together against the powerful minority who
would deny Catholics equal rights, and to elect O'Connell at all costs. One
instance of such a heroic renunciation is the subject of John Banim's poem,
The Reconciliation. Such a spirit was sure to triumph ; and the result of the
poll was declared to be: — O'Connell, 2,057 ; Fitzgerald, 1,075.

Catholic Emancipation could no longer be denied. The Marquess of
Anglesea, Lord Lieutenant, openly sided with the Catholics. He wrote a
public letter to the Catholic Primate, Dr. Curtis, in which he counselled the
Catholics to stand firm. For this he was recalled early in 1829, and the
Duke of Northumberland appointed in his place. But in a few mouths
more Wellington and Peel were converted to the same opinion, and in
the following year Lord Anglesea returned to Ireland as the Lord Lieu-
tenant of the next Liberal Administration. Wellington declared before
the session of 1829 began that there was danger of civil war in Ireland
if Emancipation was delayed. Peel held the same opinion. In the month
of March the Catholic Relief Bill was introduced. It passed through all its
stages in the Houses of Commons and Lords in a few weeks. In the Lords
the great influence of Wellington alone, and his assurances that the integrity

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 779-

of the Empire was in danger as a result of the Clare election, secured its
passage. On the 13th of April it received the royal assent. By a strange
coincidence the sword fell on the same night from the hand of the statue of
Walker on the wall of Deny, a monument of Protestant Ascendency.

By the Catholic Emancipation Act Catholics were declared eligible for
every civil and military office except those of Kegent (the Sovereign must be
a Protestant by the Act of Settlement), Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and
Lord Chancellor. The Act contained one clause very injurious to Ireland.
It disfranchised the forty-shilling freeholders, as if in revenge for the part
they had taken in returning O'Connell for Clare. It also compelled him to
seek re-election, for, as he had been elected before the Act was passed, he
was required to take an oath abjuring doctrines which' Catholics believe.
This he declined to do. He was returned unopposed for Clare.

The history of the Catholic Emancipation agitation furnishes one of the
best instances of the futility of expecting that Ireland will obtain any
redress from the Imperial Parliament unless she makes herself troublesome.
Here was a reform promised along with the Union, but not granted until
nearly thirty years after, granted then only through fear of civil war, and
when granted, accompanied by a punishment of the Irish leader who had
compelled it, and the abolition of a large class of Irish voters who had sup-
ported it. The last item would have been considered an unheard-of outrage
in an English Act of Parliament. But the Irish Catholics who were expected
to pay the taxes and fight the battles of the Empire, gained the concession so
tardily and grudgingly made only by making themselves a peril to the
Empire. The very different action of the Irish Protestant Paliament in 1793
shows that it would not have taken anything like that time to grant Catholic
Emancipation, had it been allowed to survive. O'Connell, though always
considered so distinctively a Catholic leader, declared over and over again
that he would have trusted his Protestant fellow-countrymen to have broken,
the shackles of the Catholics sooner than the Imperial Parliament did.

George IV. died on the 26th of June, 1830, and was succeeded by his next
surviving brother, the Duke of Clarence, who became William IV.

There was a General Election also in this year, and several Catholics were
elected in Ireland. O'Gorman Mahon was elected for Clare, Lord Killeen for
Meath, and elsewhere several others who had been active in agitating for
Emancipation. O'Connell was returned for the County of Waterford along with
his old opponent, Lord George Beresford. In the General Election of the
following year he was returned for his native county of Kerry, and in that of
1832 he was elected unsolicited for the City of Dublin, a compliment he felt
deeply. In 1835 he was again elected for Dublin, but unseated on petition
in the following year, when he found a seat in Kilkenny City. In 1837 he
was re-elected for Dublin, but in the General Election of 1841 he was de-
feated in the metropolis, partly owing to his opposition to Trades Unionism.
He was however returned for the counties of Meath and Cork. He elected
to represent the latter, which he did until his death.

780 FROM THE UNION TO

No sooner was Emancipation gained than O'Connell practically revived the
Catholic Association, which had been abolished by the Act, as the Friends of
Ireland and the Anti- Union Association. The latter name shows the object
of his new agitation. Repeal of the Union, as he called it in his legal
phraseology, does not differ very much from what we call Home Rule. Even
in 1800 O'Connell had spoken against the Union. Again in 1810, at a
meeting of freemen and freeholders of Dublin, mostly Protestants, called by
the Tory Corporation, he had denounced it. Only the superior urgency, as
he thought, of the Catholic claims made him comparatively, but only com-
paratively, silent for years. Now, he thought, was the time. He was
free to devote the rest of his life to agitating for repeal, and he
devoted it. If he failed he was not to blame. He seems to have done
honestly what he thought best. His Emancipation victory had made
him more popular and influential than ever. He was styled the Liberator,*
a title probably borrowed from South America ; for Simon Bolivar, who had
freed Peru from the Spanish yoke, was also called so about the same time.
O'Connell and the Irish people in general sympathised ardently with Bolivar.
Many young Irishmen, including one of O'Connell's sons, fought in South
America against Spain. Such a part is played by the young hero of Gerald
Griffin's tale of The Rivals written about this time. But the Liberator of the
Irish Catholics was soon checked in his efforts at liberating all Irishmen by the
restoration of a native Parliament. Both his Associations were suppressed,
and he was prosecuted by Earl Grey's Whig Reform Government which had
come into office in 1830. Yet O'Connell still thought, quite erroneously, as
it turned out, that the Whigs were Ireland's best friends, and that he ought to
give them the support of his party, the first attempt at an Irish party in the
Imperial Parliament. It became more and more apparent as time went on
that the Whigs in opposition denounced coercion and deplored the grievances
of Ireland, while the same Whigs, when in office, applied coercion, and forgot
those grievances. As Moore wittily said :—

" But bees, on flowers alighting, cease their hum —
So, settling upon places, Whigs grow dumb."

" O'Connell's Tail," as the English press contemptuously called his Parlia-
mentary following, supported the Liberal Government of 1830 and succeeding
Liberal Governments. Indeed these Governments could not have remained
in office without Irish support. The Repealers supported the English Reform
Act of 1832 which was a great benefit to England. An Irish Reform Act
was passed immediately afterwards. The only notable change it introduced
was the increase of the number of the Irish Members of Parliament from 100,
as fixed by the Union, to 105. This was reduced to the present total of 103

* In the General Election of 1826 O'Connell established the Liberator Order. The
Knights of the Order were those who were foremost in the service of Ireland. He
probably took the name from South America.

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 781

nearly half a century later by the disfranchisement of Sligo and Cashel in
1870. But O'Connell and Sheil fought in vain for the restoration of the
franchise to the forty-shilling freeholders, the backbone of the Irish National
cause. This was more than the Whigs would grant. The disappearance of
these voters from Irish public life, though not apparently a poetic subject, is
the theme of a fine metrical lament by Henry Grattan Curran.

In 1831, Lord Stanley, the Chief Secretary, afterwards thrice Prime
Minister as Earl of Derby, introduced the Bill for establishing National
schools in Ireland. In the following year Commissioners of National Education
were appointed who were empowered to grant aid to schools. The system has
lasted till now in spite of many and grave drawbacks. One of the first
commissioners, Dr. Whately, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, who in
this year 1831 was directly imported to the vacant see from England, like so
many Irish Protestant prelates in the days of the State Church, tried to use
it as an engine of insidious proselytism. His biography contains an avowal,
under his own hand, of his efforts to Protestantize the Catholic children of
Iteland. Other commissioners and the framers of the school manuals for
reading-lessons tried at least to denationalize them. Several proofs of this
purpose may be found in Mr. Barry O'Brien's Hundred Years of Irish History.
Mr. O'Brien tells us that Irish history was unknown in these schools until
recently, and is tolerated now only as a reading-lesson. Dr. Whately sup-
pressed a poem on the Irish harp, also Campbell's Harper and Scott's well-
known lines on Love of Country.* The schools were to give mixed secular
and separate religious instruction. But in most cases the schools were
managed by the clergy, Catholic and Protestant, and became practically
denominational. Chiefly owing to this circumstance the schools have been
fierhaps better than nothing.

The Catholic peasantry of Ireland, who, by voluntary contributions, always
generously supported their own unendowed and unestablished clergy, were
also called upon to pay tithes to the Protestant clergy, of whose ministrations
they' could not conscientiously avail themselves. They had also to pay
church rates for the maintenance of Protestant churches. These tithes
appeared a more galling grievance now that Catholics were told that Parlia-
ment had emancipated them. Soon an anti-tithe war was initiated, especially
in the southern counties where the grievance was worst, for the Protestant
clergy there were for the most part without flocks. O'Connell tried iu vain
to have tithes abolished. Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildare, exhorted his people
thus: — "Let your hatred of tithes be as great as your love of justice."
Many could not pay tithes ; most would not. When the people could not
or would not pay, their property was seized. If they resisted the always

*A Hundred Years of Irish History, p. 83. The present writer can add, on excellent
authority, that James Montgomery's fine poem, A Voyage round the World, was sup-
pressed because it contained a reference to British misgovernment of India.

FROM THE UNION TO

unjust and often illegal proceedings of the tithe-proctor, the army and the
police were utilised against them.

The tithe war was signalized by several bloody conflicts, in which many
both of the peasantry and the police were killed. The first was at Newtown-
barrv County Wexford. A fierce struggle occurred at an attempted sale of
property seized for tithes due to the local rector. Thirteen peasants were
killed and many others wounded by the police and yeomanry. But the
greatest although not the last battle of the tithe-war occurred six months
later at Carrickshock. A process-server, guarded by about forty police, wen
out about noon on the Uth of December, 1831, to serve writs for tithes dm
to the rector of Knocktopher, County Kilkenny. The people assembled also
and accompanied the legal forces. They were determined to get possess,
of the person of the chief functionary, and force him to eat the process.
kind of compulsory though incongruous meal had long seemed to the people
the most equitable, at any rate the most effectual way of disposing of writs
for debt not justly incurred. When the forces of the law had reached a
secluded and desert spot called Carrickshock Common, a short distance
Knocktopher, where the clergyman claimant's church was, a young man
attempted to seize the official, and was instantly shot dead by the police.
Then the fight began. Eleven policemen were killed and the process-
But the writs were not served that day. O'Connell acted as counsel for
several members of the crowd who were tried in the following year and all
acquitted. This lot frequently fell to him in such cases.

This (keadful noonday tragedy, in which the forces of the Government
fared so badly, at once aroused the Ministry to action. The Church Tempc
alities Act was passed in 1833. By this Act church-rates were abolished,
the four Protestant archbishoprics were reduced to two, and the <
bishoprics to ten. This was only a partial relief, and did not stop the tithe-
war Instead of boldly abolishing tithes, as O'Connell and Shell recon
mended the Whigs passed another Coercion Act as a matter of course. All
through the nineteenth century Coercion Acts have been the British pana
for the ills of Ireland. This measure was opposed by O'Conuell, who, m tl
general election of 1832, the third after Emancipation and the first after
Reform had secured a following of thirty-four Repealere-not a very smal
number when we consider how new Emancipation was and how narrow tl
franchise. Having passed a Coercion Act for Ireland which was at o,
cruel unjust, and ineffective, the same Parliament, in the same session w
unconscious inconsistency, passed a meritorious act, abolishing negro i
in the British West Indies. Besides the tithe grievance and the chron
coercion plague, there was a serious visitation of Asiatic cholera in Ireland m
1832 The next serious outbreak was in 1849, after the famine.

In 1834 Earl Grey resigned the Premiership. He was succe
Viscount M.lbourne, also a Whig, who held office for a few months. ,
Robert Peel and a Tory Ministry were in office for a few months more, bi

THK DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 783

Peel resigned in 1835. Then Lord Melbourne resumed office, and the Whigs
continued in power for the next six years until Ib41.

The Church Temporalities Act was only a half-measure, and did not mend
matters with regard to the tithe grievance. Consequently the bloody con-
flicts in the south of Ireland between the peasantry on the one side and
Protestant clergymen, tithe-proctors, soldiers and police, on the other, went
on still. There was an affray at Thurles in which four peasants were killed,
another at Wallstown. Co. Cork, with the same result, and another at Rath-
keeran, Co. Waterford, where as many as twelve were killed. The last and
worst conflict was at Rathcormack in the county of Cork, on the 18th of
December, 1834. One week before Christmas the local rector went out to
seize the property of a poor widow, a Catholic, who "owed" him (the word
seems monstrous) forty shillings' worth of tithes. This gentleman, besides
bringing the police, was supported by the 29th Foot and the 4th Dragoons.
The neighbouring peasantry assembled and resisted the seizure. A fight
ensued. The military fired. More than fifty of the people were killed and
wounded. The worst feature of this dreadful and unchristian warfare was
that it was carried on avowedly in the interest of religion. All this was
done to support that incredible imposture, the State Church of Ireland, which
four-fifths of the population utterly repudiated.

In 1831 after the ISTewtownbarry tragedy O'Connell implored the Govern-
ment to stop the collection of tithes, at least until the Parliamentary Tithe
Committee should report. But the Government would not. Shortly after
the refusal came the Battle of Carrickshock, where eleven members of the
splendid force which was the Government's chief reliance in Ireland* were
killed in a few minutes by the infuriated people. Twenty-four hours after
that incident the collection of tithes all over Ireland was stopped, the
Temporalities Act was passed, and then the collection went on again. But
it had to stop altogether after Rathcormack. And Rathcormack was the
last, only because Thomas Drummond came back to Ireland in the new year,
1835, as Under-Secretary.

Thomas Drummond was born in Edinburgh in 1797. He became an
officer in the Royal Engineers, and was attached in that capacity to the Irish
Ordnance Survey. Here he learned, in his journeyings about the country,
the real condition of the people, and soon came to have a deep sympathy
with them. He filled for a few years minor official positions in England,
renouncing with characteristic independence a pension which had been granted
to him for his scientific inventions and unusual skill in surveying. When Lord
Melbourne returned to power, in 1835, O'Connell and his Repeal Members
agreed to keep him in office by their votes if he would introduce remedial legis-
lation for Ireland. O'Connell agreed to suspend his demand for Repeal, with

* " That famous constabulary force which is the arm, eye, and ear of the Irish Govern-
ment," says Mr. John Morley in his Life of Gladstone, Vol. III., p. 403.

2

784 FROM THE UNION TO

which he had been thwarting the Government since 1830. His agitation on
this question had aroused greater enthusiasm in Dublin than anywhere else
in Ireland, for the people of the capital had not ceased to feel and resent the
degradation of their city resulting from the Union. The agreement of
O'Connell with Lord Melbourne was known as the Lichfield House Compact.
O'Connell loyally observed his part in it, and Lord Melbourne did his best to
observe his. But the remedial legislation suffered from the opposition of the
House of Lords, whose members, mostly Tory, knew that the Whig Govern-
ment was kept in office by the Irish vote. This was the position of all Whig
Governments in the nineteenth century, except Gladstone's Government of
1880. Lord Melbourne sent the Earl of Mulgrave (created in 1838 Marquess
of Normanby) to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, and Lord Morpeth (afterwards,
as Earl of Carlisle, twice Lord Lieutenant) as Chief Secretary, but the real
government of Ireland was placed in the hands of Thomas Drummond, the
new Under-Secretary. In four or five years Drumniond showed the wonderful
improvement which might be effected in Ireland by a ruler who would treat the
majority of the people with justice, and not govern, as is usually done in
Ireland, in the interests of a small ascendency party only. It is difficult to
enumerate in a short space all the reforms he inaugurated. Instead of four
hundred inefficient watchmen he appointed a thousand vigilant policemen
in Dublin, the nucleus of the present fine Dublin Metropolitan Police force.
He manned the Koyal Irish Constabulary with the sons of the Catholic
farmers. Before that no government would trust them with police duties.
A perusal of the trials for the Carrickshock affair will show how Protestant
the police force then was. As local magistrates were often partial and
biassed, Drummond appointed stipendiaries all over the country who were
answerable to him. He kept a strict hand over the Ulster Orangemen.
Orange Lodges in the army were suppressed. Keaders of Sir Charles Gavan
Duffy's historical works will remember how Drummond abolished the
tyranny of Sam Gray, an Orange magistrate in Duffy's native county of
Monaghan. But he was equally severe in suppressing faction-fighting in the
south. Assuming office after the Rathcormack tithe-battle, he refused to
allow the Government forces, soldiers or police, to assist in recovering tithes,
and thus put an end to the tithe-war. Agrarian crime decreased wonderfully
when the people found that there was a man at the head of the Government
who acted justly towards all — landlord and tenant. The ascendency party
tried to prove that crime had increased under Drummond's rule, but met
with a signal defeat, as the result of the inquiry showed that it had
diminished. Of course a contest of such old standing as the agrarian war
carried on by the ubiquitous Ribbon society against the agents of land
tyranny could not stop immediately. In the year 1838 Lords Glengall
and Lismore, with thirty other magistrates of Tipperary, addressed a re-
monstrance to Drummond with reference to the murder of one Cooper.
His reply contained the memorable dictum, " Property has its duties as well

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 785

as its rights," the disregard of which is really the Irish land difficulty in a
nutshell. •"•",

O'Connell supported Drummond with his great influence in the country,
for he felt that even in a native Irish Government no man could rule more
justly.

Drummond suppressed a notable nuisance at his own door, the Sunday
drinking booths in the Phoenix Park, Dublin. He held a kind of levee
every day. He was accessible to every one. The Irish people gradually
came to be on the side of the law when they began to find that they were
fairly treated by it. Even landlords admitted this change. But when this
improved state of things was reached, Drummond's health gave way, owing to
his great labours in this cause, and he died on the 15th of April, 1840, aged
only forty-three. He expressed a wish when dying to be buried in Ireland,
the land of his adoption, where he had done so much good. He was buried
in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin. It was intended that his funeral should
be private, but crowds from Dublin and many from other parts of Ireland
attended, and it became practically a great public funeral. A fine statue of
him by Hogan adorns the City Hall, Dublin ; it was erected by public sub-
scription three years after his death. In 1833, two years before Drummoud
assumed office, there were 24,000 troops in Ireland : at the time of his death
there were but 15,000, and in 1847, seven years afterwards, there were
28,000. These figures are the best commentary on the improved condition of
Ireland under his rule.*

The remedial legislation introduced by the Whig ministry in fulfilment of
the Lichfield House compact was not as satisfactory as Drummond's govern-
ment of Ireland. In 1837 Lord Morpeth, the Chief Secretary, introduced the
Tithe Commutation Bill, passed in the following year. This was a very poor
compromise by way of settling the tithe grievance. The tithes, reduced by one-
fourth, were made payable by the landlord instead of by the tenant. Of course
the landlord made the tenant pay still by raising his rent. This intolerable
burden continued until it was removed by Gladstone's Church Act and suc-
cessive Land Acts. While this Bill was passing through Parliament William
IV. died, on the 20th of June, 1837. He was succeeded by his niece, Victoria,
daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent. She reigned until her death on the
22nd of January, 1901. Her Majesty visited Ireland in the course of her
long reign in 1849, 1853, 1861, and 1900 — four times. She was succeeded
by her eldest son, the Prince of Wales, as Edward VII. He has already
visited Ireland twice.

The first Poor Law for Ireland was also passed in 1838. The country was
divided into Poor Law Unions, and workhouses were erected. While some
such scheme was necessary, it must be said that the Poor Laws have always
been unpopular in. Ireland. This is perhaps inevitable with State-aided charity.

* See Mr. Barry O'Brien's excellent Life of Drummond,

786 FKOM THE UNION TO

But the break up of all family life, and the utter extinction of self-respect,
which are the characteristic evils of the Irish "workhouse" system (" work "
is notable by its absence from these institutions), give good ground for the
odium in which they stand.

A Municipal Reform Act for Ireland was passed in 1838. This had several
serious drawbacks, as it abolished 58 out of 68 municipalities in Ireland. But
its advantages were that Catholics could at last become members and hold
municipal offices in the Corporations of the chief cities of Ireland. In 1841
O'Connell was elected Lord Mayor of Dublin, the first election under the new
Act. In Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and all the large cities and
towns of Ireland, except Belfast and Derry, the Catholic and Nationalist
element at once preponderated, and has remained in power ever since. This
was a great blow to the old Ascendency party, but the greatest blow of all
was that a Catholic might now be Sheriff of those, cities, and thus take a
prominent part in executing the laws.*

In the same year 1839 the Marquess of Normanby was obliged to resign
the Viceroyalty owing to a vote of censure passed on him in the House of
Lords for releasing too many prisoners. He had also displeased the Ascendency
by removing from the Commission of the Peace Colonel Verner in Armagh
County and other Ulster Orange magistrates, for celebrating the Battle of the
Diamond. He was succeeded by Lord Fortescue.

On the very day of Drummond's death, the 15th of April, 1840, O'Connell
founded the new Repeal Association. He had begun to despair of Whig remedial
legislation. Late in 1841 the Melbourne Ministry resigned, and the Tories
under Sir Robert Peel returned to power. Earl De Grey (1841-4) and Lord
Heytesbury (1844-6) were his Lords Lieutenant. Lord Eliot, afterwards Lord
Lieutenant as Earl of St, Germans, was Chief Secretary. Every Irish magis-
trate who favoured Repeal openly including O'Connell himself and Lord
Ffrench, was dismissed by the Government. But O'Connell appointed the dis-
missed magistrates arbitrators, and the people resorted to their courts instead
of the regular tribunals.

The huge Repeal meetings held by O'Connell at this time were 'greatly
favoured by the new habits of temperance and sobriety which the people were
acquiring. The Rev. Theobald Mathew, a Capuchin friar residing in Cork
City, began there in 1838 his great temperance movement. Soon it extended
all over Ireland, and was taken up with extraordinary enthusiasm. Father
Mathew devoted the rest of his life to this excellent work, visiting England
and preaching there with great success. While it is true that not everybody
who took the total abstinence pledge was faithful to it, still many were, and
the movement did the greatest good in Ireland. It had the disadvantage of

. *The feelings of the Ascendency on this point have been put metrically in this highly-
expressive line : —

The sheriffs chain is hanging where the rope ought to be.

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 787

being immediately succeeded by the Famine, which made all irregularities
worse. But many were faithful even in this temptation, and the crusade of
Father Mathew, who died in 1856, paved the way for much other excellent
temperance work in Ireland since then.

O'Connell said that 1844 was to be the Repeal year. He held monster
meetings in 1843 in many counties of Ireland. The greatest were those at
Tara and Mullaghmast. The Tara meeting was held on the 15th of August.
To hear O'Connell show the blessings of Repeal more than five hundred
thousand persons, it is said, came to this historic hill, the residence of the
ancient chief monarchs of Ireland. Mullaghmast, near Athy, in County Kildare
had been the scene of a treacherous massacre of Irish chiefs by the English of
the Pale, who had invited them to a feast, about the middle of the reign of
Elizabeth. O'ConnelPs meeting here was held on Sunday, the 1st of October,
and it is said that the number of those who attended this meeting was larger
even than that at Tara.

This assembling together of large masses of men had alarmed the Govern-
ment. On the next Sunday after Mullaghmast, the 8th of October, O'Connell
made preparations for holding another monster meeting at Clontarf, a historic
seaside suburb of Dublin, where King Brian, the greatest sovereign of Ireland,
by a memorable victory annihilated the Danish power in 1014. But Clontarf
was within easy reach of the immense garrison of Dublin. Late on the even-
ing of Saturday, the 7th of October, a proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant
was posted on the walls, forbidding the meeting. O'Connell made every effort
to prevent the vast multitudes from assembling who would have done so. In
order to avert bloodshed he had agents on every road of access to Cloutarf,
turning the people back. Happily he accomplished his purpose ; for the
garrison had been sent to Clontarf, and the guns of the Pigeon House Fort on
the opposite side of Dublin Bay turned on the place of meeting.

On the 14th of October O'Connell and eight of the principal members of
the Repeal Association were charged with conspiracy and other misdemeanours.
Conspiracy was a ridiculous charge to bring against O'Connell who always did
everything openly. The eight others were O'Connell's third son, John;
Charles Gavan Duffy, editor of the Nation; Dr., afterwards Sir John, Gray,
editor of the Freeman's Journal ; Father Tyrrell, parish priest of Lusk, County
Dublin; Father Tierney, parish priest of Clontibret, County Monaghan ;
Thomas Steele, the Clare Protestant gentlemnn, who had been O'Connell's
most faithful adherent ever since the famous Clare election ; Richard Barrett,
editor of the Pilot, Dublin ; and Thomas Matthew Ray, the Secretary of the
Repeal Association. The traversers were released on bail until the beginning
of the trial.

On the 22nd of October O'Connell opened his new place of meeting called
by him Conciliation Hall, on Burgh Quay, Dublin. At this meeting William
Smith O'Brien joined the Repeal Association. He was a Protestant, son of
Sir Edward O'Brien, a great Clare landlord, descended from that illustrious Irish

FROM THE UNION TO

sovereign who had overcome the Dalies at Clontarf. He had been a Meiaber
of Parliament for about twenty years. Hitherto he had acted with the
Whigs, but had lost faith in them and in British Parliaments. He thought
now that none but an Irish Parliament ever could or would right the wrongs
of Ireland. Personally he was a man of most honourable and exalted character

O'Connell's trial began on the 15th of January, 1844. The four judges
and the twelve jurymen who tried the case were all Protestants. The
Catholics on the jury panel and Protestants suspected of liberal views or
Repeal politics had been carefully excluded. But jury-packing was so
common a feature in Irish State trials that nobody, at least in Ireland, was
much surprised. To enumerate all the instances of jury-packing iu Irish
political and agrarian cases in the nineteenth century would far exceed the
limits of space allotted to this sketch. But a special circumstance aggra-
vates its injustice in this- case besides the eminence of O'ConiielPs character.
One lung slip containing the names of sixty-seven jurors, of whom a large
number were Catholics, was missing, perhaps accidentally lost, perhaps
designedly removed. The Crown counsel decided to dispense with it and
go on with the case. O'Connell and his seven* associates would never have
been convicted by a fairly empanelled jury of Irishmen. But in this case
there was no doubt. On the 12th of February the eight prisoners were
found guilty, and ordered to appear for sentence on the 30th of May.

In the meantime O'Connell attended Parliament, which he had practi-
cally abandoned in the previous year to hold his monster meetings, and
spoke out with that pre-eminent and even vituperative directness for which
he was so famous. He denounced the proclamation of the Clontavf meeting
and the packing of the jury as these mischievous and contemptible acts of
the Government deserved to be denounced. Many critics of O'Connell have
complained that he was intemperate in speech, addicted to gross personalities
or gross flattery. But he defended this practice of his by asserting that one
should praise one's friends or censure one's enemies in as strong language as
possible. It is probable that this excess in language of O'Connell was largely
a matter of temperament. He was a Kerryman, an unmistakable Celt, and
he had that ardent and enthusiastic disposition characteristic of the Munster
Irishman. The jury-packing was denounced not only by O'Connell, but also
by Lord John Russell and Macaulay, who were then in opposition. But four
years later both those gentlemen were members of a Government (one was its
head) whose Irish officials were packing juries to convict John Mitchel and
others of the '48 leaders. Moore's couplet again held good — that Whigs
became dumb when in office.

* Father Tyrrell, of Lusk, Co. Dublin, one of the nine originally charged, died before
the trial. It is said that his death was hastened by his exertions in trying to prevent
the people from attending the Clontarf proclaimed meeting, on which occasion he
remained up all night turning back the people from the County of Dublin, who were
assembling in great numbers.

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 789

On the 30th of May the Repeal prisoners appeared to receive sentence.
O'Connell was sentenced to pay a fine of £2,000 and to undergo a year's
imprisonment. He and his associates were incarcerated in Richmond Bride-
well, then and for many years afterwards the prison for the City of Dublin.
But the judgment was brought up to the House of Lords on a writ of error.
It was reversed by the majority of the Law Lords. Three were for reversing
it, two for maintaining it. It was on this occasion that Lord Denman, one
of the Law Lords whose opinions reversed the judgment, uttered the oft-
quoted words that trial by jury, carried on by such methods as were
employed in this case, would become "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare."
On the 6th of September O'Connell and his associates were released from
prison.*

O'Connell was now free, and had practically triumphed. But he and his
Repeal Association had seen their best days. Even if the calamitous Famine
had not occurred in the following years, the Association would still probably
have gone down under the blow dealt by the secession of its ablest adherents.
In 1842, three young men, named Duffy, Dillon, and Davis, determined in a
memorable conversation under a tree in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, to found
the Nation newspaper. It was founded — the first number appearing under
the editorship of Duffy, who had already had some editorial experience — on
the 15th of October, 1842. Its appearance was heralded by a well-known
poem from James Clarence Mangan, in the opinion of many the greatest Irish
poet of the nineteenth century. Duffy continued for many years to edit the
Nation. As already mentioned, he was one of O'Connell's fellow-prisoners in
1843. But the inspiring genius of the paper and of the movement was Thomas
T)avis. This young Protestant Irishman, educated at Trinity College, had
hitherto devoted his attention to archaeology. From the affairs of ancient
Ireland he had rapidly passed to those of his country in his own lifetime.
His impassioned prose and poetry were designed to awaken Irishmen, espe-
cially young men, to a new future for Ireland. She was to be "a nation once
again," in his own words. His patriotic enthusiasm soon gathered a gifted
band of young Irishmen around him. This Nation school of fervently patri-
otic writers, poets, and orators acquired the name of Young Ireland, although
they did not claim or acknowledge this name. Such names were then fashion-
able. "Young England," the party of Lord John Manners, now the aged Duke
of Rutland, was then in its zenith. "Young Italy" and "Young France" had
been known for some years. From the first the Nation young men had shown
a spirit of independence, while they inculcated on their readers the duty of
thinking for themselves and the value of education. The newspaper and the
school were to be their weapons. They found many disciples, especially among
the younger generation now growing up.

After the release of O'Connell and the collapse of the monster meeting

* "'Twas the law that broke the lock," said a contemporary ballad.

790 FROM THE UNION TO

method this Young Ireland wing differed more and more from the old Eman-
cipation wing of the Repeal Association. Although Davis, the leading spirit
of the party, died prematurely in September, 1845, the quarrel went on.
Smith O'Brien was the recognized leader of this section. O'Connell em-
phasized the importance at the Association meetings of some contemporary
measures which related rather to religion than to Repeal or secular politics.
The young men objected to this. They maintained that the increase of the
grant to Maynooth College and the establishment of the Queen's Colleges
were not matters for the Repeal Association to discuss. It is probable that
Peel introduced this legislation for Ireland with some intention of dividing
the Repeal Association. If so he succeeded. Many of the young men went
so far as to favour the Queen's College scheme, and to advocate mixed educa-
tion of Catholics and Protestants. O'Connell, as might have been expected
from his career, supported Rome and the majority of the Irish Bishops on this
question and denounced the "godless Colleges." Here O'Connell was certainly
right ; for these Colleges were not offered by Peel out of friendship to the
religion of Irishmen. They were instituted on the usual British principle
of giving Irishmen what Englishmen think is good for them, not by any
means what Irishmen want or would choose for themselves. And the British
educational policy to Ireland has uniformly been to try to make her Protestant
or, at least, to wean her from Catholicity. But, the Queen's College question
apart, there were many points in which Young Ireland was right in its quarrel
with O'Connell. They said a Repeal movement should include everybody,
Catholics and Protestant. Being a national movement, all Irishmen should
be in it. O'Connell did not really contest this. He thought so, too. He
was always too glad to welcome Protestants as members of the Association,
and he had secured many of them. But the Protestants, especially the Dublin
Protestants, who hated the Union and denounced it in'lSOO and 1810, in both
of which years O'Connell was by their side, were afraid of a Parliament sub-
servient to the man who had won Emancipation. This circumstance alone
would have been sufficient to bring failure to O'Connell's Repeal movement.

Although O'Connell had tried, ever since 1829, to gain over his Protestant
fellow-countrymen to his Repeal platform, it cannot be said that he succeeded.
The title of Conciliation Hall bestowed by him on his new place of assembly meant
that he wished to have Irish Protestants there, too. He saw, as every far-seeing
man has since seen, that the Irish Parliament would never be restored save
on the demand of a united Irish nation, and that the descendants of the
fighting Protestant anti-Unionists of 1800 would have to be foremost in the
demand. He predicted that Isaac Bult, who had been selected by the Unionists
to speak against him in the Repeal debate at the Dublin Corporation, would
yet be found fighting for the cause of Home Rule. As we know, he became
the leader of that cause. But this was not to be in O'Connell's lifetime. To
Irish Protestants he was the most representative Catholic in the world. And
they were right in thinking so, although wrong in suspecting that he ever had

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 791

any other wish than to see all Irishmen, Protestant as well as Catholic united
for Irish nationality and enjoying its triumph equally. O'Connell, notwith-
standing some personal failings, had always been sincerely attached to the
Catholic faith. Now, in his old age, he added to faith the greatest devotion,
and was a typical pious Catholic.

There was another cause of controversy between O'Connell and Young
Ireland in which the Young Irelanders were clearly in the right. They
thought Irish members of Parliament should not accept places from the
Whigs or any other Government. O'Connell thought otherwise. To the
Liberator, who had abolished the Penal Laws, it seemed an excellent thing
that Catholics should attain the highest places in the State. We cannot
wonder at his thinking so ; even now Emancipation in Ireland does not
seem a reality when Protestant ascendency monopolizes the loaves and fishes.
But O'Connell's principle would be fatal to the independence of an Irish
Parliamentary Party. In this matter as in many others the quarrel of Young
Ireland was not so much with O'Connell as with his followers, especially with
his third son, John, who aspired to succeed to his father's leadership, although
he had inherited none of his great qualities. Although O'Connell did not
object to the acceptance of office by his followers, he would by no means
accept it for himself. He declined the Irish Mastership of the Rolls, and
there is little doubt that the Whigs of sixty or seventy years ago would have
been as willing as Gladstone was in 1868 in the case of Lord O'Hagan to supple-
ment the Emancipation Act by appointing a Catholic Lord Chancellor of
Ireland if by doing so they could have bought off the leader of the opposition
to English rule in Ireland. But many of O'Connell's Parliamentary following
were mere worthless venal place-hunters, not for a moment to be compared
with the Young Ireland leaders, who believed rather in an uncompromising
fight for Irish nationality than in Irish Members of Parliament being bought
off with good places by a Whig Government, which had already bestowed Civil
Service clerkships and tidewaiterships on the sons of their constituents. The
controversy on this subject became acute when the Whigs returned to office
in 1846, and the final severance between the two sections of the Repeal
Association took place in that year, when the Young Irelanders seceded and
founded the Irish Confederation rather than accept O'Connell's principle that
the winning of Irish liberty was not worth the shedding of one drop of human
blood. It is likely that O'Connell did not literally mean what he said, but
rather that Ireland was not then in a condition successfully to oppose England
by force of arms. Although O'Connell in his later days preached the efficacy
of moral force, in his younger he, too, had believed in physical. He had
extolled Bolivar and declared his wish to imitate him, and Bolivar freed his
country by fighting. A certain passage, too, in Fitzpatrick's Sham Squire*
shows, if well founded, that O'Connell when a young man of twenty-three was

* Pp. 313-314.

792 FROM THE UNION TO

more than half disposed to throw in his lot with the United Irish insurgents
in Dublin in 1798. But age had tempered his fervour, and he foresaw more
clearly than the Young Ireland leaders themselves that their principles would
hurry them into a futile revolutionary attempt. They did not think so at the
time, for at this period the only revolutionist among them was John Mitchel.

In 1845, 1846, and 1847, Ireland was passing through such a dreadful
period of calamity that political dissensions could not be thought of. The
potato had long been the staple food of the Irish people. This vegetable
yielded a good crop and suited the soil and climate. It had often failed
partially before. But there was a bad failure in 1845. The blight appeared
and there was great distress. Even at this early period O'Connell advocated
the prohibition of the export of food from Ireland ; for, extraordinary as it
7iiay appear, there was plenty of food in the country, although the people
were starving. John Mitchel always maintained that the Famine in Ireland
was artificial. But the fault was with the Irish land system, the source of so
many of the economic calamities of Ireland. The price of the exported food
had to be paid to the landlords. O'Connell advocated tenant-right, but he
was far in advance of the British Government of that time. All through the
dreadful Famine years the Government relief measures were ineffective, and
this was largely due to the fact that a change of Government took place in
the very middle of the period. O'Connell wished the Corn Laws to be sus-
pended and the Irish ports thrown open for the import of provisions. The
English Protectionists, members themselves of the Conservative Party, of
which Peel, the Prime Minister, a Free Trader, was leader, denied that there
was any danger of famine, for they thought that such an acknowledgment
would only help their opponents, the Free Traders. Thus Peel's hands were
tied and the people of Ireland starved. The Government of Peel's successor
only began to take satisfactory measures for relief as soon as the Famine was
over and millions of the Irish people had been sacrificed.

In a single night early in August, 1846, the potato crop was blighted as in
the previous year, only more completely. Fever followed famine, and death and
degradation accompanied both. The public soup-kitchens, the recently erected
workhouses were the only refuge of many, but for the majority there was no
refuge and no hope. When infectious disease had supplemented hunger,
many of the friends of the unfortunate deserted them. Then the hideous
trap-coffin or hinge-coffin was seen at work, by so much did the dead exceed
the living in number. This was a coffin in which the corpse was carried to
buriiil, but which, instead of still enclosing the corpse, was brought away
from the coffinless grave to convey thither hundreds of other departed victims
of the Famine and the typhus. The English Government come out very badly
in the history of the Famine, but not the English people. With characteristic
benevolence private individuals in England subscribed enormous sums of
money to relieve the distress in Ireland. So did many in other countries.
But these generous gifts, which it was hard for a brave and a high-spirited

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 793

nation to be obliged to accept, could not counterbalance the miseries and the
irreparable losses to Ireland caused by a Famine of which the iniquitous Irish
land system was the chief if not the only cause. Wholesale evictions, incre-
dible as it may appear, took place in those years. But, worst of all, famine
and eviction produced that nation-killing emigration which still goes on. The
population of Ireland in 1841 was over eight millions. In 1845 it cannot
have been far from nine millions. Now it is under four millions. This is
the saddest fact which must be chronicled in the history of Ireland in the
nineteenth century. The emigration is worse than the Famine. For the
Famine is over long ago, but the emigration continues. An alien Govern-
ment and bad land laws have produced both.

O'Comiell made a masterly speech in the House of Commons on the 3rd of
April, 18-16, showing the outrageous condition of the Irish land system. But
Peel, insl< ad of reforming that system, brought in a Coercion Bill. On the
25th of May the Bill was defeated, the first and last Coercion Bill for Ireland
ever <!efeated in the British Parliament. This was effected by the junction
of the Whigs and the Protectionists with O'Connell's party. The Whigs wished
to return to power and succeeded. The Protectionists, under Lord George
Bentinck and Mr. Disiaeli, wished to defeat Sir Robert Peel, who advocated
Free Trade, and they succeeded. Peel resigned, and the Whigs returned to
office with Lord John Russell as Prime Minister. The Earl of Bessborough
was sent to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, but he died in the following year,
and w.is succeeded by the Earl of Clarendon. For the first year of this
Ministry Henry Labouchere was Chief Secretary, for the five years following
Sir William Somerville. Lord John Russell, who had denounced Coercion and
jury-packing when out of office, not only employed those weapons now against
his political opponents in Ireland, but even descended to use a lower one
through his Irish Government. It was admitted in cross-examination in 1851
by Lord Clarendon, the Lord Lieutenant, that he had paid one James Birch,
the proprietor of the World, a low black-mailing newspaper published in
Dublin, to traduce the private characters of the Young Ireland leaders. This
admission was made during the hearing of an action brought by Birch in the
Law Courts for the recovery of money which he alleged the Government
owed him. This was even worse than the methods in Ireland of the preceding
Whig Government, which, while openly in friendly alliance with O'Connell,
had, through its Irish officials, opened and read his private letters in the Post
Office. The letters to and from O'Connell and certain other Repealers had
been opened by softening the seals or envelopes by an ingenious application of
steam, then copied, and skilfully re-sealed. All this information as to the
opening of the letters is to be found in a Parliamentary Return of the Session
of 1845.

O'Connell appeared in Parliament for the last time on the 8th of February,
1847. He made a most pathetic appeal to that body to relieve the terrible
sufferings of the Irish people whom he had led and loved so long. The famine,

794 FROM THE UNION TO

the differences in his Repeal Association, domestic trouble, and the malady —
softening of the brain — from which he had been suffering for some time, con-
tributed, together with old age, to break down that marvellous mental and
physical organization for which he had been remarkable in youth, and which
had helped him to win so many triumphs. Physicians recommended him to go
to the south of Europe, and his own piety prompted him to visit Rome. But
he never reached it. He died at Genoa on the 15th of May, 1847, bequeathing
his heart to Rome and his body to Ireland. His funeral took place with
almost regal honours at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, on the 5th of August.
It is a significant token of the bitterness of the differences in the Repeal
Association that the Young Ireland leaders, who had always spoken with
respect of him personally and acknowledged his great services, on expressing
their desire to join the funeral were curtly forbidden by John O'Connell.

Notwithstanding personal failings and faults in policy, O'Connell is, on the
whole, the grandest figure in the Ireland of the nineteenth century. He defeated
the Veto and yet gained Emancipation. He invented popular agitation, the
most effective weapon in Irish politics ever since. His greatest praise must
be that he revived national feeling in Ireland. So long as he retained his
powers he kept alive in the Irish people faith in the efficacy of constitutional
methods. As an orator he was in the first class. Those who listened to his
eloquence were affected by it as they were by no other man's. Nor is this the
testimony of his own fellow-countrymen alone. The great English novelist,
Charles Dickens, in his youth a Parliamentary reporter, declared that he was
on one occasion so overcome by O'Connell's words that he had to throw down
his pencil. He could not report it or do anything but listen to it. The sun
of O'Connell's day seemed to set in gloom, but those who review it now must
admit that there had never been so brilliant a day.

O'Connell's death was virtually the death of the Repeal Association. John
O'Connell tried to keep it alive, but it was scarcely heard of afterwaids save
in the General Election of 1847, when it advocated Whig place-beggars against
the men independent <>f English parties whom the Nation supported. In too
many cases the place-hunters won. The Repeal Association adjourned its
meetings sine die on the 4th of March, 1851.

After O'Connell's death the aggravated horrors of the famine of 1847
gradually drove the Young Ireland party to rebellion. But this had not been
their deliberately adopted programme. In their earlier period they aimed
rather, under Davis's influence, at educating the people and popularizing
national literature. They issued shilling monthly volumes dealing with Irish
history and literature" through James Duffy, a publisher of Dublin. Duffy's
Library of Ireland, as it was called, still maintains its place as the best national
series of books ever issued in Ireland. The subsequent careers of many of the
Young Ireland leaders are the best criterion of their abilities, and must cause
universal regret that the services of so gifted a group of men were lost to their
country, owing to misgovernment. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, who had been

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 795

editor of the Nation from its foundation to 1855, when he emigrated to
Australia, afterwards became Prime Minister of Victoria. He died in 1 903,
having reached the great age of eighty-seven, and was accorded the honour of
a splendid public funeral in Dublin. Thomas Darcy M'Gee, poet, historian,
and orator, and excellent in all three, Avas a member of the Ministry of the
newly-formed Dominion of Canada. His career after 1848 in America presents
singular points of resemblance to that of John Boyle O'Keilly, who took part
in the later Fenian insurrection. O'Reilly did not die a natural death, nor
did M'Gee. but the latter's death was incomparably sadder. Early in the
morning of the 7th of April, 1868, when walking to his home in the streets
of Ottawa he was shot dead by one Whelan, who was executed for it.
Whelan was a member of the Fenian Brotherhood, to which M'Gee was
opposed, but the crime had never been ordered or sanctioned by the
Fenians. Thomas Francis Meagher, a most eloquent Young Irelander,
whose father, a Waterford merchant, was an Old Ireland Repeal Member
of Parliament — and this difference of opinion between father and son
was not uncommon in Ireland then — after bravely leading an Irish Brigade on
the Federal side in the great American Civil War of 1861-5, became Governor
of Montana, and was accidentally drowned in the Missouri in 1867. Richard
O'Gorman the younger, who was engaged in the insurrection and had to leave
Ireland, became a judge in the United States. His father, the elder Richard
O'Gorman, a wealthy Dublin merchant, although he joined the Young
Irelanders and left the Repeal Association, did not approve of the attempt at
insurrection. William Smith O'Brien, the leader of the party, was allowed to
return from his Australian exile, and died at Bangor, in Wales, in 1864.
Some of his children and grandchildren have been distinguished for their
talents. His statue was erected on O'Connell Bridge, Dublin, a few years
after his death. John Mitchel, the greatest writer and the most irreconcilable
and sincere rebel of all Young Ireland, escaped from imprisonment in Tasmania
and went to the United States, from which he returned to Ireland in 1875,
after twenty-seven years' exile, only to die. He had just been elected member
for Tipperary, and his election caused a legal difficulty as he was an unpardoned
felon. His high-minded brother-in-law, John Martin, died a few days after-
wards. John Blake Dillon, one of the founders of the Nation, father of the
present Mr. John Dillon, took part in the insurrection, and escaped to the
United States disguised as a Catholic clergyman. He returned to Ireland,
was an alderman of Dublin, and died member for Tipperary in 1866. Richard
Dalton Williams, a poet of great merit, settled like Mitchel in the Southern
States. He died in Louisiana in 1862. Michael Doheny, an able orator and
writer, died in the United States in the same year. Kevin Izod O'Doherty
and his wife, formerly Miss Kelly from Gal way, but better known as " Eva,"
one of the seditious poetesses of the Nation, Avere still alive in Australia until
recently. He died in the summer of 1905, and his widow is the last survivor
of Young Ireland.

796 FROM THE UNION TO

There were other writers on the Nation who were rather literary men than
politicians. James Clarence Mangan, a man of rare poetical genius; Denis
Florence M'Carthy, who was scarcely inferior to him; Sir Samuel Ferguson,
an Antrim Presbyterian, who reproduced in English verse the very soul of
Gaelic poetry ; John O'Hagan, afterwards a judge, but once a very seditious
poet , always a man of the greatest literary culture ; Thomas M'!N"evin, who
brought out an excellent edition of the Trials of the United Irishmen ; Father
Meehan, Dublin curate and literary man for over half a century ; last, but not
least, John Kells Ingram, who is still living, Fellow, and ultimately Vice-
Provost of Trinity College, who contributed to the Nation in its earliest days
the best Irish rebel poem ever written, Who fears to speak of '98. There were
some poetesses, too. whose contributions to the Nation became famous. Besides
" Eva " (Mrs. O'Doherty), there was " Mary" who was Miss Downing, a Cork
lady, who afterwards became a nun. Above all there was " Speranza," Miss
Elgee, better known afterwards as Lady Wilde. She married in 1851 Dr.
aflerwards Sir William Wilde, who was eminent both in literature and medi-
cine. Their two sons were very gifted, and the younger especially was a man
of real genius. In 1848 Speranza's burning verse and no less burning prose
were amongst the best and boldest in the Nation. A leading article from that
paper was read aloud in court during the trial of its editor, Gavan Duffy.
She stood up and avowed its authorship. She died amid great sorrows in 1896.

The horrors of the Famine, the fever, and the evictions had driven some of
the Irish Confederation to the opinion that there was no hope save in insurrec-
tion. Foremost amongst them was John Mitchel. Mitchel was born in 1815
at Duugiven, Co. Derry, where his father was a Unitarian minister. While
he was still a child the family removed to County Down. He was educated
at Trinity College, and soon became a member of O'Connell's Repeal Associa-
tion, from which he seceded with the other Young Irelanders. On the death
of Thomas Davis in September 1845, Mitchel was invited to take his place on
the Nation. In the end of 1847, when he began to advocate resistance by
force, he was obliged to leave the Nation, as its conductors, Duffy, Dillon, and
M'Gee did not approve of his views. There was a debate on the subject in
the Confederation, and it is curious, in view of later events, to note that the
principal opponents of Mitchel's gospel of force were Smith O'Brien, Meagher,
Dillon, Duffy, M'Gee, O'Gorman, Doheny, Williams, and O'Doherty, all of
whom took part in the attempted insurrection a few months later, either by
actually joining in it or advocating it in the press. Mitchel thereupon started
the United Irishman, and openly preached revolution. He was the successor
of Robert Emmet and the predecessor of the Fenians. He recommended
barricades, the throwing of broken bottles, and even of vitriol. Those who
condemn the desperate counsels of Mitchel should remember the desperate
plight of his country. It is perfectly wonderful, nevertheless, that the Govern-
ment should have allowed his paper to last three months. He was soon helped
in his advocacy by events outside Ireland. A wave of revolution swept over all

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 797

the countries of Europe in 1848. In many countries it was successful in
getting rid of the old order of things. This was notably the case in France
where Louis Philippe, the self-styled King of the French, the Citizen King,
who had risen to power by the revolution of 1830 which swept away the elder
branch of his family, found himself swept away in his turn, and a Eepublic
established. This Kepublic did not last long, for in a few months Louis
Napoleon Buonaparte was elected President, and managed, like his illustrious
uncle half a century earlier, to seize the imperial power as Napoleon III.
But while the Eepublic lasted the Irish confederates fraternized with it
as the United Irishmen had done with the first French Republic of the
great Revolution. All Young Ireland at once came over to Mitchel's view?,
and regarded a revolution as quite feasible. O'Brien and Meagher went
to Paris to interview M. Lamartine, best known as a poet, who was the
first President. Parliament passed rapidly a new Coercion Act by which
writing or speaking incitements to rebellion in Ireland was made treason-
felony, punishable by transportation. Mitchel, O'Brien, and Meagher were
arrested. The juries which tried the two latter were not packed com-
pletely and disagreed, and the prisoners were discharged. But Mitchel was
tried under the new Act. The jury was packed, and the prisoner, though
defended by the eminent and venerable Robert Holmes, brother-in-law of
Robert Emmet, was of course convicted and sentenced to fourteen years'
transportation. The Government apprehended an attempt at rescue, for
Mitchel's determination and single-minded honesty had won all hearts. But
none was made, and Mitchel was transported, first to Bermuda, then to South
Africa, and ultimately to Tasmania, from which he escaped to the United
States in 1853. His prison experiences may be read in his very interesting
Jail Journal. Like his contemporary, Duffy, he wrote, but from a much more
extreme standpoint, the history of the Young Ireland movement in The Last
Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps). Even the most violent of Mitchel's opponents
must admit that this book gives proof of a literary style which has rarely been
equalled.

The Untied Irishman soon had successors, for the friends of Mitchel not
only shared his views, but had the warmest personal admiration and sympathy
for him. A fortnight after Mitchel's trial O'Doherty and Williams started the
Irish Tribune, and in another fortnight John Martin began to publish the Irish
Felon. Martin was assisted by James Fintan Lalor, a native of the Queen's
County, a very able and original writer, of opinions as extreme as those of
Mitchel. But the Government soon suppressed the Nation, the Tribune and
the Felon, and arrested Duffy, Martin, O'Doherty, and Williams. The Cabinet
determined to forestall the plan of the Confederation, which was to begin the
insurrection after the harvest. Parliament passed an Act suspending the Habeas
Corpus in Ireland, and warrants were issued for the arrest of the principal
members of the Confederate clubs in Dublin and other Irish towns. The editors
were in prison. There were warrants out against O'Brien and Meagher. This

798 FROM THE UNION TO

news reached O'Brien in Wexford County, where he was staying with a friend.
He rapidly betook himself to Tipperary where he was joined by Dillon and
Meagher, Terence Bellew M'Manus, a Young Ireland leader who had been in
mercantile life in Liverpool, and Michael Doheny, who was a native of
Tipp'Tary. Kichard O'Gorman tried to raise the people of Clare and Limerick;
Thomas Devin Keilly and Smith, two Mitchelites, went to Kilkenny. Bu
the attempt was hopeless. Xot only were the people dispirited by the Famin
but the Catholic clergy were opposed to armed insurrection, seeing, no doubt
that under the circumstances it was madness. The only conflict occurred
Ballingarry, where one Captain Trant, who had the warrant for O'Brien'
arrest, was at the head of forty-five police. These barricaded themselves in a
strong stone house called Farraurory. O'Brien and a few hundred e asants
were outside. The police fired, killing two and wounding several. The local
clergyman appeared on the scene and persuaded many to return home. That
evening O'Brien, Meagher, and M'Manus were outlaAVS in the Tipperary
mountains with a few followers. Many of the people were Eepealers of the
old school and did not approve of insurrection. Thus, in the preceding March,
when Mitchel, O'Brien, and Meagher were being entertained at a public
banquet in the city of Limerick, the hall was entered and a great riot raised
by an angry O'Connellite mob because Mitchel had written disrespectfully of
the Liberator's policy. Amongst those wounded at Ballingarry was James
Stephens, a native of Kilkenny, then a very young man, afterwards famous as
the Central Organizer of the Fenian Brotherhood. He succeeded in making
his escape with Doheny who wrote the history of this flight in the Felon's
Track.

O'Brien was arrested at Thurles Railway Station on the 4th of August.
He practically gave himself up. Meagher, with two companions, Leyne and
O'Donoghue, was arrested near Cashel on the 12th. Dillon escaped, as already
mentioned, on a ship sailing from Gahvay to New York. After a few days he
was recognized by another Irish political refugee, Patrick James Smyth, who
happened to have chosen the same vessel. Richard O'Gorman escaped on a
ship sailing from Limerick to Constantinople, and went thence to Algiers.
John O'Mahony, who made an unsuccessful attempt at another rising in
Tipperary a little later, escaped to Paris, where he met Stephens, with whom
he was afterwards associated as a Fenian leader. M'Manus was arrested at
Queenstown on board a ship sailing from Liverpool to America. On the 14th
of August John Martin was sentenced to fourteen years' transportation for
publications in the Irish Felon. The four prisoners, O'Brien, ijeagher,
M'Manus, and Patrick O'Donoghue, were tried for high treason at a Special
Commission in Cloumel. The trials lasted a month, from the 23rd of
September to the 21st of October. They were of course, convicted, and sen-
tenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. It is probable that the Govern-
ment had never any intention of inflicting the barbarous old penalty for high
treason. There was no execution for treason in the. long reign of Queen

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 799

Victoria or in that of her predecessor, William IV. The last execution for
this crime took place in 1820, early in the reign of George IV., when Thistle-
wood, Ings, Brunt, Tidd, and Davidson, the five Cato Street conspirators, were
executed for conspiring to murder the members of the Cabinet of that day.
But had the Government in 1848 been disposed to proceed to extremities,
they would have found it very difficult to do so. A famous old soldier,
General Sir Charles Napier, made public a letter he had received in 1832,
the year of the Reform Act, from one of the political associates of the very
Whigs who formed the Government of 1848 asking the aid of his military
experience in such a project of insurrection by the Whigs as the Young
Irelanders had attempted in Ireland. Napier refused to help the English in-
surrection, but kept the letter, and when he saw the Whig Government trying
the Irish leaders for high treason, made it public in the interests of justice.
Lord John Russell, who had proposed the Reform Bill in 1832, was now
Prime Minister. He was obliged to advise the Queen to commute the sen-
tences, and this was done in the following year, when the four prisoners were
transported for life to Van Diemen's Land or Tasmania. O'Doherty was con-
victed in November, and sentenced to ten years' transportation. Most of the
sentences were subsequently reduced. Williams was acquitted. There were
one or two Catholics on his jury, as on those which tried Duffy. Duffy was
tried twice. In both trials the jury disagreed. After some months in prison
he was at length released, and started the Nation again. M'Manus, Meagher,
and Mitchel escaped from Tasmania to the United States in 1851, 1852, and
1853 respectively.

The Young Irelanders had failed. The evictions and the emigration con-
tinued. An Encumbered Estates Act, passed in 1849, to enable or compel
landlords who were overwhelmed with debt to sell their estates, did not do
much good. Other landlords bought the estates and the bad old system con-
tinued. The Celtic exodus to America was greater than ever. English writers
and statesmen professed to be delighted with this, not foreseeing that thus
was formed the nucleus of the Fenian movement, a much more dangerous
insurrection than that of 1848. Men whose last ideas of English rule had
been associated with famine, disease, and eviction were ready, when the time
came, to use the most violent means of resistance to it.

On the 12th of July, 1849, the worst Orange outrage of the century occurred.
John Mitchel calls it " the predetermined massacre of Dolly's Brae," a place
near Castlewellan, Co. Down. There has been nothing like it since, except,
perhaps, the great Orange riots at Belfast, in 1886, occasioned by the return
to Parliament of Mr. Thomas Sexton as member for that city. It is said
that many Orangemen are reasonable men on every day of the year except the
12th of July. But on that day a spirit of frenzy, prompting the destruction
of their Catholic neighbours, seizes the brethren in Ulster. The day is the
.anniversary of the Battle of Aughrim, or, by the old style of reckoning, of the
Battle of the Boyne ; in both of which battles the Irish Catholics were defeated

800 FROM THE UNION TO

when supporting the lawful Sovereign, who was a Catholic, against the foreign
and usurping Prince of Orange. On this day, in 1849, the brethren assembled
in great numbers at Tollymore Park, the demesne of the Earl of Roden,
an Orange peer, the same who had thrown all the books of his library except
the Bible into a pond in his park during the "New Reformation" in 1827.
One contingent had marched through a Catholic district with Orange banners
and lilies displayed, playing the insulting tune, "Croppies Lie Down." At
Tollymore there was a dinner, some drink, and a speech by Lord Roden. The
Orangemen determined to march back by Dolly's Brae, where they expected
to meet with opposition from Catholics. Lord Roden might have dissuaded
them, but did not try to do so. They went to Dolly's -Brae, accompanied —
incredible as it may seem — by a magistrate, one Beers. The Orangemen, as
usual, were armed; the Catholics, as usual, were not. There were police
present, but their officer actually helped the Orangemen. Many Catholics
were murdered, and most of the houses burned or wrecked. So atrocious Avas
this outrage that Lord Clarendon, the Lord Lieutenant, was obliged to dismiss
Lord Roden and Beers from the Commission of the Peace. But nothing else
was done. Nobody was ever brought to justice for it. There is good evidence
besides that in the alarm of the Young Ireland rebellion in 1848, Orange
officials in the Castle secretly furnished arms to the lodges in Ulster. It is
quite probable that some of the weapons used at Dolly's Brae wsre amongst
those so furnished.

Perhaps this is the most appropriate place to give an account of the rise
and progress of Orangeism, so much heard of in the century following the
Union. The Orange society is said to have been founded after the "Battle
of the Diamond," an affray, or rather massacre, in the County of Armagh, in
1795. About three hundred of the Kildare insurgents who had surrendered
in 179.8 were massacred at the Gibbet Rath on the Curragh, on the 29th of
May, on an order given by General Duff. The regiment selected to perpe-
trate the massacre was an Orange corps known as the Foxhunters, raised and
commanded by the Earl of Roden, father of Lord Roden of Dolly's Brae
notoriety. Three months later, on the 27th of August, this regiment was
amongst those who were ignominiously routed by the French at Castlebar.
Orangeism, which is practically contemporaneous in history with the nine-
teenth century, became strong once more as Emancipation drew near.* The
Duke of Cumberland, brother of the King, who succeeded to the throne of
Hanover on the death of William IV., and would have succeeded to that of
England but for the birth of Queen Victoria, became Grand Master of the

* A toast drunk in the Glaslough Orange Lodge, Co. Monaghan, and overheard by
the Rev. Dr. Murray, of Maynooth, in 1835, ran as follows: "Here's to the little house
in the bog, that's built with the bones of Papishes and thatched with the skins of
priests and O'Connell's head for a chimney. " A good account of the Orangemen of his
native Clones, with a characteristic Orange song, is given by Dr. Murray iu his paper,
A Niijld in an Oramje Lodge, in the Irish Ecclesiastical Miscellany, 1850.

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 801

Orangemen in 1827. In the evidence before a Parliamentary Committee one
Orangeism, in 1835, it was alleged by some witnesses that some of the more
ardent of the brethren had made a plot to seat their Grand Master, the Duke
of Cumberland, on the throne when William IV. should die, to the exclusion
of the Princess Victoria. The first Irish official who showed a disposition
to curb the Ulster Orangemen was Thomas Drummond, the famous Under
Secretary of 1835-40, who was almost as much hated by them as the present
Under Secretary. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's historical works contain a good
account of Orangeism in this period, but the best is Mr. Barry O'Brien's Life
of Drummond. Orange lodges in the army were suppressed then, and it is no
wonder they existed when the Prince of the blood royal, who was next but
one in succession to the throne, was Grand Master. As a rule few Ulster
Protestants of education or standing in the world belong to the Orange
Society. But a few peers and other great landlords find it expedient for
political purposes to accept County Grand Masterships and such offices. It is
probably a sign of better times in Ulster and in Ireland that Lord Kossmore
recently refused to accept the Grand Mastership of Monaghan, and wrote a
sensible letter to the Monaghan Lodges pointing out that the interest of all
Ireland was also the interest of Orangemen. It is remarkable that Orange-
men have always been much more numerous amongst the Episcopalian body than
amongst the Presbyterian. Ulster, the cradle and home of Orangeism, is the
only part of Ireland where it is found in any strength. It has been of no
account in Dublin since the Bottle Riot of 1822. It is most violent in
Belfast and Derry cities, and in the counties of Armagh, Tyrone, Down, and
Fermanagh. Ulster Orangeism has been imported to Australia and Canada,
England and Scotland, where it makes a few recruits of other than Ulster
origin, who adopt it for political purposes. It is a sad circumstance connected
with the history of the Parliamentary Committee on Orangeiem already
mentioned that William Motherwell, a Scottish poet of great genius, author
of Jeanie Morison and other fine poems, is said to have had his death hastened
by chagrin at his failure to answer satisfactorily as a witness before it. He
edited a Tory paper in Paisley, and in an evil hour for himself became a
member of the brotherhood. He was not the right sort of man for the
Orange Society.

When Orangemen turn out on the 12th of July they wear sashes and
sport lilies of the colour of the orange, a fruit of Persian origin, as its name
shows. On this subject of the word Orange the brethren are the victims of a
strange confusion of ideas. The name of their society does not, of course,
come from the name of the fruit, but from Orange, the ancient Arausio, where
the Cimbri defeated the Romans in 105 B.C., a principality in the south-east
of France held by William III. The house of Orange-Nassau still reigns in
Holland. Some Orange processions consist of drumming-parties only, carrying
no other instrument. Those which aspire to be musical play invariably their
own set of party tunes, "The Boyne Water," " The Protestant Boys," "Derry

802 FROM THE UNION TO

Walls," and, most barbarous of all, "Kick the Pope!" In vain did John
Mitchcl remind Orangemen that the Pope serves no writs in Ulster. In vain
did Thomas Moore write conciliatory words to the air of " The Boyne "Water,"
and Thomas Davis to that of "The Protestant Boys." Gerald Griffin and
John Banim did the same good work, but their poems have not improved the
Orangeman, and are probably unknown to him. A man who is ignorant
enough to be an Orangeman is scarcely open to literary influences, as the
following circumstance will show. Sir Samuel Ferguson wrote a satirical
poem, supposed to tell the experience of a Portadown Orangeman who went
up to Dublin Castle to offer the services of the brethren to the Government,
then menaced by Young Ireland. His "conditional loyalty" is well brought
out.* He is loyal as long as he enjoys supremacy or, as he says, " the
Papishes put undher me feet." He has an interview with the Commander-in-
Chief, who asks him doubtingly if he will serve with the loyal Catholics. A
Catholic official of high standing is present. The Orangeman replies that no
loyal Catholics exist, and takes his leave. But he speaks to some Orange
officials, who supply him with arms. He concludes his story by declaring that
if a rebellion should break out he will assist the Government by at once
shooting^ the official he has seen, Sir Thomas Redington, the Under Secretary,
because he is a Catholic ! The Orangemen, not perceiving the irony of the
piece, are said to have deliberately adopted Ferguson's satire as embodying
their real sentiments. Thomas Moore in his Petition of the Orangemen of
Ireland against Catholic Emancipation has wittily summed up the absurd
and intolerant pretensions of Orangeism.f But it is not quite so violent in
Ulster as it was half a century ago, and such a letter as Lord Eossmore's could
scarcely have been written then.

It has been remarked that the Orangemen of Ulster never formed so large
a percentage of the Presbyterian body as of the Protestant. This was to have
been expected from the historical antecedents of the Ulster Presbyterians.
The United Irishmen of Belfast, Antrim, and Down were almost exclusively
Presbyterians. Monroe, who made the brave attempt in Down, in 1798, and
M'Cracken, who did the same in Antrim, were both Presbyterians. Both
paid for their daring with their lives. In 1850 circumstances again brought
the Catholics and Presbyterians into friendly alliance. The League of North
and South, whose history has been ably written by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy,
was founded for the purpose of having tenant-right made law in Ireland.
In Ulster the conditions of holding land were different from those in the
rest of Ireland. "What was called the "Ulster custom" prevailed, that is,

*In 1869, when the Protestant Church was disestablished, Rev. John Flanagan, an
Orange clergyman, threatened that the Queen's crown would be kicked into the Boyne.
t That forming one-seventh, within a few fractions,

Of Ireland's seven millions of hot heads and hearts
We hold it the basest of all base transactions
To keep us from nuird'riug the other six parts.

THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE. 803

the Ulster tenants, unlike those of the other three provinces, had the right of
continuous occupancy at a fair rent. It was the custom rather than the law.
The reason of this favourable system of land tenure in Ulster was that the
tenants, Presbyterian and Protestant, were the descendants of those Scotch
and English settlers who were placed in possession of the land by agreement
in the plantation of Ulster, early in the reign of James I. The chief planters
were called " Undertakers," because they undertook to plant so many settlers
according to the size of the estate granted by James. Most of the great Ulster
landlords, the Abercorns, Conynghams, Downshires, Londocderrys, Ennis-
killens, etc., are descended fioui the Undertakers. These allowed their tenants
the benefit of the Ulster custom in order to induce many Scotch and English
emigrants to settle on their estates. The Ulster tenants, too, in many cases,
unlike those of the other three provinces, were of the same race and religion
as the landlords. But the Famine had hit Ulster hard as well as the rest of
Ireland. As for Irish tenants iu the other provinces, their condition had long
been unenduiable. In April, 1850, a circular, signed by three leading Irish
public men, Frederick Lucas, Dr. Gray, and Mr. M 'Curdy Greer, a Catholic,
a Protestant, and a Presbyterian, announced that a conference of the tenant
societies of the four provinces would be held in Dublin. This conference was
held on the 6th of August, 1850, in the City Assembly House, William Street,
Dublin. It was most representative. The editors of the Dublin Nationalist
organs met those of the Presbyterian Liberal newspapers of Belfast and
Derry. The chair was taken by one of the latter, Dr. M'Knight. One of
the ablest of the Ulster delegates present was James Godkin, a writer of great
authority on Church and Land questions in Ireland. Catholic priests and
Presbyterian ministers were both largely represented. The Tenant League
was founded. Such a coalition had not been seen before in Irish history, if
we except the ruoie desperate one of the United Irishmen in 1798. Few of
the existing Irish members of Parliament weie in the Leaeue. During the
prostration of the Famine period the men who had secured return at the
General Election of 1847 were mere placehunters. The League declared for
"Independent Opposition" o Whigs and Tories both as long as neither would
make tenant-right the law ol the land.

This excellent alliance v. as unfortunately dissolved by a notorious letter
written by the Prime Minister to Dr. Maltby, Bishop of Durham. Pope
Pius IX. in the summer of 1850 had, in consideration of the increase of
Catholicity in England, due principally to Irish immigration, and, in a lesser
degree, to the Oxford movement, restored the diocesan organization of the
Catholic Church in England. He appointed Dr. Wiseman a Cardinal and first
Archbishop of Westminster. The Pope did not institute a Catholic Archbishop
of Canterbury or York, and, indeed, showed no intention of offending Eng-
lish or Protestant susceptibilities. But "No Popery" has always been a cry
founded on unreason. A violent anti-Catholic agitation set in, and Lord John
Russell, on the day before the absuid 5th of November anniversary, wrote

804 FROM THE UNION TO THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE.

his public letter to fan the flame. Guy Fawkes Day, 1850, in London was
such a day as had not been witnessed there since the Titus Gates plot or the
excesses of Lord George Gordon's No Popery mobs of 1780. It is likely that
Lord John Russell, who did not disdain thus to act the part of a Sbaftesbury
in putting himself at the head of a No Popery alarm, in which he probably
did not believe, had in his mind the condition of things in Ireland. If so,
he did the mischief he intended. From that day the Ulster non-Catholic
members withdrew, and the movement was left practically in the hands of the
Irish Nationalist party. The Ulster Catholics were still included in it. It is
a fact, often ignored, that Catholics form almost half the population of Ulster.
But the League of North and South was at an end.

CHAPTER II.

From the Disruption of the Tenant League to the end of the
Century.

HTHE Catholic Tenant Leaguers of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught went
on with their agitation for Tenant Eight notwithstanding Lord John
Russell's threat to introduce legislation against the assumption of titles by
Catholic prelates. The Tenant Leaguers demanded what have since been
known as the three F's — Fixity of Tenure, Free Sale, and Fair Rents. But
many of the place-hunting members returned by Irish constituencies at the
last General Election in 1847, though forced by the pressure of Irish public
opinion to join the Tenant League and advocate its principles, took no
interest whatever in Tenant Right and abhorred Independent Opposition.
They had entered Parliament in order to advance themselves by getting
appointed to places by some English Ministry. How were they to do this if
they pledged themselves to support no Government which failed to grant
Tenant Right] These men welcomed Lord John Russell's letter and his
threat of legislation as affording the pretext for a new agitation which should
swamp the Tenant Right movement.

When Parliament met for the Session of the new year, 1851, Lord Jehn
Russell, the Whig Prime Minister, introduced the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill,
making it penal for a Catholic prelate to assume the title of Bishop of a dio-
cese in the United Kingdom. Although this Bill was supported by the Govern-
ment Whig party, it received only a half-hearted support from Disraeli and
the Protectionist wing of the Tory party. They did not care much about it.
After all it was not their Bill. The Peelite or Free Trade section were
actually opposed to the Bill. The principal members of this group since the
death of Sir Robert Peel, in 1850, were the Earl of Aberdeen, William Ewart
Gladstone, Sidney Herbert, and Sir James Graham. The last-named gentle-
man had been a member of Earl Grey's Liberal Reform Ministry of 1832.
Gladstone and Herbert were afterwards members of a Liberal Cabinet, and
the former was destined to be the most successful leader the Liberal party
had in the nineteenth century. But the Irish place-hunters of the General
Election of 1847 were the most active opponents of the measure. They
exhausted every effort and fought it clause by clause. In this course they
were applauded and admired by all the Irish Bishops and clergy and most of
the Catholic laity. Only the heads of the Tenant League, Duffy, Moore, and
Lucas, and a few of their followers distrusted their zeal. The Ecclesiastical
Titles Bill applied to Ireland as well as to England, a very riduculous applica-
tion when we consider that the titles of the Catholic Bishops of Ireland had

806 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

never been changed, that they had been officially recognized by the Govern-
ment over and over again, and that there was no allegation, even by Irish
Orangemen or English No Popery men, of recent "Papal Aggression" in Ire-
land. Still the Established Protestant Churches of England and Ireland had
been made one by the Act of Union in 1800, and Lord John Eussell had to
include Ireland. It seemed to many Irishmen that the work of Emancipation
was about to be undone, and that the new liberties of Catholics, granted little
more than a score of years before, were to be taken away. Of course the Bill
was passed by Parliament in a foolish fit of panic, as many anti-Catholic Bills
have been since the days of Henry YIII. But the openly heroic and secretly
self-seeking Irish members who opposed it became endeared to Irishmen by
the self-assumed title of the Irish Brigade. They impudently borrowed the
name of that famous group of regiments of Irish exiles in the service of
France who, in the hundred years from the Siege of Limerick to the French
Kevolution, had made all Europe and America ring with their prowess.
English politicians and journalists, some of whom no doubt shrewdly dis-
believed in the disinterestedness of the fervour of this group of Irish members,
called them the Pope's Brass Band.

The most brazen member of this band was William Keogh. He had been
called to the Irish Bar, but had not distinguished himself in his profession,
though not for want of talent. He was needy and unscrupulous, and having
become involved in a sea of debt, saw that the only sure expedient for ex-
tricating himself from his difficulties was the profession of patriotism, the
last resource in those days of an Irish barrister who wished to obtain a seat
on the Bench. Political services have always counted very largely in the
appointments to judgeships in Ireland. Keogh managed to secure election for
Athlone in 1847 by a majority of half a dozen votes. He stood as a Peelite,
the English party which did not join the No Popery agitation three years later.
Athlone was one of many small boroughs in Ireland which were open to
corrupt influences in elections. They were all abolished as constituencies
by the Reform Act of 1884. Keogh was a most eloquent agitator, but his
name has become quite notorious in Ireland owing to the unprincipled audacity
of his tergiversation.

At the General Election of 1847 John Sadleir, the other great leader of
the Brass Band, had been returned for Carlow, a borough even smaller than
Athlone. Sadleir, originally a solicitor, had gone to London and adopted the
calling of Parliamentary agent. He thus became acquainted with the
financial condition of Ireland, and ultimately became a professional financier.
He helped the Tipperary Joint Stock Bank, started by his brother James in
his native county, an enterprise largely availed of by the farmers of the south
of Ireland. He invested the deposits of this in English and foreign specula-
tions, the East Kent Railway, the Rome and Frascati Railway, and a Swiss
railway, and was appointed chairman of the London and County Joint Stock
Bank. "The repute of his wealth, the extent of his influence, above all*

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 807

the worship of bis success was on every lip. Whatever he took in hand
succeeded ; whatever he touched turned into gold."* He was a man of
reserved and taciturn character and poor health, quite unlike the convivial
and audacious Keogh. He had managed to have two of his cousins elected
for Irish constituencies. His party consisted of about eight or nine members,
some of whom were indebted to him for pecuniary assistance.

On Tuesday, the 19th of August, 1851, a great meeting was held in the
Rotunda, Dublin, to protest against the Titles Act, which had just been
passed, and to inaugurate a Catholic Defence Association. The chairman
was the Most Rev. Paul Cullen, who had in the previous year been appointed
Archbishop of Armagh ; he had passed the greater part of his life in Rome
as President and Professor in the Irish College. On the 2nd of April, 1852,
he was elected Archbishop of Dublin by the clergy on the decease of Dr.
Murray, and he was also appointed Papal Legate by Pius IX. Fourteen
years later he was appointed Cardinal. His appointment as Papal
Legate gave him great authority over the clergy and the Catholic Church
in Ireland. At the Rotunda meeting Keogh was the principal speaker,
and he made a great point by addressing Dr. Cullen as Archbishop of
Armagh in spite of the Act. On the 28th of October Keogh was enter-
tained at a banquet by his constituents in Athlone, where he extravagantly
flattered Dr. M'Hale, Archbishop of Tuam, who was present. At this
banquet he solemnly declared that he would support no English party —
Whig, Tory, or Peelite — which did not undertake to repeal the Ecclesiastical
Titles Act and to grant Tenant Right. About this time Sadleir, with a part
of the enormous fortune he then possessed, started a Catholic weekly paper in
Dublin, to be sold at half the price of the existing Catholic weeklies, the
Nation and the Tablet, which still preached distrust and disbelief in the
banker and Keogh and their party. The new journal was called the Weekly
Telegraph, and was entrusted to the editorship of William Bernard MacCabe,
a Dublin journalist and author of pre-eminent ability.

In February 1852 Lord John Russell and the Whig Ministry resigned, having
been defeated on a Militia Bill by a combination of some of their own party under
Lord Palmerston with the Conservatives. The latter party took office with
the Earl of Derby as Premier. He announced that Parliament would be dis-
solved in the summer. Dr. Maurice Power, a Sadleirite, who had succeeded
to the vacancy in the representation of County Cork caused by the death of
O'Connell, was offered and accepted office as Governor of St. Lucia. Duffy,
Lucas, and the other Tenant Leaguers declared that the appointment of Power
to office was but an ominous prelude to the appointment of his leaders. A

* A. M. Sullivan, New Ireland, p. 157. Readers of Dickers Little Dorrit, in which
John Sadleir figures as Mr. Merdle, will note the close resemblance of the above description
to that of Mr. Merdle by Dickens. John Sadleir has also appeared in fiction as Daven-
port Dunn in Lever's novel bearing that title.

808 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

cousin of John Sadleir presented himself as a candidate for the vacant seat.
Keogh went down to support him with his ready and fluent tongue. But the
occasion of this election had filled the Cork people with doubt of the Sadleirite
party. At a meeting in Cork City on the 8th of March, McCarthy Downing,
afterwards Member for Cork, openly accused Keogh and his fellows of not
being genuine advocates of Tenant Eight. Keogh replied with extraordinary
vehemence, not scrupling to finish the repetition of his pledges with the words,
"So help me God !" the usual termination of the oath in a court of justice.
But his was the vehemence of insincerity. His audience was naturally un-
willing to believe this, and they applauded him enthusiastically.

The General Election took place in July. In Ireland the Catholic
Defenders, as the Sadleirite party called themselves, were all obliged to take
the Tenant Right pledge. Of this party John Sadleir and his three relatives
were re-elected. So was Keogh in Athlone. John Sadleir's brother James
was elected in Tipperary. Of the genuine Tenant Leaguers of 1850 it may be
said that they were victorious everywhere except in Monaghan where Dr.,
afterwards Sir John Gray of the Freeman's Journal was defeated. Frederick
Lucas was elected for Meath, Duffy of the Nation for New Ross, John
Francis Maguire, the able and honest editor of the Cork Examiner, for Dun-
garvan, and George Henry Moore was re-elected for Mayo. Lucas, the founder
of the Tablet, was an Englishman. Originally a Quaker, he had become a
Catholic, and with the religion of the Iiish people he had adopted a sincere
sympathy for them and a desire to right their wrongs. He fought harder for
Tenant Right than many a born Irish Nationalist. George Henry Moore, of
Moore Hall, Co. Mayo, was a man of the greatest ability and eloquence. Al-
though a landlord he was a sincere advocate of Tenant Right. It was a
tradition in his family to support the popular cause, for his uncle had been,
appointed head of the short-lived republican government established in Con-
naught by the French after their success at Castlebar on the 27th of August,
1798. When this government fell a fortnight later, owing to the defeat and
surrender of General Humbert to the Lord Lieutenant, Cornwallis, Moore's
life was spared on condition of his perpetual banishment. In the General
Election of 1852 Isaac Butt was returned for Youghal as a Liberal Conserva-
tive. It was the first time he sat for an Irish constituency. He had previously
represented Harwich for a few months.

In the County of Westmeath Captain William Henry Magan, who stood
as a Sadleirite, was opposed by Sir Richard Leviuge, a Conservative landlord.
Westmeath was a county where landlord oppression had been exceptionally
severe, and where the Ribbon organisation, that terrible Vehmgericht for
righting the wrongs of tenants was proportionately strong. So violent was
this secret retaliatory war even twenty years later that in 1871 a special
Coercion Act was passed for the benefit of Westmeath alone. The town of
Moate, once a prosperous Quaker settlement, on the road from Dublin to
Galway, is situated on the border of Westmeath and the King's County,

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 809

another county noted for the strength of the Ribbon society. Keogh made a
speech in Moate, which is only a few miles from Athlone, his own consti-
tuency. The speech, which was on behalf of Captain Magan, has become
historic. He reminded his hearers that in the coming winter the days would
be short and the nights long. "And then," said he, "let every one remember
who voted for Sir Richard Levinge !"

On the 8th of September, a few weeks after the General Election, a con-
ference of Irish members in favour of Tenant Right was held in Dublin.
There were forty members present. A resolution was adopted, with a single
dissentient, that the members returned as Tenant Righlers should hold them-
selves independent of and opposed to all governments which did not make
Tenant Right a cabinet question. The one dissentient was Edmund Burke
Roche, afterwards Lord Fermoy, who shared the representation of Cork County
with Sadleir's cousin.

None of the three existing English parties, Whigs, Peelites, and Conserva-
tives, had been returned by the English electors in sufficient strength to form
a government. A Coalition Cabinet could alone be formed — one consisting of
Peelites and Whig.*. The Irish members pledged to Tenant Right were
between forty and fifty in number. They had the fate of the Ministry and
the fate of Ireland in their hands. If they held firmly to their pledges the
new Government would be obliged, in return for their support, by which alone
it could hold office, to concede Tenant Right, and repeal the Ecclesiastical
Titles Act.

On the 4th of November Parliament met. On the 17th of December the
Conservative Government was defeated by nineteen votes in the Commons.
On the 20th Lord Derby resigned, and the Queen sent for Lord Aberdeen, a
leading Peelite, to form a Government. This he did in the only manner
possible, namely, by a Cabinet composed of Whigs and Peelites. Of the
latter party the Cabinet included the Premier himself, Gladstone, and Sir
James Graham. They had been opposed to the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, and
had never denied the justice of Tenant Right. As regards Gladstone at least
this attitude will be no surprise to readers of Irish history.

Early in January 1853 sad tidings from London became known in Ireland.
Keogh and Sadleir had betrayed their trust. Keogh was made Solicitor-
General for Ireland, Sadleir a Junior Lord of the Treasury. Worse still, their
immediate followers, their newspaper, and even some of the clergy, defended
their action. That it was altogether indefensible will, perhaps, be best shown
by pointing out how extremely improbable it was that this Government would
either legalize Tenant Right or repeal the Ecclesiastical Titles Act without
pressure from the Irish Party. One member of the Cabinet, Lord Palmerston,
the Home Secretary, himself an Irish landlord, was the author of the famous
maxim, " Tenant Right is Landlord Wrong." Another Cabinet Minister, the
Foreign Secretary, was no less a person than Lord John Russell, the author of
the Ecclesiastical Titles Act. It is true that Lord John had never had the

810 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

courage to enforce the Act ; but it was certain that he would be no party to its
repeal, a measure to which Keogb had pledged himself over and over again.
Russell's action in this matter was admirably satirised by Punch which carica-
tured him as "the boy who chalked up 'No Popery,' and then ran away."

The blow of the Keogh-Sadleir betrayal fell most heavily on the unfor-
tunate tenants who had displeased their landlords in the preceding summer
(for this was before the Ballot Act) by voting for the Tenant Right candi-
dates. Now that there was no hope of redress for the tenant or fear of
interference for the landlord, some of the latter began wholesale evictions, a
most cruel political weapon, which has never been heard of in any country
but Ireland.

Duffy, Lucas, and Moore appealed to the Bishops and clergy to condemn
the dishonourable conduct of the once loudly protesting Catholic Defenders.
Dr. MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, Dr. Cantwell, Bishop of Meath, and the
Bishop of Killala spoke out at once in strong condemnation of Keogh and
Sadleir. But the other Bishops did not think it their duty to speak. Some
of the priests took the same view. A few defended the Weekly Telegraph's
idols, but it is probable that most of the Irish clergy nevertheless disapproved
of such a brazen change of front as Keogh had just executed.

Unfortunately Keogh easily secured re-election in Athlone on accepting
office. He received the support of the local Bishop, and besides this powerful
aid he had a valuable auxiliary in the poverty of his constituents, whom he
gratified by his lavish use of his power of nomination to Government clerk-
ships. The sons and nephews of the Athlone voters were appointed to places
in the Civil Service, tidewaiterships in the Customs and other places of this
kind. Keogh made them as far as possible his allies in acceptance of office.

Sadleir was not at first so fortunate as Keogh. Although he, too, had
the support of the local Bishop and some of the clergy, who resented as an
intrusion a visit of Lucas and Moore to Carlow to oppose their candidate, he
was defeated by John Alexander, a Conservative, by a bare half-dozen of
votes. But he went to Sligo, which was vacant, as the last member returned
had just been unseated for bribery. This showed that it was an ideal seat for
the great capitalist, who indeed secured election by a majority of four, as
afterwards appeared, by such means as appraising the suffrage of some of his
supporters at the high figure of £25. But the Parliamentary Committee
which established this decided also that the banker, not so wise as they,
could not possibly have known of such trivial expenditures of his enormous
revenue. The revelations of the Sligo Elector Committee must, therefore,
have burst upon him with shocking force. The borough was disfranchised
with Cashel in 1870.

The Catholic Bishops believed, like O'Connell, that the appointment of
Catholics to high office was most important. As for the Titles Act, there
was no attempt to enforce it. All further mention of it may be dismissed by
stating here that it was quietly repealed in 1871, during Gladstone's first

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 811

Premiership, by Parliament, which was probably heartily ashamed by that
time that it had ever passed it. The Bishops thought, too, that Lord Aber-
deen's Government would be more favourable to the Irish tenants than any
other then likely to be formed. But all this does not undo the benumbing
effect on the people of Ireland of the Keogh-Sadleir betrayal and its tacit
approval by some of the clergy. It discouraged all hope in an Irish Parlia-
mentary party as an effective weapon for Ireland. It made many men take
to Fenianism, the last thing the clergy would have wished. The Papal
Legate, Dr. Cullen, was blamed personally by Duffy, Lucas, Moore, and
their followers for restraining the priests, not only of his own diocese of
Dublin, but of every diocese in Ireland, from supporting the Tenant Eight
movement. Dr. Cullen had a not unnatural distrust of Duffy and the
Nation, even before he returned from Rome to Ireland, which he had left as
a mere boy. We know now that Duffy did not deserve this distrust. But it
is not surprising that Dr. Cullen should have entertained it when we remem-
ber that Young Ireland had at one time sympathized with Young Italy, not
to speak of the French Eepublic of Louis Blanc and of Victor Hugo. The
Nation had at one time warmly praised Mazzini and the Carbonari, from
whose spoliation during the "Roman Republic" of the Triumvirate in 1849,
after Pius IX. had fled from the city to Gaeta, Dr. Cullen had been able to
save the College of the Propaganda only by the timely assistance of the
United States Minister. It is true that Duffy, as soon as he saw the anti-
Catholic spirit of Mazzini and his associates, publicly and emphatically
abandoned all support of him ; but it was most unfortunate that he had ever
commended him. It is not very surprising, therefore, that the honest
Frederick Lucas, who was deputed by his brother Tenant Leaguers, Duffy,
Moore, and the rest to go to Rome and appeal against the Legate, Dr. Cullen,
should have met with little encouragement. Lucas, without receiving any
decisive answer, returned to England, and died at Staines, on the 22nd of
October, 1855. Duffy took an active part in the Session of 1854, in the
framing of an Act conferring autonomy on the Australian colonies. On the
6th of November, 1855, a fortnight after Lucas's death, he sailed for Australia.
In this new land of his adoption, for which he had abandoned Ireland, he took
a prominent part in administering the Act he had helped to pass, and after-
wards became Prime Minister of Victoria.

The honest Tenant League leaders had done their best. They were
betrayed Jand they failed. It is now necessary to trace the careers of the
two leading pledge-breakers subsequent to their re-election. The Irish Con-
servative press denounced Keogh's appointment as Solicitor-General on the
ground of Jiis notorious speech at Moate. The Dublin Evening Mail declared
that to name him one of the Queen's Law Officers was an insult to Her
Majesty. On the 10th of June the Marquess of Westmeath drew attention
to the speech in the House of Lords. He quoted the incitement to murder
those who voted for Sir Richard Levinge. The Ministerial speakers tried to

812 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

make light of it, but the ex-Prime Minister, Lord Derby, observed that the
appointment as a Law Officer of the man who spoke such words ought not to
be treated lightly, and the Earl of Eglintoun, the Viceroy of the late Conser-
vative Government, who was Lord Lieutenant when Keogh made the speech
said that he had " openly recommended assassination."

On that day week there was another debate in the Lords on the same
subject. Several persons of position had written in the meantime declaring
that they heard the words complained of spoken by Keogh. It was known
that a constabulary reporter had been sent to the meeting. Lord Westmeath
declared his absolute certainty that the report of that constable would be
found on the table of the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of St. Germans, if he
liked to look for it. The Government representative, the Duke of Newcastle,
merely produced a letter from Keogh in which he said he had no recollection
of having used the words. Keogh sent also a letter from a friend, who said
that he attended the meeting. Keogh's friend's convenient memory enabled
him to assert, in the teeth of the evidence of all others who were present, that
no such words had been used. Still the Lords were not convinced. Lord
Eglintoun produced a letter from a magistrate stating that "twenty gentle-
men of independence and station," who were present on the occasion, were
ready to testify "on oath" to the use of the words. Lord Eglintoun summed
up his speech by saying that when Mr. Keogh's speech was brought under his
notice as Lord Lieutenant he little expected that the speaker would so soon have
become Solicitor-General for Ireland. His last words were : " But I confess
that during the whole time I was in Ireland, no words were brought to me
which, in my opinion, so distinctly recommended assassination."

Keogh attempted a counterstroke to this debate by asserting that the
Conservative leaders had offered him office. This was at once denied by
Lord Naa?, who had been Chief Secretary in the late Conservative Govern-
ment, as he was twice afterwards. He is better known in history as the Earl
of Mayo, who was unfortunately assassinated in 1872 in India, where he had
been an unusually able and successful Governor-General. When Lord Naas
demanded that Keogh should produce some proof of his statement, the latter
brought forward the timely testimony of another friend of his, one Edmund
O'Flaherty, whose name must soon be mentioned again. Keogh said O'Flaherty
was "a gentleman of honour, veracity, and high character." But posterity
will probably believe that the testimony of Lord Xaas outweighs the united
evidence of Keogh and O'Flaherty. Keogh's next public act would seem to
show that if the Tories had really made overtures to him he would have met
them more than half way. Whether they ever offered office to him or not, he
proved that he was superior to subtle distinctions of political parties. When
the Peelite Premier, Lord Aberdeen, resigned office early in 1855, to be re-
placed by the Whig, Lord Palmers ton, the same course was adopted by the
other members of the Government who were Peelites, the party to which
Keogh avowedly belonged and which had appointed him first to office.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 813

Amongst others Brewster, the Irish Attorney-General, thought it necessary to
resign his office. Not so Keogh. He at once stepped into the Attorney-
Generalship.*

Sadleir weathered the storm successfully in Sligo, where he was elected.
But disaster came to him from Carlow, where he was defeated. Sadleir, like
other candidates of that day, was the creditor of many a voter. The advan-
tages of such a custom are obvious. If an insolvent voter showed any ill-
timed independence on the polling day he could be sent to the Marshalsea in
Dublin. Sadleir's Tipperary Bank had a branch in Carlow, through which
such loans to voters were made. One Edward Dowling, who was suspected
of intending to vote for Sadleir's opponent, Clayton Browne, at the General
Election of 1852, had been arrested for debt on the morning of the 12th of July,
the nomination day, and confined for fourteen months in the Marshalsea. In
November 1853 he took an action for false imprisonment. It was proved
that he had been unlawfully arrested. Sadleir was a witness, and so con-
flicting was the evidence that the jury had to take his word or Bowling's.
They took Bowling's. After this verdict Sadleir was obliged to resign his
lordship of the Treasury in January 1854. He had held it barely a year.

In the following June the public learned with dismay that Edmund
O'Flaherty had just fled from imminent exposure of his dishonesty. At the
time of Keogh and Sadleir's betrayal of the Tenant Eight cause in January
1853 this gentleman, who was a prominent member of their party, though
not a member of Parliament, received the appointment of Commissioner of
Income Tax on its extension to Ireland by Gladstone, Lord Aberdeen's Chan-
cellor of the Excb.equer.-J- It was pretty generally known, too, that O'Flaherty
had conducted the actual negotiation of the betrayal between his leaders and
the Peelite chiefs. Afterwards, as we have seen, he was a useful and timely
witness for Keogh in his contradiction of Lord Naas's denial that the Tories
had offered office to that versatile party office-holder. Now he was gone,
leaving bills in circulation, some bearing forged signatures (amongst them
Keogh's), amounting altogether to about £15,000. There was no doubt that
the signatures were forged. At least Keogh said his wa?.

When Lucas died and Duffy left Ireland Sadleir's triumph seemed com-
plete. But he was even then on the verge of ruin. He was connected with
many ventures. Not only was he directing a bank in Ireland and another in
London, but he speculated largely in iron and was interested in the im-
portation of sugar. He got up a company to exploit the sale of Irish
land, the great, almost the sole asset of his native country. He found
this more attractive than pleading for Tenant Right. He invested in

* A good account of Keogh's political career may be found in A Record of Tr&itorism,
or the Political Life and Adventures of Mr. Justice Keogh. By Mr. T. D. Sullivan.

t Ireland was relieved at the same time of £4,500,000, due to the Consolidated Fund
since the time of the Famine. Gladstone made this relief his plea for imposing the
Income Tax on Ireland.

814 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

English, American, and Continental railways. Many of his speculations
turned out badly. Money was necessary for his schemes. At last he
took to wholesale forgery of title-deeds, conveyances, and bills. Fraud,
as often happens, necessitated more fraud. He was allowed to overdraw his
account with the Tipperary Bank by £200,000. In the middle of February
1856 some of the drafts of that bank were dishonoured at Glyn's. This
brought on the crisis at once. The news spread and there was a run on some
of the branches. Next day there was an announcement that there had been
a mistake, and the drafts were met. If a little money could be raised for the
emergency, the difficulty might be tided over. James Sadleir telegraphed to
John that all would be safe if twenty or thirty thousand pounds were sent
over by Monday. This was received on a Saturday. Sadleir went to one
Wilkinson to apply for money. Not only did Wilkinson refuse to advance
it, but, struck by the desperation of Sadleir's manner, he sent his partner,
Stevens, to Dublin to inquire about the security on which he had already
lent him money. The security was one of the forged title deeds. It is
evident that this start of Stevens for Dublin was a part of the news Sadleir
heard from his friend Norris, a solicitor, who visited him at half-past ten that
Saturday evening. They both agreed that the crash must come. On Monday
the Tipperary Bank must stop payment. Norris left at half-past ten. Sadleir
spent half-an-hour writing a few last letters to his friends, took a small silver
tankard and placed it in his pocket with some poison he had bought early on
that day. When passing through his hall he met his butler, and told him
not to stay up for his return. He went out and closed the door. At that
moment all the clocks of London were proclaiming the hour of midnight. It
was Sunday morning. When the day began to dawn the passers-by on
Hampstead Heath, the great natural terrace which looks down upon London
from the north, noticed a gentleman who was apparently lying asleep. Beside
him was a silver tankard, which had contained the essential oil of almonds. It
was the corpse of John Sadleir, who had taken his own life.

The letters he wrote on the fatal night, as well as some words which fell
from him when Wilkinson refused him the advance, showed the dreadful
plight to which he had brought those who trusted him, and announced his
intention of committing suicide. They disclosed to an astonished public
much of the tragic history of his desperate expedients of forgery and fraud.
They exhibit great remorse. But it was the tardy contrition that comes
too late to the reckless gambler in speculation, whose failure involves the
ruin of thousands of victims. Tipperary people, who had never previously
invested in a bank, but were persuaded to try his, were ruined in hundreds.
Some of them were so primitive and unsophisticated as to think their invest-
ments were actually within the buildings of the branch banks in Thurles,
Tipperary, and other towns. When disabused of this idea they only realized
that they were ruined ; they did not know how. The large number of those
ruined shareholders in the banks, railway, insurance, and other companies

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 815

with which he was connected, may be estimated when it is stated that his
known defalcations two months after his death amounted to £1,250,000.
By that time thousands regretted that he had ever existed, rather than that
he was dead.

Twelve months, almost to the day, after the suicide of Sadleir, his brother
James, who was probably as much victim as accomplice, was expelled the
House of Commons for having fled before charges of fraud.

O'Flaherty absconded, Sadleir died by his own hand, but Keogh, the
intimate friend of both, a greater traitor than either, was made a judge.
This was only six weeks after Sadleir's death. On the 2nd of April, 1856,
the day after the death of an Irish judge, Keogh was advanced to the vacant
seat on the Bench. This ill-timed and much-criticized appointment was
made by Lord Palmerston's Whig Government, on whose inauguration
Keogh had unscrupulously secured the Attorney-Generalship when his own
party, the Peelites, and their Irish Attorney-General resigned.

All this painful episode of the Brass Band,, their betrayal of Ireland, the
shameless success of Keogh, of whom we shall hear again in his judicial
capacity, the tragic fate of his fellows, may appear to occupy a dispropor-
tionate space in this sketch. But their treachery gave a fatal set-back for a
generation to Irish Parliamentary effort. The attempt of Duffy, Lucas, and
Moore was the first serious endeavour to help Ireland by a pledge-bound
Parliamentary party in independent opposition. When this failed a dull
apathy came over the Irish people, eviction and emigration went on apace,
and their offspring, Fenianism, made many converts amongst Irishmen at
home, and even more amongst the millions whom misgovernment had driven
to the United States.

It is a relief to turn aside from the painful history of this sad epoch to
draw attention to the literary career of Thomas Moore, which had just
closed with his life on the 26th of February, 1852. His Irish Melodies, his
satirical political poems, his Irish History, his Life of Lord Edward Fitz-
gerald, his Memoirs of Captain Rock, his Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion,
all related to Ireland. It may be truly said that the works of Moore made
the people of Ireland, their faith, their legends, their character, and their
national history and aspirations, known to the world, just as the works of
Goethe and Schiller about the same time were making Germany known. As
10 the literary merit of his poetry, it is enough to mention the opinion of
Edgar Poe, a critic who was fastidiousness itself. He says Moore is not
sufficiently appreciated on account of the wonderful and almost perfect
workmanship of his poems. The standard of excellence is so high and so
uniform as to blunt its perception by the reader. .

Mention has already been made of the Queen's Colleges. These were
three colleges for university teaching, situated in Belfast, Cork, and Galway,
founded in 1845 by the Government of Sir Robert Peel, which resigned in
the following year. Their original cost was £100,000. They began to

816 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

teach in 1849. As these colleges were constituted on the principle of no
education but secular and no recognition of religion, the Irish people, under
the leadership of O'Connell and their Bishops and clergy, refused to avail
themselves of them. They were also disapproved of by Pope Pius IX. soon
after their institution. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that the
Belfast College, which for the last half century has been practically the
University of the Ulster Presbyterians, was the only one which attained a
fair measure of success. The people of Munster and Connaught, who are
almost exclusively Catholic, never resorted to the others, but the Govern-
ment, from that day to this, has persisted in supporting them generously
with funds, thus maintaining the traditional British policy in Irish education,
to give Irishmen anything but what they want. The Irish Protestants have
Dublin University, but the Irish Catholics, who are four-fifths of the popula-
tion, are expected to resort to that or other institutions where, as Cardinal
Newman has said, at least two branches of knowledge, theology and history,
will be taught erroneously, as Catholics believe. In 1850 the three Queen's
Colleges were formed into a University, the Queen's University, to which a
charter was granted. The degrees, exhibitions, prizes, and examinations of
this University were open to none but students of the three Queen's Colleges.
This regulation was not calculated to ensure great academic efficiency even
in an examining University.

Owing to the temptations held out to brilliant young Catholic Irishmen
by the prizes of the Queen's Colleges, the Bishops determined that an effort
must be made by Catholics themselves to provide a University since the
State would provide none. In 1852, therefore, Pope Pius IX., at the sug-
gestion of Archbishop Cullen, created the Catholic University of Ireland.
It was opened at Stephen's Green, Dublin, on the 3rd of November, 1854.
It was placed under the Rectorship of the most distinguished English-
speaking Catholic then living, Dr., afterwards Cardinal, Newman, who some
nine years before had been received into the Catholic Church, having spent all
his life in Oxford. A staff of Professors, including many famous names, was
appointed. For thirty years it was frequented by Catholic students, aome
of them the ablest men of their time. But it was crippled for want of
funds, and subsisted on the generous offerings made by the heroic and some-
times pathetic efforts of the Irish people to provide out of their poverty an
institution of higher education. In 1866 an attempt was made to obtain a
Supplemental Charter for the Queen's University, allowing it to examine
students like those of the Catholic University outside the Queen's Colleges.
The Senate agreed to it, but it was prevented by an injunction of the Law
Courts obtained by some graduates.* The Catholic University, however,
went bravely on in spite of difficulties until a somewhat better state of
things was created by the foundation in 1880 of the Koyal University.

* The Irish L'n'n; ,-*itij <Juextion. Tht Catholic Case. By the Most Rev. William
J. Wiilah, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin. 1897. Pp. 36 and 37.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 817

The political condition of Ireland from the treason of Keogh and Sadleir
to the outbreak of the Fenian movement in 1865 was very hopeless as
regards any attempt at improving the state of the country. Most of the
members of Parliament sought personal advancement only, usually not in
vain. The Nation alone still maintained that Ireland was a separate
nationality, that Irish tenants ought to be in a more secure position than
that of virtual slavery, and that both these objects could only be secured by
independent Irish members. Shortly after Duffy left Ireland in despair the
Nation came under the control of Alexander Martin Sullivan, one of the
most able, honourable, and eloquent Irishmen of that generation. He had
become connected with the journal a few years before, and was editor until
1876, when it passed into the hands of his brother, Mr. Timothy Daniel
Sullivan, the laureate of the Irish national movement. From the departure
of Duffy to the rise of Butt the brothers Sullivan and the Nation almost
alone kept up some hope in the Irish people that Parliamentary and consti-
tutional agitation might yet effect something for Ireland. This secured for
them the hostility not only of the British Government, whom the existing
state of apathy, despair, eviction, and emigration suited, but also of a section
of their fellow-countrymen, who never doubted their sincerity, but who
believed that such opinions might deter the people from following the only
road to improvement possible in their eyes, that of revolution.

The ideas of the British Government in Ireland at this time may be
gathered by describing those of the most favourable specimen of its Vice-
roys, the Earl of Carlisle, who was Lord Lieutenant from 1855 to 1858, and
again in the second Whig Government of Lord Palmerston from 1859 to
1864. Lord Carlisle had, as Lord Morpeth, been Chief Secretary from 1835
to 1841 in the friendly Melbourne Government, when Druinmond was Under
Secretary. He was well acquainted, therefore, with Ireland when her popu-
lation numbered eight millions. He was an amiable and cultured man, a
good speaker and writer, with a decided bent towards literature. He had
won the Newdigate Prize for English poetry at Oxford in his youth. But
his poetry took a strange turn when, as Viceroy of Ireland, in a phrase
worthy of Homer, he said that Ireland was destined by nature to be " the
mother of flocks and herds," and that emigration was the best thing for the
country. He did not explain how flocks and herds could compensate for the
wholesale disappearance of men and women and the imminent extinction of
a brave and courageous nation, a calamitous process, which might have been
expected to appeal to the sympathies of a man of poetical sentiment. Yet
the same idea runs through all his speeches delivered during both his terms
of office.*

A.t the end of the eighteenth century Irish Nationalists were divided
into two sections, the constitutional, who regarded Henry Grattan as their

*See the Speeches, Lectures, and Poems of the Earl of Carlisle. Collected and
edited by James J. Gaskin, his enthusiastic admirer.

818 FRuM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TKNANT LEAGUE

leader, and the revolutionary, or followers of Tone. Since the debate in the
Irish Confederation early in 1848, when Mitchel advocated revolution and
the other leaders opposed it, Nationalists had been similarly divided. By
far the larger number supported open, constitutional, and Parliamentary
agitation. But there was a minority which still hoped to right Ireland by
insurrection. The despair which ensued after the treacherous acceptance of
office by the chiefs of the Keogh-Sadleir party gave the extreme men their
chance. Two of the insurgents of 1848, whose names have been already
mentioned, James Stephens and John O'Mahony, took refuge in Paris when
that attempt failed. There they became acquainted with Continental revo-
lutionists and their methods. They learned that conspiring was an essential
to an insurrection, and that a start should be made by means of a secret
society. O'Mahony went to America ; Stephens returned to Ireland, and
led an apparently quiet life in Kerry. But he was already engaged in the
very serious responsibility of attempting to redress his country's wrongs by
introducing into Ireland the plan of a secret and oath-bound association, a
weapon which was very powerful for evil although intended for good. The
Crimean War in 1854-6 and the Indian Mutiny in 1857-8 had caused Ire-
land to be comparatively free from the large military force usually kept
there. Stephens thought the moment propitious for his purpose. He
began by founding in Skibbereen the first branch of his new secret association,
the Phoenix Society. In this town he found a young man at the head of the
existing Phoenix Literary Society, one Jeremiah Donovan, whose name has
become known everywhere since as O'Donovan Rossa, who was an eager and
zealous proselyte and promoter of the Stephens policy. Many young men
were sworn in in this town and in those of Bantry, Kenmare, and Killarney.
The Phoenix Society did not extend beyond the south-west angle of Ireland,
portions of the counties of Cork and Kerry. Strange to say, it did not meet
with the approval of John Mitchel, who was then residing in the United
States. As a matter of course it was opposed by the Catholic clergy, like its
successor, the more formidable Fenian Brotherhood, a few years later, for
the Catholic Church disapproves on principle of «11 secret oath-bound associa-
tions, however laudable the political object for which they are formed may
appear. The Nation, as might have been expected, was also hostile. But
in truth the Phoanix Society perished early, nipped in the bud by the usual
fate of Irish political conspiracy, its betrayal by spies and informers. In
December 1858 the Government made a swoop on the conspirators. There
were wholesale arrests in the towns mentioned. But in the ensuing trials
only one prisoner was convicted and sentenced. This was Daniel O'Sullivan,
a National School teacher, who was convicted as usual by a " carefully-
selected " jury in the Kerry Spring Assizes of 1858, and sentenced to ten
years' penal servitude, a sentence subsequently remitted. At the first trial
in Tralee, March 1858, the jury, which was not so thoroughly packed, had dis-
agreed. It is noteworthy that the informer in this case, on whose evidence

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 819

he was convicted, bore the same name as the prisoner. This was Daniel
Sullivan, called Goula, a process-server. By the advice of their friends the
other prisoners pleaded guilty, on the fulfilment of certain conditions by the
Government, and were liberated. Stephens, who was referred to in Gaelic
in the evidence as the Hawk, was well known to have been the founder of
the Phoenix Society. Its history is interesting principally because it was
the beginning of Fenianism in Ireland.

In 1859 an incident occurred which brought the minds of Irishmen back
to the times of the Siege of Limerick and of the Irish Brigade in the service
of France. This was the victory of Magenta in Italy, gained on the 4th of
June over the Austrian forces by the Franco-Irish General, Patrice Maurice
de MacMahon, who was created by Napoleon III. on the field Duke of
Magenta and Marshal of France. His great-grandfather was a member of
an old family in the County of Clare, where the surname M'Mahon is
to this day more numerously represented than any other. This Patrick
MacMahon, who resided in Limerick and fought in the Jacobite War ending
in the second siege of that city, took refuge in France like so many other
Irishmen after the Treaty of Limerick. His great-grandson, the Marshal
Duke of Magenta, had already been honourably distinguished in the Crimean
War, where he took the Malakhoff, and in reply to the request of his chief,
Pe"lissier, to leave it, returned the famous answer, "J'y suis, j'y reste."
The Emperor upheld him in this decision, but created Pelissier Due de
Malakhoff. At Magenta MaeMahon's turn came. His admirers in Ireland,*
who were proud of this success of the descendant of an Irish soldier of the
Siege of Limerick, subscribed a large sum of money and presented him with
•A sword of honour, which he accepted from the Irish deputies, Mr. T. D.
Sullivan and Dr. George Sigerson, having requested the permission of the
Emperor, which was given, says A. M. Sullivan, "in a very marked manner."
The Franco-Irish Marshal's subsequent career is well known. He was
Governor of Algiers for some years. He fought bravely but against over
whelming odds in the Franco-German War of 1870-1. Finally, in the
Republic which was founded after the fall of the Empire in 1870, he was
elected to the high and honourable office of President in 1873, which he
filled until 1879. He died on the 17th of October, 1893.

But another warlike movement in Italy in the following year attracted
more attention in Ireland. This was the threatened invasion of the
Papal States from the north by the armies of King Victor Emmanuel of
Sardinia. His Prime Minister, Count Cavour, continued his schemes for a
Uuited Italy with his master at its head. Napoleon III. with his army had
driven the Austrians from Lombardy at Magenta and Solferino. France
received Nice and Savoy as the price of this, but Sardinia received the

* See Neio Ireland, p. 206. Sullivan tells us that after Magenta "bonfires blazed on
the hills of Clare, the ancient home of his ancestors. His name became a popular
watchword all over the island."

820 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TKNANT LEAGUE

much larger territory of Lombardy. Venetia was surrendered by Austria to
Napoleon III., who instantly handed it over to Sardinia. But Sardinia did
not gain Venetia until 1866, when the Austrians sustained the crushing
defeat of Sadowa at the hands of the Prussians, although at the same time
the Austrians repulsed the Italians at Custozza. The annexation of Venetia
in 1866 was the last step in the Sardinian King's progress to the sovereignty
of all Italy except the altogether indefensible one of annexing the Pope's
territory and Rome itself in 1870, on the 20th of September, when for the
first time for years it might safely be done without fear of interference from
France, where, on the 2nd of September, Napoleon III. had surrendered to
the King of Prussia at Sedan, and on the 4th the present Republic had been
established at Paris. A previous attempt to seize Rome was defeated on the
3rd of November, 1867, at Mentana, by French troops sent by the Emperor,
just as Pius IX. had been restored to Rome in 1850 by the army of Marshal
Oudinot sent by Louis Napoleon, then President, who became Emperor two
years later.

In 1860 all the other annexations of independent States in Italy took
place except the two detailed in the last paragraph, Venetia and the
remnant of the Papal States, for a portion of the latter was seized in
this year. This it was which brought Irishmen into the struggle. They
were comparatively indifferent to the Austrian loss of territory or to the
annexation of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, or Parma, or Modena, or even
to Garibaldi's famous raid, which in this year abolished the ancient Kingdom
of Naples, or, as it was called, of the Two Sicilies. But when it came to
attacking the Pope's territories, Irishmen sent not only addresses and money
to his assistance, but men also. England had for some time been sending
all three to the Pope's opponents. Ireland stood out then among the
nations of the earth, as she does still, for the fervour and genuineness of
her devotion to the Catholic Church and its Head. Alone among the
peoples of the north of Europe she remained firmly attached to the Roman
Church when others fell away in the sixteenth century. She had never
wavered in her Catholicity from that time, and now was the time to give
practical proof of it. About two thousand Irishmen sailed to join the little
army of ten thousand which the brave Frenchman, de Lamoriciere, had
assembled to defend the northern frontier of the Papal States. They fought
unsuccessfully but bravely. The Sardinian General, Brignone, who com-
manded at the capture of Spoleto on the 17th of September, may be cited
as one of the eulogists of their courage and determination, as well as their
own commander, Lamoriciere, who testifies to the bravery of the Irish at
Perugia, at the decisive battle of Castelfidardo, on the 18th of September,
and during the siege of Ancona, which fell on the 29th. His praise of the
Irish is in striking contrast to his censure of some of the other troops under
his command. The Irish soldiers of the Pope received a very warm wel-
come home when they landed at Cork on the 3rd of November, 1860.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 821

The English, as has been mentioned already, were conspicuous for their
sympathy with the anti-Papal Italians. The Prime Minister, Lord Palmers-
ton, was in sympathy with most European revolutionists. In 1845 Sir
James Graham was severely taken to task for opening certain letters which
passed through the English Post Office from Italians named Bandiera to
Giuseppe Mazzini, the principal leader of the Italian Revolution. Englishmen
did not show the least indignation when it was acknowledged on the same
occasion that the private letters of O'Connell and other Irish leaders had
been opened for years in the Irish Post Office by direction of the Government.
Besides Lord Palmerston, another English public man who was quite
notorious for his advocacy of Italian revolution was Earl, formerly Lord
John, Russell, who offered Pius IX. a residence in Malta in 1862, which was
declined as a matter of course. Earl Russell's motives for doing this may be
guessed when one remembers his patronage of the No Popery cry in 1850
and his Ecclesiastical Titles Act. Gladstone became famous for his denuncia-
tions of King Bomba, as Ferdinand II. the last King of Naples but one was
called. Another Liberal Minister, James Stansfeld, was even more violent
as a pro-Italian, and was obliged to resign his office in the Government
because of his connection with Italian revolutionists who, in 1864, conspired
against the life of Napoleon III. The Earl of Ellenborough was prominent
in raising active assistance for the Sardinians. Much of this feeling in
England was probably a genuine sympathy with alleged oppressed nationality,
which, not being Irish, might safely create a generous enthusiasm in English-
men, but a good deal of it in regard to the Papal States was certainly
dictated by Protestant prejudice of the type found in ignorant Orangemen.
Mr. Justin M'Carthy notices this when spaaking of the more than royal re-
ception given to Garibaldi in London in April, 1864. The root of the
tremendous enthusiasm of this ovation lay, as Mr. M'Carthy acutely points
out,* in the belief that Garibaldi was in some kind of rebellion against the
Pope's authority. Hence the Irish were all the more driven to adopt a
diametrically opposite attitude of ardent fidelity to Rome and opposition to the
allies of England. It was very hard too for Irishmen to endure the contempt
and hatred expressed by English public men and journalists for the brave
and generous Fenian leaders when these same Englishmen took under their
enthusiastic patronage all other European revolutionists. Some of the
appeals of English statesmen and journalists for Italian revolutionists were
actually used by Fenian organizers as an argument for the justice and
expediency of an Irish revolution against England. Readers of the works of
English poets and novelists of this time, the Brownings, Dickens, the
Trollopes, Wilkie Collins, and many others, will find that whenever Italy or
Italians enter into the story, an ardent Italianissimo is a kind of demigod.
He is the hero, while the villain, if not a Catholic ecclesiastic, is at least a

* History of Our Own Times, Vol. II., p. 214.

822 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

Catholic lay reactionary, or better still, one who has abandoned the ranks of
the Italian secret revolutionary societies to become an agent of European
governments. The English journalists continued to assert the right of every
nation to select its own government, and the right to determine why, how,
and when such selection should be made. But this was meant to apply to
Italians or any continental or foreign nation oppressed by some power
other than England, in fact to any nation but the Irish. They were under-
stood to be a race apart, and to live under some quite different dispensation.

The changes of Ministry and of English parties in the ten years 1855-65,
did not arouse much interest in Ireland. They meant nothing save that the
Lords Lieutenant and some other high officials were changed. In 1855-8
Palmerston was Premier, the Whigs were in office, and Carlisle was Viceroy.
In 1858-9 the Tories ruled with Derby as Premier and Eglintoun as Viceroy,
both for the second time. In 1859-66 the Whigs were in once more, with
Palmerston as Premier again until his death on the 18th of October, 1865,
when he was succeeded in the Premiership by Earl Russell who went out
with his party in the following year. Under this Government the first
Viceroy was Carlisle again from 1859 until the close of 1864, when he retired
owing to ill-health, and died shortly afterwards. He was succeeded by Lord
Wodehouse who on leaving office with his party in 1866, was created Earl of
Kimberley, and was long a prominent member of the Liberal party. In
1861-5 the Chief Secretary was Sir Kobert Peel, eldest son and successor of
the Prime Minister of that name. This Chief Secretary became quite famous
for his boisterous indiscretion.

Stephens's Phcenix Society appeared to all to be dead, but soon exhibited
the property of the fabled Phcenix by rising again from its ashes. This was
chiefly owing to the fact that it could be managed from the United- States
where the British Government could not reach it. Now was seen the bitter
fruit of the Famine and the consequent evictions and emigrations. In
America the chief was John O'Mahony, who was an Irish scholar and had
translated into English the History of Ireland by Geoffrey Keating, a
Tipperary priest who lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth. It was O'Mahony
who called the organization Fenians after the famous military force so called
in ancient Ireland irom their leader Fionn. Stephens, who, for the first few
years, was in supreme authority over the Irish Fenians, preferred to designate
the home section in Ireland the Irish Republican Brotherhood or I.R.B.
The Fenians in America, who a few years later, were making raids on Canada
and fitting out privateers, confined themselves at first to supplying their Irish
brethren with officers, money, and arms. The supply of the last was so in-
sufficient that the want of them may be said to have been the chief drawback
all through the attempted Fenian insurrection. The Irish Bishops and priests,
too, considered it their duty to oppose the spread of Fenianism, as it came
under the head of those secret societies for subverting established authority
which are all condemned by the Catholic Church, It was on account of its

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 823

being a secret society that the Irish clergy were antagonistic to Fenianism ;
for the bishops and priests of Ireland have over and over again given the
most practical support by influence, speech, and subscription, to all open
movements for the independence or good of their country. Besides the
clergy the majority of Irish lay Catholic Nationalists refused to take part in
the Fenian movement. They were unable to approve of its methods, and
mauy who would have welcomed total separation from England, the avowed
object of the Fenians, did not believe it to be practicable. Englishmen
should take note that the force which kept Fenianism alive was the bitter
hostility to England of the Irish in America who had been driven thither by
British misgovernment, and the bitterer hostility of their children who had
been born there. Exiled Irishmen and their sons were the most anti-English
of all Irishmen. 1847 produced 1867.

But a greater danger to the Fenian Brotherhood than the want of arms
or the opposition of the clergy or of the Nation, or of John Martin, Smith
O'Brien, John Blake Dillon, or any constitutional Nationalist, was the pre-
sence of spies and informers. There were not only weak men in the
organisation, who, to save their own lives or liberties, betrayed their asso-
ciates through timidity or cowardice on the first word of danger or Govern-
ment interference ; there were also base men, of whom the world can
supply a sufficiency for every such emergency, who deliberately adopted the
calling of spies, men who were insensible to the dishonour of such a calling
and only alive to its easily earned emoluments. Readers of the wo/ks of
Madden and Fitzpatrick will remember how the industry and research of
those writers have unearthed the secret records of the Government in 1798,
and published to an astonished posterity the details of the treason not only
of known and open informers, but also of some who went to their graves
unsuspected and were regarded to the last as staunch patriots. Such a one
was Leonard M'Nally, and in the history of Fenianism such a one plainly
would have been the English spy, Thomas Miller Beach, who, as Major Le
Caron, was high in the confidence of the Fenian leaders in America for a
quarter of a century and also in that of his own native Government's Secret
Service. He chose to avow himself at the Times Commission of 1888-9, but
would apparently have remained undetected by his associates but for this
avowal. As the honest and patriotic men in the United Irish Society were
victims who had all along been at the mercy of such men as M'Nally,
Samuel Turner, Magan, Reynolds, Armstrong, M'Gucken, Cockayne, and
informers of a lower grade like Jemmy O'Brien'; so the honest and patriotic
members of the Fenian Brotherhood — and the^ great majority were honest
and patriotic— were all along at the mercy of Pierce Nagle, Talbot, Beach,
Corydon, Keogh, M'Gough, and several others. Talbot was a head
constable in the Irish Constabulary, who of set purpose became a spy. In
this capacity he became involved in, and doubtless stimulated, a conspiracy
amongst some Irish soldiers who were Fenians to deliver up to that body an

824 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

arsenal at Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary. Talbot in due time disclosed the
plot to his official superiors and paymasters, and appeared in the witness-box
against his former associates, whom of course he had intended all along to
betray. They were convicted and sentenced. It was regarded by the Irish
people as a very heinous feature in Talbot's conduct that he pretended to be
a Catholic, which he was not, to obtain the confidence of his victims, who
were. It was even asserted that he had approached the sacraments of the
Catholic Church, a great profanation for one who did not believe in them.
He admitted in the witness-box that he had struck out the prayer for the
Queen from the Catholic prayer-book he was using in order to show the
others the extremity of his republican sentiments. He was mortally wounded
by a shot in North Frederick Street, Dublin, on the night of the llth
of July, 1871, meeting at last with that fate which day and night must
haunt the thoughts of every man who has become publicly known to have
followed his ignoble calling. His death probably caused as little real regret
to his employers as did that of Jemmy O'Brien, the informer of 1798, who
was hanged for murder, and found that the authorities whom he had so
often obliged would not lift a finger to avert his doom, but were almost
undisguisedly gratified at his disappearance. When such men cease to
be useful they become troublesome, as the "Whig Government of Ire-
land in 1848 discovered when Birch, the infamous journalistic black-
mailer, having extracted from them as much as they were willing to give,
exposed to all the world their secret connection with him in an action to
recover more hush-money. But the number of spies and informers who
have fallen victims to the vengeance of their former associates is small
when compared to those who have not, and the undetected and unsuspected
traitors, the ablest and most dangerous class, need evidently have no fear of
such a fate. We know now that such men existed in 1798, and we may
presume that they did in 1865-7. It is also an obvious but essential defect
in all conspiracies that those who are erroneously suspected or believed to
be traitors, are quite as likely to perish by the vengeance of their fellows as
those who are really so.

But the ardent and enthusiastic Fenians, most of whom were young
men, went on with their designs undeterred by such considerations. These
designs received a most powerful impetus from the outbreak of the great
Civil War in the United States. In November, 1860, Abraham Lincoln, an
avowed advocate of the abolition of slavery in the Southern States, was
elected President by the Republican Party, which had been long out of
office. The retiring President, James Buchanan, belonged to the Democratic
Party, which was strong in the South. In consequence of Lincoln's election,
and before his inauguration as President on the 4th of March, 1861, eleven
of the Southern States seceded from the Union in rapid succession and
set up a separate republic. These eleven were South Carolina, Alabama,
Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia (except the western

TO THE KND OF THE CENTURY. 825

portion), Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The new republic was
called the Confederate States of America, and they elected Jefferson Davis
as their President. This act at once brought about the great war, which
raged for the four years 1861-5 with varying fortunes, but ended in the
defeat of the South, the abolition of slavery, and the reunion of all the
States. The large Irish population in America took a prominent part in the
war. One of the ablest of the Northern generals, Philip Sheridan, was son
of a Cavan emigrant. In later years he became Commander-in-Chief of the
United States Army. The Irish, like the rest of the population, usually went
with their States. As most of the Irish were settled in New York and other
Northern States, they were principally found on the side of the victorious
North. There was an Irish Brigade under the command of Thomas Francis
Meagher, the '48 leader, which distinguished itself in the Federal or
Northern Army in many battles, particularly in the capture of Fredericks-
burgh. But there was also a famous Irish Brigade led by Patrick Cleburne
in the service of the Southern States, which made so long and so brave a
struggle against overwhelming odds. John Mitchel, who had settled in
Tennessee, also supported the South, and two of his sons were killed righting
for it. He was perfectly sincere in this, as in all his actions, though it
seemed strange to many of his countrymen that a man of his principles
should be found on the side of negro slavery. But the great importance of
the war, in connection with Fenianism, was that it familiarized so many of
the exiled Irish to the use of arms, to a soldier's life, and to the experience
of real warfare. Thousands of these exiled Irishmen only waited the close
of the Civil War to strike a blow for Ireland. Consequently O'Mahony's
and Stephens's project of enrolling Irish-Americans as Fenians met with an
altogether unexpected success.

Another circumstance proved a great accidental aid to the Fenian
leaders. Terence Bellew M'Manus, the '48 leader, had, as already men-
tioned, escaped in 1851 from imprisonment in Tasmania and settled in San
Francisco. He died there early in 1861, and some months later the pro-
posal was made that his remains should be brought back across America
and the Atlantic and reinterred in Ireland. The project was enthusi-
astically taken up, especially by the Fenian leaders, who made this demon-
stration an occasion for enrolling many Irishmen both in America and at
home. The body reached Ireland on the 30th of October, and was interred
in Glasnevin, Dublin, on Sunday, the 10th of November, attended by an
immense procession which traversed the principal streets of Dublin. One
reason for this great demonstration was that Archbishop Cullen, who knew
what was going on secretly with reference to the use of this funeral as an
opportunity for recruiting for Fenianism, had refused to allow the use of
any church in his diocese for the lying in state of the body. His experiences
of the Mazzinians in Italy as well as the principles of his Church had created in
him a profound distrust of all secret societies and revolutionary movements.

826 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

In November 1863, Stephens, the chief of the Fenians at home, estab-
lished the Irish People as the Fenian organ in the Irish press. It seems
strange that an avowedly secret movement should have courted such a
public development. As will be seen, the staff of this newspaper was, as a
matter of course, utilized by the Government as a place for planting at
least one prominent spy. While the Irish People lasted it was a good
indicator of the exact strength of the movement and of the districts where the
movement was most powerful. The south of Ireland was its chief home, as it
had been its cradle. There were many reasons for this. Munster had suffered
very largely by the famine and the evictions, and had contributed most
largely to the emigration. Besides this the Munster people are physically
the finest in Ireland, and are moreover naturally disposed to come to the front
in any active or military movement. In general the Fenian movement was
stronger in the large cities like Dublin and Cork than in the rural districts.
All large country towns, especially those which were, even in a small way,
industrial centres, contained many Fenians. The great majority of the
Fenians were young men. The Government was not likely to be uninformed
on these points, and the Fenian organ must have unintentionally furnished
it with valuable information. As a literary exponent of revolution in Ire-
land the Irish People was conducted with great ability, and Stephens had
secured the services of some men whose talents were a great help to his
propaganda. Mr. John O'Leary, who is still happily amongst us, and whose
ability and sincerity are acknowledged and admired by all Irish Nationalists,
was the editor-in-chief of the Irish People. Mr. O'Leary is a native of
Tipperary town, was qualified as a physician, and had resided in both France
and America before this time. His principal colleagues were Luby and
Kickham.

Thomas Clarke Luby, also a native of Tipperary, was a Protestant and
nephew of a Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. He had been a
follower of Mitchel in 1848, and had been engaged since that time in
journalism and teaching. Like Tone, Emmett, Davis, Smith O'Brien, and
many others, he had left the ranks of the Ascendency and practically re-
nounced his early connections, to devote himself to what seemed to him the
best course for securing the independence of his country.

Charles Kickham was, perhaps, the ablest writer amongst the Fenians*
and is certainly the most famous. A native of Mullinahone, Co. Tipperary,
he was originally intended for the medical profession. But this intention
had to be relinquished owing to an unfortunate accident which he met with
in his youth, an explosion of the gunpowder in his flask, which seriously
affected both his hearing and his sight. He then took to literature, which
was his proper calling. He was perhaps the ablest writer who has ever
appeared in Ireland of peasant ballads, of that class which by their exquisite
simplicity go direct to the hearts of the people. He was no less felicitous
as a novelist and story-teller, and his Knocknagow, with its masterly delinea-

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 827

tion of the people of his native county, his infinitely pathetic Sally Cavanagh,
or the Untenanted Graves, and his For the Old Land, with other shorter stories
in magazines, not all of which have been republished, may be pointed to as a
proof that he was one of the most truthful and dramatic writers who ever
described Irish life. Sir Charles Duffy rightly classes him with Gerald
Griffin, Banim, and Carleton, and he had some qualities not to be found in
any of these. Kickham was a man of most amiable character, and was
generally esteemed and beloved, even by those of his countrymen who did
not approve of his political opinions. The unmerited suffering which he,
with other Fenian prisoners, underwent in English prisons excited more
indignation in his case probably than in any other.

Another brilliant writer who was a Fenian was John Boyle O'Eeilly. He
was born in 1844 at Dowth Castle on the Boyne, Co. Meath, where his father
was a National School teacher. While still very young he became a journa-
list at Preston, Lancashire. In 1863 he enlisted in a cavalry regiment
quartered at Dublin with the object of gaining over its members to
Fenianism. So extensively and successfully was this part of the Fenian
propaganda carried on that in 1866 most of the regiments quartered in
Ireland were found to be affected by it, and were hastily transferred to
England. O'Reilly was arrested on the 13th of February, 1866, tried by
court-martial for mutiny, convicted, and sentenced on the 9th of July to
be shot, which sentence was afterwards commuted to twenty years' penal
servitude. When he had served about three years of his sentence O'Reilly
escaped, by the help of an Irish priest, the Rev. Patrick M'Cabe, from
the convict settlement in West Australia, and, after many adventures,
succeeded in reaching America. A few years later he went with others on
the ship Catalpa on a successful expedition to rescue other Irish Fenian
prisoners in West Australia. His volume of poems entitled Songs from Southern
Seas appeared in 1873, and his powerful romance Moondyne, describing West
Australia, in 1879. In the United States O'Reilly's sentiments towards
the Catholic Church underwent a great change. Originally like many
Fenians he had been, although a Catholic, partially hostile to it on account
of its condemnation of secret societies and opposition to revolution, but
afterwards became, as editor of the Boston Pilot, a lay defender of the faith.
Twenty years earlier Thomas D'Arcy M'Gee had undergone a similar meta-
morphosis. Having succeeded in making his escape from arrest when the
Government made its swoop on the Young Ireland leaders, M'Gee, who had
been engaged in attempting to raise an insurrection amongst the Irish in
Scotland, continued after he reached the United States to use his rare gifts
as a writer and speaker in a rather unfriendly manner to the Catholic
Church, of which he was a member. This was but a continuation of the
attitude of some of the Young Ireland leaders, who, impatient of 0:Connell's
ardent and militant Catholicism, had actually gone so far as to eulogize Sir
Robert Peel's new scheme of the Queen's Colleges. But M'Gee, after some

828 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

experience of life iu the United States and of the Know-Nothing movement
of 1853-4, came to the conclusion that the Catholic Church was the greatest
force for good in the world, and determined ever after loyally to support it.
This determination he firmly adhered to until his untimely death. Life in
the United States made as earnest a Catholic of O'Reilly as of M'Gee. As
a poet and essayist O'Reilly's works exhibit the greatest literary power, and
in his case too, like M'Gee's, a promising literary career was cut short by
a premature death.*

Having given this account of the literary side of Fenianism it now
becomes necessary to give an account of it as an active insurrectionary
movement.

The most prominent Irishmen of that larger body of Nationalists, which
did not wish to employ revolutionary methods, at the time of the beginning
of the Fenian movement, were Smith O'Brien, John Martin, and John Blake
Dillon, who had been leaders of Young Ireland, A. M. Sullivan, who con-
ducted the Nation, George Henry Moore, of the Tenant Right movement,
and The O'Donoghue, then a young man, lately elected to fill the place in
the representation of Tipperary caused by the expulsion of Sadleir's brother.
The O'Donoghue was grandnephew of the Liberator and representative of
an ancient clan in Kerry ; he was eloquent, talented, of a fine presence, and
a great popular favourite. Stephens did not like the influence wielded by
those leaders. He thought constitutional Nationalism a weakness and a
danger to his plans. Consequently, in the first few years of Fenianism the
leaders showed more hostility to the men who followed O'Connell's political
doctrine of moral force than to the Government, the common enemy of both.
After the failure of the Fenian attempts in 1865 and 1867 many Fenians
adopted a very different course, and, having grown older and presumably
wiser, were glad to throw in their lot with the majority of their country-
men. Thus Michael Davitt became the founder of the Land League ;
Patrick Egan and Thomas Brennan its treasurer and secretary respectively.
Thus many ex-Fenians such as James O'Kelly, James Francis Xavier O'Brien,
James O'Connor, James Lysaght Finegan, John O'Connor Power, John
Barry, Keyes O'Clery, Matthew Harris, Joseph Nolan and others afterwards
became Members of Parliament and identified themselves with open agitation.

* The manner of his death bore a singular resemblance to that of the other able Irish
writer, Halpine, who had died in New York twenty-two years earlier. O'Reilly
died at BosCou in 1890 of an overdose of chloral which he was taking as medicine.
Charles Graham Halpine was son of a Protestant rector in Meath, where he was
born in 1829. His father was also editor of the Dublin Evening Mail. The younger
Halpine settled in the United States, served in the Civil War with distinction, and
afterwards became a journalist in New York. He wrote many humorous poems of
great ability, which he gave to the world as the work of Private Miles O'Reilly, an Irish
soldier of the Federal Army. He died in 1868 of an overdose of chloroform, which he
was in the habit of taking as an opiate.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 829

The Government had information of the spread of Fenianism, but did
not think that the moment for arresting the leaders had arrived. The ful-
ness of time was brought about by the close of the war in America and the
consequences of this to Fenianism as well as by an accidental piece of
information which it acquired through the efforts of one of its spies. On
the 9th of April, 1865, the Southern Commander-in-Chief, General Lee,
surrendered to the Northern, General Grant, at Appomattox Courthouse
in Virginia. Shortly afterwards the Southern, Johnston, surrendered to
the Northern, Sherman, who had completed his devastating march through
Georgia, and the great War was practically over. The regiments were
disbanded in June. Many were largely composed of Irishmen, and one
famous regiment was practically altogether Irish and strongly Fenian
too, the Sixty-ninth New York, whose colonel, Michael Corcoran, was one
of the most prominent Fenian leaders in America. Many brave and intelli-
gent officers, eager to strike a blow for their own country, hastened to
Ireland. One of these, Brigadier-General Millen, came to Dublin to act as
Commander-in-Chief. From France came Cluseret, afterwards a Paris Com-
munist in 1871, and from Italy arrived Fariola. There was little real secrecy
in all these movements. Besides, as will be seen presently, one of Stephens's
trusted subordinates, and not the only one, as was shown in 1867, was supply-
ing the Government with information about the really secret business in
return for Secret Service money, which he had been receiving for over a year.
This was Pierce Nagle, who was employed as a folder in the Irish People
office, and often sent by Stephens on confidential missions.

On Friday, the 8th of September, 1865, Nagle took from the pocket
of an envoy of the South Tipperary Fenian Head Centres, who had
fallen asleep in the newspaper office, a letter addressed to those chiefs by
Stephens, which the messenger was to bring back to Clonmel. Of course, it
never reached its destination, for Nagle handed it to the police. Nagle's
treacherous act had momentous consequences. On the evening of Friday,
the 15th of September, the Government of Lord Wodehouse struck its blow
against the Fenians. On that day a Privy Council was held at the Castle.
The police reports as to the arrival of Irish- American officers, of remittances
of money, of nocturnal drilling, especially in Dublin, were laid before it,
but above all Stephens's letter to the Tipperary Fenians which Nagle had
abstracted. The letter declared that " this year must be the year of action,"
and that the "flag of the Irish republic must this year be raised." A post-
script from " J. Power" (Stephens) declared that the letter was to be read
for the working Bs. only and afterwards burned.

When the letter had been read Lord Wodehouse and the Council deter-
mined to strike at once. The authorities all over Ireland were instructed
by telegraph to make a simultaneous swoop on all known Fenians, particularly
the chiefs, at ten that night. This was done. In less than twenty-four hours
all prominent Fenians were in custody. In Dublin the police, besides seizing

830 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

the type and current number of the Irish People in a raid on the office,
No. 12 Parliament Street, at half-past nine at night, arrested Luby, John
O'Leary, O'Donovan Rossa, and nearly all the chiefs of the movement. But
Stephens was not yet in custody. On that night he was at the house of one
Denneeffe in Denzille Street, giving interviews to his followers and actively
promoting the business of the conspiracy. Mr. James O'Connor, now M.P. for
West Wicklow, then manager of the Irish People, came there, waited his turn
for entering the Central Organizer's room, and told of the seizure of the
paper and the arrests. Stephens rushed out and told the news to the other
Fenians in the house. Of course Nagle, who was present, seemed the most
astounded and the most deeply grieved.

For nearly two months Stephens remained at large. He was living at
Fairfield House, Sandymount, near Dublin. The house is a quiet suburban
residence near a retired and picturesque bridge over the Eiver Dodder. The
road beside the house is called Herbert Koad, from the surname of the Earl
of Pembroke, who is proprietor of the district. Stephens affected no dis-
guise, but lived there as Mr. Herbert, borrowing the name, no doubt, either
from the road or the noble owner. But on the 9th of November his wife
was traced home to the house from the city by female spies, and on the next
evening Stephens was arrested along with Kickham, Brophy, and Duffy, the
last being the chief of the Connaught Fenians. The police found in the
house a large sum of money and a good stock of provisions. The place was
plainly a refuge. The Fenian chiefs had evidently intended to remain there
some time.

Nagle had been arrested after he left Denzille Street on the 15th of
September. The farce of treating him as a rebel and a prisoner was kept up
for a few days ; but when one day he appeared in the witness-box instead
of in the dock and told all he knew of his associates, who had trusted him,
everybody saw what a hopeless position they were in. Nagle appeared
against Stephens, too, but, as will be seen, all the legal proceedings against
Stephens, who was committed for trial on the 15th of November, were
destined to be futile. On the night of the 24th of November he escaped
from Richmond Bridewell, Dublin, once the prison of O'Connell, now a
barrack. He was confined along with his associates, Luby, O'Leary, Kick-
ham, and Rossa, in a separate row of cells, but his door was unlocked at
midnight and he was brought out and helped to scale the wall by two of
the prison officials, Breslin and Byrne, who were sworn members of the
Fenian Brotherhood. A duplicate key from a wax impression had been
manufactured by Michael Lambert, a Dublin Fenian. The escape caused
the Government great consternation. After three months Stephens, who
had been concealed in a house in Kildare Street, and also in that of a poor
widow named Butler in Summer Hill, both in Dublin, escaped from near
Skerries in a lugger, which brought him to France, just as Hamilton
Rowan, the United Irishman, had done about seventy years earlier. A

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 831

reward of £1,000 had been offered by the Government for the recapture
of Stephens.

A Special Commission for the trials of the Fenians sat at Dublin from
the 27th of November, 1865, to the 2nd of February, 1866. At this Com-
mission thirty-six persons were convicted or pleaded guilty. Thomas Clarke
Luby was tried first, and on the 1st of December convicted and sentenced to
twenty years' penal servitude. He was defended by Isaac Butt, but no
forensic skill availed against the evidence of the two Irish People office
informers, Pierce Nagle and Patrick Power, and of a commission from
Stephens found in Luby's house. This document appointed Luby, O'Leary,
and Kickham a triumvirate to govern the Irish Fenians during Stephens's
absence. On the 6th John O'Leary was convicted and also sentenced for
twenty years. On the 7th Michael Moore, who had manufactured pikes for
the Brotherhood, received ten years. On the 9th John Haltigan, the printer
of their newspaper, and also very active in the drilling, received seven. On
the 12th O'Donovan Eossa was sentenced to penal servitude for life, as he
had been concerned also in the Phoenix Conspiracy. Mr. James O'Connor,
now M.P. for West Wicklow, was sentenced for seven years. These sen-
tences were subsequently remitted after a few years and the prisoners
released owing to the exertions of Irishmen in the Amnesty movement. One
of the most painful circumstances about those sentences was that most of them
were inflicted by Mr. Justice Keogh, who had, extraordinary as it may seem,
been selected by the Government to preside at trials for political conspiracy,
although he had become quite notorious for his historic incitement of the
Westmeath Ribbonmen to midnight assassination. Since he had been raised
to the bench he had lost no opportunity of being as offensive as he could to
all who held the opinions, the vehement profession of which had made him
worth buying. It was hard for Irishmen, however much they disagreed
with Fenian methods, to see brave, honourable, and patriotic men sent to
prison by this unprincipled ex-demagogue. So many Irishmen would never
have adopted Fenian principles if his treachery had not created in them a
despair of Parliamentary and open political struggle. Keogh exhibited a
personal animus against some of the prisoners, for the Irish People had often
held him up to the scorn which he deserved.

Stephens gave oint that 1866 was to be the year of action, yet it passed by
without any attempt at insurrection. After this time the Fenians lost confi-
dence in him and the control of the movement passed from his hands and
O'Mahony's into those of others.

In the summer of 1866 Earl Russell's Whig Government resigned and was
succeeded by a Conservative Government which held office for two years. For
the first year and a half Lord Derby was Premier, this being his third tenure of
the office, but during the rest of this Ministry's term of office the Premier was
Benjamin Disraeli, the clever Jewish politician who had become by sheer
unaided ability the leader of the Conservative party. The Lord Lieutenant

832 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

was the Marquess of Abercorn, a great Ulster landlord who, on leaving office
in 1868, was created a duke. This Government passed a Eeform of the Fran-
chise Act for England in 1867, and one for Ireland in 1868. By this Act the
franchise was conferred in boroughs on the occupiers of all houses rated for
relief of the poor, and on lodgers who paid £10 a year or more. In counties
holders and occupiers, whose holding was at least £5 a year in value and £12
a year in rent, received the franchise.

Early in 1867 the Fenians in Ireland determined to make an attempt at
insurrection by their *wn effoits. At a secret council held in Dublin the
12th of February was fixed for the rising. A day or two before this date it
was decided to postpone it to the 5th of March. But the countermand failed
to reach in time the distant district of West Kerry, once the home of
O'Connell. The Fenians of Cahirciveen marched out on the night of the 12th,
but found that no others were assembling at Killarney, and so dispersed to
their homes. But the incident caused great alarm for a time. On the same
day a much more daring attempt was planned by the Dublin and Liverpool
Fenians. The exiled Irish in England had many Fenians in their ranks. It
was decided by M'Cafferty and Flood to attack Chester Castle, which was said
to contain 20,000 stand of arms, and to be held by a mere handful of soldiers.
The day fixed was Monday, the llth of February. The plan was the
extremity of audacity. It was to seize the arms, cut the telegraph wires, seize
the trains also, and send on men and arms to Holyhead. When there they
were to capture all the steamers in port and sail into Dublin before the news
of this daring feat could have reached it. Numbers of Fenians from the
Lancashire towns were seen to come into Chester by the trains that day. But
the authorities had received information from one of five Fenian chiefs, who
were alone cognizant of all the details of the rising in Ireland and England.
This spy bore the classic name of Corydon. He was not, however, a faithful
shepherd, having been long a Secret Service hireling. This fact was so little
suspected by the Fenians that he was, as has been said, one of their chiefs
and thoroughly acquainted with all their plans. Like the spy Nagle, who was,
however, of much inferior standing in the Fenian ranks, Corydon was most
implicitly trusted by Stephens and by all the other Fenian chiefs. He had
served in the American Civil War. According to his own account at the trials
in 1867 he began his career of treachery in September, 1866. He used to
carry dispatches between Stephens in Ireland and O'Mahony in America. He
held a high place at the secret council at which the details of the attack on
Chester Castle were arranged. He instantly brought the news to the Chief
Constable of Liverpool. The guards on Chester Castle were doubled. Troops
arrived in special trains. The Fenians, seeing that some leader had betrayed
them, abandoned the attempt. Those from Lancashire returned by the trains.
The Dublin contingent, a large one, took train and boat. The moment they
reached the North Wall they were arrested and brought to Kilmainham
Gaol.

TO THE EN'D OF THE CENTURY. 833

On the morning of the 5th of March the projected rising took place, but
only in a few districts of Ireland. In Kerry, as we have seeu, it had been
premature. But in all the other counties of Munster, in Dublin, and in
Drogheda, attempts at insurrection were made. The projected details of this
rising, believed by those who took part in it to be a profound secret, were all
well known to the Government through Corydon, who knew and told everything.
When the insurgents saw all too plainly that their betrayal must have been
the work of one of their own leaders, they became utterly disheartened. No
display of military force could have been more effective than this discovery,
for the Fenians did not want for courage, as the rising showed, although their
supply of arms was wofully deficient. Many of the Fenians of Munster were
to have assembled at Limerick Junction Station on the Great Southern Rail-
way, a short distance from the town of Tipperary. Brigadier-General Godfrey
Massey, whose real name was Patrick Condon, and who had served with distinc-
tion in the American Civil War, and was then in Cork, was to take the command.
But when he reached Limerick Junction at midnight before the 5th of March,
he was instantly seized by four detectives with loaded revolvers. The platform
was occupied by soldiers. Massey fainted. He was brought a prisoner to-
Dublin. At the trials a month or six weeks later he appeared as an approver.
His explanation of this very unexpected step on his part was that he perceived
that some one of the most trusted chiefs of the insurrection must have been a
traitor. Of course, this was Corydon, but Massey did not yet know he
was a spy. Massey said that he formed the opinion then that it was better to
reveal all, and so stop an insurrection in which he and many others were merely
the victims of the Government and its spies.

The Junction was occupied by troops and Massey was a prisoner. So ran
the news through the South of Ireland on the morning of the day fixed for the
insurrection. This news practically prevented any organized and united
rising of the Munster Fenians, as it was evidently intended that it should.
Yet there were conflcts in several districts of that province and outside it. In
Dublin, in Drogheda, in Cork, in Kilmallock, in Tipperary attempts were
made in which great bravery was displayed against overwhelming odds, but
there was a poor supply of arms and the result was a foregone conclusion. In
Dublin hundreds of Fenians left the city to meet at Tallaght, at the foot of the
mountains a few miles south of the metropolis. But the Government, apprised
by Corydon of their intention, had already sent soldiers and police thither.
The first Fenians to arrive attacked the police barrack. The police fired. Two
were killed, many were wounded, and the Fenians dispersed. The only
success they had was gained by a party of Fenians marching from Rathmines,
commanded by Patrick Lennon, who captured two police barracks at the foot
of the mountains, Stepaside and Glencullen. They disarmed the police but
did not injure them. Some of the Fenians cut the telegraph wires, too, in
South County Dublin. When the members of the I. R. B. saw that their plan
had been betrayed many tried to escape through the Wicklow Mountains or

834 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

the county of Kildare, but were pursued and captured by parties of cavalry
sent there by Lord Strathnairn, who was then Commander-in-Chief in Ireland.
He is said to have advised the authorities to allow the Fenians to leave the
city, as it was better to deal with the insurrection in the country than in
Dublin. But the great majority of the Fenians attempted to return to Dublin,
which could only be done by crossing the Grand Canal, which separates
Dublin from the southern suburbs. On the bridges hundreds were arrested,
as also were many in the country. One reason why so many sought to re-enter
the city was that the weather was abnormally severe. A snowstorm of
phenomenal violence set in that night all over Ireland, and continued for five
days until the snow lay in some places, such as the hills and mountains near
Tallaght, as much as four feet deep. Many of the unfortunate insurgents fell
victims to the severity of the weather in the Tallaght hills; the troops, of
course, suffered too, but they were better provided with shelter.

The most serious attempt at insurrection was made in the city and county
of Cork. In some places the rails of the Great Southern Railway were torn
up. At Midleton Daly, the Fenian leader, was killed in the conflict with the
police. Many Fenians, one of the leaders of whom was the late James Francis
Xavier O'Brien, left Cork to attempt an insurrection at a place outside the
city. They displayed great courage but were poorly provided with arms, and
ultimately had to desist. In spite of the Limerick Junction failure many
attacks were made on police barracks in the south. There was a sharp conflict
at Castlemartyr, Co. Cork. The police were worsted in some places and their
barracks captured, although in the majority of cases they defended themselves
successfully. One Fenian leader in Cork, Lomasney, who was called Captain
Mackay, attained great celebrity for his courage and determination. He
captured the police barrack at Ballyknockane, near Cork, and treated his
prisoners honourably and humanely. Even after the failure of the insurrection
he remained at large with some of his followers for many months, and on the
27th of December, 1867, a daring exploit of his band made a great noise.
This was nothing less than the seizure of arms in a Martello tower at Fota.
He was arrested on the 7th of February, 1868, and sentenced on the 20th of
March to twelve years' imprisonment, but was released after a shorter period
owing to the efforts of the Irish Amnesty Association.

The most serious individual conflict in the attempted Fenian rising in
1867 occurred at Kilmallock, in the county of Limerick. On the evening
ot the 4th of March, the eve of the day fixed for the projected insurrec-
tion, the police arrested William Henry O'Sullivan, afterwards member for
Co. Limerick, one of the most popular and respected gentlemen in that dis-
trict. As Mr. O'Sullivan was not a member of the Fenian Brotherhood, this
arrest was regarded as an act of wanton injustice and excited great indigna-
tion. This resentment took a very practical form when two hundred
Fenians, early on the morning of the 5th, took possession of the town. The
police, fourteen in number, retreated to their barracks. The Fenians, al-

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 835

though aware that Limerick Junction was held by troops and that Massey
was a prisoner, forthwith commenced a siege and a vigorous fusillade on the
barracks. Many of them went through the town searching the houses for
arms. The honourable character of the Fenian insurgents was strikingly
displayed on this occasion. The most rigorous respect was shown for pri-
vate property. The search for arms included, amongst other houses, two
banks, each containing a large sum of money. Not a penny of this was
interfered with. A sum of £10, however, found in a letter on a captured
police orderly by a contingent from Bruree, was at once confiscated, for this
money was regarded as the property of the Government, and, therefore, law-
ful prize. The conflict went on for three hours until, at ten o'clock, a party
of armed police from Kilfinane arrived on the scene and raised the siege by
attacking the besiegers from behind. In this severe encounter several of
the Fenians were killed, including one who was quite unknown in Kilraal-
lock. The police escaped almost without any loss, as they fought under
cover.

There were some attempts in Tipperary also. But there was no ade-
quate preparation and there was a great insufficiency of arms. Many were
arrested, including the leader, Thomas Francis Burke, also one of Corydon'a
numerous victims. In this county as in all the others the Fenians displayed
the greatest courage and endurance, as was acknowledged by Lord Strath-
nairn, who was principally responsible for the military movements necessary
to meet the attempts at insurrection.

A Special Commission to try the Fenian prisoners opened at Dublin on
the 9th of April. At this Commission Corydon appeared in his true colours
as the principal Crown witness against his long-destined victims. He showed
the most complete acquaintance with all the ramifications of the conspiracy
both in England and Ireland. This was not to be wondered at consider-
ing his exalted position in the Fenian organisation and the confidence
his associates had reposed in him. With the assistance of the minor in-
formers, Keogh and M'Gough, he succeeded in handing over the brave
and unfortunate men who had trusted him to the rigours of penal servi-
tude in English prisons, where they were treated in many cases with an
exceptional severity and even cruelty never bestowed on the murderer and
the burglar.

At this Commission Burke, the Tipperary leader, and Doran were con-
victed of high treason, and were, on the 1st of May, sentenced to death.
So were six others. This sentence was commuted on the 26th to one of
penal servitude for life ; but the prisoners were released, like most of the
Feuians, owing to the exertions of the Amnesty Association. Amongst
the other Fenian prisoners sentenced to death for high treason were James
Francis Xavier O'Brien, and by court-martial John Boyle O'Reilly ; but the
capital sentence was not carried out in the case of any Fenians sentenced
except those who were tried in connection with the Manchester rescue and

836 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

the Clerkenwell explosion. There were as many as two hundred and thirty
Fenians indicted at the Dublin Commission opening on the 9th of April,
1867, of whom some, like Captain John M'Cafferty and M'Clure, were con-
victed of treason and sentenced to death, and many others of treason felony,
the majority on Corydon's evidence. In Limerick the trial of another party
of Fenians began on the llth of June. Many were convicted and sentenced
in July and August.

On the 12th of April, 1867, a party of Irish- American Fenians left New
York for Ireland to assist the insurrection. They sailed in the Jacknell,
which was laden with arms. The principal leaders were Warren and
Costello, who had served as officers on the Federal side in the American
Civil War. On Easter Sunday, the 29th of April, they renamed their vessel
the Erin's Hope. They reached Sligo Bay on the 20th of May, and soon were
informed of the failure of the insurrection, but were advised by their friends to
try to land the arms on the southern coast. After evading for a long time the
Government gunboats, the officers of which had heard of their arrival,
they were at length obliged to land in the middle of June at Helvick Head,
near Dungarvan, owing to want of food and water. A coastguard lookout
observed their landing, and they were arrested. The Government authori-
ties did not for a long time know with certainty what their object was, but
when they had been some weeks in Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, one of their
number named Buckley revealed all to the authorities, and they were tried
at the Dublin November Commission, 1867, along with some other prisoners
who had been engaged in the attempt in March. An important legal point
was raised on these trials. An American citizen, Nagle, was released.
Colonel John Warren, although a native of Cork, was a naturalized American
citizen. Captain Augustine Costello was in the same position. As citizens
of another country they demanded a mixed jury of British and American
citizens ; but this was refused to them, as the British law then maintained
that no British subject can divest himself of his allegiance. Although the
American Government refused to assist the prisoners, it was obliged to
maintain their contention, for the citizens of the United States are very
largely composed of former subjects of Great Britain and other European
countries. Ultimately Great Britain had to alter the law in this matter by
an Act passed in 1870, which provides that a subject may divest himself of
his allegiance. This "Warren and Costello Act" was passed owing to the
contention of these prisoners at their trial three years earlier. But the con-
tention did them little good at the time, for Colonel Warren and Captain
Costello were both convicted of treason felony and sentenced, the former to
fifteen and the latter to twelve years' penal servitude. At the same Com-
mission Halpin, who had been leader in the attempt at Tallaght, near
Dublin, was also sentenced for fifteen years. Corydon, when cross-examined
by Halpin, admitted that he expected a reward of two thousand pounds for
his treachery. But in these cases also the prisoners were released in a few

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 837

years owing to the exertions of the Amnesty Association. It was evidently
only just that some distinction should be drawn between the cases of men
of good character, whose only offence was that they had done the best, as
they believed, for their country, and that of men of bad character, whose
crimes admitted no such excuse.

It has been mentioned that there were many Fenians amongst the Irish in
England. The two most startling incidents of Fenianism occurred in that
country — the Clerkenwell explosion and the Manchester rescue. The first-
mentioned was the second in order of occurrence. On the 13th of December,
1867, some Fenians who did not know much of the effects of an explosion,
placed a barrel of gunpowder in a narrow street beside the outer Avail of Clerk-
enwell Prison, London, near that portion of the prison in which they believed
Richard Burke, a Fenian leader, to be then exercising. Another Fenian
leader, Theobald Casey, was also incarcerated here. It was about a quarter to
four o'clock when the barrel was fired. The object was, as confessed on the
subsequent trials, to rescue Burke by "driving a hole through the boundary
wall." The consequences of the explosion were appalling. Some tenement
houses on the opposite side of the street, inhabited by very poor people, were
demolished. Twelve persons were killed and one hundred and twenty injured.
The whole wall for sixty yards was blown in. It is certain that if Burke, on
whose behalf this was done, had happened to be exercising at the time he
would have been blown to atoms. It is equally certain that the ignorant
perpetrators had not the remotest intention of bringing about such a dreadful
result, but the incident naturally caused the greatest indignation in England.
Several persons were arrested on suspicion, and on the following 28th of
January, one of the prisoners, Patrick Mullany, turned informer and accused
another named Michael Barrett of firing the barrel. At the trial in April
Barrett was convicted of murder. His execution took place on the 26th of
May, 1868, the last public execution in England.

The Manchester rescue excited indignation in England but admiration in
Ireland. It is impossible not to admire the courage of the mere handful of
Irishmen who, in the heart of a hostile English city, generously risked their
lives to rescue their leader. The success of this rescue had a large share in
inflaming English indignation. It happened in this way. Early in the
morning of the llth September, 1867, Colonel Thomas Kelly, one of the most
prominent of the Fenian leaders, who had planned the successful escape of
Stephens, was, together with another Fenian named Deasy, arrested in Man-
chester on suspicion of loitering. The two prisoners were remanded for a
week ; the authorities were ignorant of their identity, but one of the detec-
tives suspected them of being Fenians. Before that day was over the authori-
ties received information which made this suspicion a certainty.

There were many Fenians amongst the Irish in Manchester. Some of
them formed the desperate determination of rescuing the prisoners from the
prison van as it passed through the streets after the next sitting of the court.

838 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

When that day arrived, Wednesday, the 18th of September, the prisoners
were brought before the court, identified as Kelly and Deasy, and remanded
for another week. But that day was destined to be their last as prisoners.
Before they were removed from the court telegrams reached the Manchester
police authorities from the Government, both in Dublin and in London, warn-
ing them that they had received secret information that the Fenians in
Manchester had held a council and decided to attempt the rescue of the
prisoners. But the Manchester magistrates did not give full credence to the
warning, and so neglected to arm the police guard in charge of the van.
They thought that sufficient precaution was taken when they had increased the
number of the guard from three, the usual number, to twelve policemen.
Kelly and Deasy were placed in two locked compartments. There were also
four ordinary prisoners in the van, three women and a young boy. The dozen
of constables were disposed in this way. Five sat in front on the box, two
behind, and four in a cab which followed the van. One, a sergeant named
Charles Brett, sat inside and kept the keys. At half past three the van left
the court and was driven towards Salford Gaol.

At a point where the road runs under the railway at Bellevue a man with
a pistol rushed forward and ordered the drivers to stop. Then about thirty
men, armed with revolvers, appeared from behind a wall, surrounded the van
and stopped the horses, shooting one of them. The police fled. The rescuers
tried in vain to break the van with hatchets and crowbars ; and in the mean-
time the police returned and a large crowd began to assemble — a crowd very
hostile to the Fenians. About a score of the latter stood around the van and,
with revolvers pointed, kept off the crowd, occasionally firing shots over their
heads. The rest of the rescuing party continued their efforts to effect their
purpose. They asked Brett, through a ventilator over the door, to give up
the keys to them if he had them. This he courageously refused to do. As
he wished to see the assailants of the van he looked out through the keyhole;
this movement was not known to those outside. Just then one of the party
outside was heard to give the order, " Blow it open ; put your pistol to the
keyhole and blow it open." One of the would-be rescuers attempted to do so,
but instead of blowing open the lock he shot Brett dead. It was a most un-
fortunate occurrence, but plainly the result of mischance. It would indeed
have been a most impolitic act on the part of the rescuers to murder Brett,
while it is evident that the desperate expedient of blowing open the lock by a
shot was the only way left to effect their purpose. After the fatal shot, and
the cries of "he's killed" from the women prisoners within, one of the
rescuers asked the latter to hand out the keys. The keys were handed out.
A young man went into the van and with the keys released Kelly and Deasy.
They were brought away by a few of the Fenians, the others preventing pur-
suit. The rescuers had, with great courage, effected their purpose, but they
had not quite calculated the serious consequences to themselves of their daring
exploit. The huge hostile crowd seized the few Fenians and treated them with

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 839

the utmost violence. When the mob had beaten them the police arrested
them. Manchester was aflame with excitement. The police, infuriated at
having been thus braved and put to flight by a few Irishmen, arrested appar-
ently every Irishman they could lay their hands on. To be Irish was to be
guilty. In a day or two all England was as eager for vengeance as Manchester,
and the readiest way to obtain it was clearly to indict all the Irish in Man-
chester for the wilful murder of Brett.

The many poor Irishmen living in English cities were made feel the indig-
nation of the more powerful nation. In Manchester a Special Commission
was issued to try the prisoners. It was too plain that no fair trial could be
obtained until passion had cooled down. When the prisoners were being sent
for trial they were actually placed in the dock handcuffed, a practice long
obsolete in English courts. Their chief counsel, an Englishman, protested and
threw up his brief in the case when his protest was disregarded. The passion
with which these prosecutions were conducted will be perhaps best appre-
hended when it is mentioned that as many as twenty-three men were com-
mitted for trial for wilful murder in a case which was not even manslaughter,
but a death resulting from an unfortunate accident. The real crime of the
accused was the successful rescue of the prisoners.

On the 28th of October William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, Thomas
Maguire, Michael O'Brien, and Edward Condon were arraigned for the murder
of Charles Brett. Allen, a very young man, a native of Tipperary, was
originally a Protestant, but had become a Catholic. Several witnesses swore
that it was he who had released Kelly and Deasy. The Crown theory of the
incident was that Brett had been purposely shot dead through the ventilator for
refusing to surrender his keys. The only witness relied on to support this
theory was a female thief then about to undergo her third term of imprison-
ment for robbery. After this trial her terms of imprisonment became almost
innumerable. But the rescuers all maintained that Brett's death occurred as
has been already stated. The identification of some of the prisoners was
palpably erroneous, to put it charitably. The five prisoners were indicted,
convicted, and sentenced together. All addressed the court before sentence,
and united in expressing sorrow for Brett's death. But they pointed out the
passion of their prosecutors and denied the truth of the evidence. One of the
prisoners, Condon, concluded his speech with the words, "God save Ireland!"
which were repeated by all the others, and have since become a national
watchword.

The English reporters who had attended the trial sent a memorial to the
Home Secretary, Mr. Gathorne-Hardy, now Lord Craubrook, declaring their
belief that the evidence and verdict were certainly erroneous as regarded
Maguire. After some investigation the Home Secretary was satisfied that
Maguire, who belonged to the Royal Marines, was not present at all
at the rescue. He was granted a "free pardon" for a crime of which
he was not guilty, this being the usual British course, and restored to

840 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

the force to which he belonged. A minority of Englishmen began to
grow ashamed of this trial. They said it would be monstrous to take
human life on such evidence. Soon it was announced that Condon was
reprieved, pending consideration of his case. He was an American citizen
and was unarmed when arrested. The death sentence on him was ulti-
mately commuted. It was generally believed in Ireland that the three
others, Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien, would be treated similarly. But a large
party in England clamoured for blood. After all, Kelly and Deasy had been
rescued and British authority defied by a few Irishmen. That was the real
crime, not the death of Brett. This execution, one of the last public execu-
tions in England, took place on Saturday morning, the 23rd of November,
1867. The demeanour of the Manchester mob towards the "Fenian
murderers " ought to have been one of the most powerful arguments in favour
of the new Act passed a few months later, which directed that executions
should take place within the walls of prisons. Triumphant shouting and
singing was the least reprehensible part of their behaviour. Allen, Larkin, and
O'Brien died bravely and like good Catholics.

The indignation of Ireland at this execution was greater than that of Eng-
land at the rescue. At no time in the nineteenth century was there such a
storm of international passion between the two countries. Irishmen could
hardly believe that such an outrage had been committed. When it was given
out that " the bodies of the three murderers were buried in quicklime in un-
consecrated ground within the gaol," it was plain that Irish nationality was
meant to be attacked.

It was determined to hold memorial funeral processions in every place
where Irishmen were to be found. On the day after the execution, a Sunday,
the souls of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien were prayed for in the Masses wherever
Irishmen worshipped. On that day the Irish in London held the first funeral
procession. A very large one was held in Cork on the 1st of December. On
the 8th processions took place in Dublin and Limerick. The former was the
largest held. About a hundred and fifty thousand persons were present.
Nationalists who had been most opposed to the Fenians and their methods,
John Martin and A. M. Sullivan, headed the procession. All Irish National-
ists felt the insult of the execution of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien. A short
time after that disgraceful act of tyranny Mr. T. D. Sullivan wrote the song
with the chorus of "God Save Ireland !" Condon's words. It was taken up
at once by Irishmen, and became the anthem of Irish Nationalists.*

A. M. Sullivan and Martin were prosecuted for heading the procession, but the
jury disagreed. Sullivan, however, was sent to prison for six months for severe
comments on the execution in the Weekly News, of which he was proprietor.
A much less honourable and patriotic man was also sent to prison for twelve

* It appeared in the Nation of the 7th of December. On the next day Mr. Sullivan
heard the song and chorus sung in a railway carriage at Howth.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 841

months for comments in the Irishman, the extreme Nationalist or Fenian organ,
of which he was editor. This was Eichard Pigott, whose name must be men-
tioned in a very different connection twenty years later. It is remarkable, con-
sidering the reference in the last sentence, that Charles Stewart Parnell, then
a young man of twenty-one, a Protestant and a landlord, holding a commission
in the Wicklow Militia, was induced to change his political views by the
execution of the three Irishmen in Manchester. It was perhaps this event
which inspired him with that hatred of England which characterized him.

Gladstone was greatly censured for asserting, in a speech at Dalkeith in
1879, that it was the Manchester rescue and the Clerkenwell explosion which
finally determined him to undertake the Disestablishment of the Protestant
Church in Ireland in 1869. It was rightly pointed out that Englishmen thus
admitted that they would not redress Irish wrongs for the sake of justice but
only when roused to do so by violence.

The Amnesty movement has been mentioned already. This was an effort
to effect the release of the Fenian prisoners, and was generally successful.
These men occupied much the same place in the admiration of the Irish people
as the Italian revolutionists did in that of the English. Their unmerited suf-
ferings under excessively severe prison treatment excited indignation in Ire-
land. Non-Fenian and even anti-Fenian Nationalists were united with Fenians
in this movement. The Amnesty Association had a very active secretary.
John Nolan. But the tower of strength in this movement was Isaac Butt
Butt had defended the Young Ireland leaders in 1848. He did the same for
the Fenians in 1867. He sacrificed a lucrative practice at the bar to make a
splendid effort for years for the Fenian prisoners. Never had clients a more
able and zealous advocate. His consistent support of the Amnesty movement
won its chief successes. O'Donovan Eossa, released in March, 1869, was elected
member for Tipperary on the 25th of November in that year. Of course, the
election was set aside as he was declared to be ineligible, having been convicted
of treason-felony.

After 1867 the Fenian movement ceased to occupy the public attention to
such a large extent, and Parliamentary affairs began again, for the first time
since the Keogh-Sadleir betrayal, to claim recognition from the Irish people.
They had been indifferent to the General Elections of 1857, 1859, and 1865,
and only paid a little more attention to that of 1868 because Gladstone had
already begun to attack the Established Protestant Church in Ireland. Glad-
stone himself has told how powerfully the Fenian outbreak contributed to his
course on this occasion. But in truth, the Establishment was doomed as a
hopeless abuse. Macaulay described it twenty or thirty years earlier as "the
most utterly absurd and indefensible of all the institutions now existing in the
civilized world." In Ulster alone of the four Irish provinces does the non-
Catholic population exceed the Catholic. The percentages are approximately,
Catholics 44, non- Catholics 56. Yet in the non-Catholic population of Ulster
the Presbyterians, descended from the Scottish settlers, who never belonged to

842 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

the Established Church, largely predominate. In relation to the general popu-
lation of Ireland in 1869 the members of the Established Church formed about
one-tenth of the whole, the Catholics formed three-fourths.

It will be remembered that the Irish anti-tithes agitation of 1831-4 was
ended by the sorry compromise of making the Catholic tenant pay the land-
lord instead of the Protestant clergyman. The actual Tithe War was stopped
by Thomas Drummond's refusal to allow the forces of the Crown to assist in
the collection of tithes. Besides this the number of Protestant bishoprics in
Ireland was reduced. But the abuse and anomaly of the Establishment con-
tinued. "When England left the Church of Kome Ireland showed that she
was quite determined to remain in it. She has been always consistent in
rejecting what Mr. Healy has called " the new religion — made in Germany."
The Normans, who came to Ireland with Henry II. and Strongbow, went with
their Celtic neighbours in their determined adherence to the Catholic Church,
and in general their descendants have been ever since that time as good Irish-
men and as good Catholics as the old Milesians themselves. But the absurd
Protestant Church Establishment was only the church of all the English adven-
turers who came to Ireland in the days of the Tudors and of Cromwell. The
largest, most intolerant and most predatory section of these adventurers was that
which followed Oliver. He was the most merciless of all the enemies of
Ireland, and believed in no policy but extermination of the Irish race and the
Catholic faith. Massacre, depopulation and deportation were leading items in
his Irish policy, but confiscation was its mainstay. An immense extent of the
land of Ireland passed out of the possession of the Irish nation to enrich his
soldiers, who, militantly democratic in England, immediately transformed them-
selves into a landed aristocracy in Ireland. There are more Irish landlords
and more members of the Irish peerage of Cromwellian extraction than are
descended from any other British invasion of Ireland ; although there is no
circumstance in the history of their families which is more sedulously obscured
or more reluctantly acknowledged. These Puritans leavened their Establish-
ment with the most Low Church views, their religion indeed being nothing
more than opposition to the Catholic Church.

When Henry VIII. first attempted to force Protestantism on Ireland he
could find few or no unwoj-thy Irishmen to become renegades, and the first
Protestant bishops, such as Browne of Dublin, Bale of Ossory, and Staples of
Meath, were Englishmen who had abandoned the Church of their baptism and
ordination. This tradition was continued up to the very time of Disestablish-
ment, the last Protestant Archbishop of Dublin who died before that event
being Richard Whately, an imported Englishman like his earliest predecessor,
George Browne. The wealthy revenues of some of the sees formed a powerful
inducement with British Governments to provide for their English clerical
supporters ; and one of the best results of Disestablishment for Protestants in
Ireland is that they can at least exercise an independent choice of their
bishops, unfettered by English interference. Sometimes, but rarely, Irish

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 843

Protestant Bishops supported the rights of the nation, like Lord Bristol, Bishop
of Derry, the Volunteer, and Drs. Dickson of Down and Connor, and Marlay of
Limerick, who manfully opposed the Union. But in the majority of cases
they were politically as members of the House of Lords, English or Irish, the
merest tools of the Government which appointed them. Sometimes they were
scholars, and individually worthy men, like Bedell of Kilmore, and Berkeley
of Cloyne, but there were others whose very names are best left unmentioned.
The Irish Protestant Church was practically treated as inferior and subordinate
to that of England, and readers of the life of Swift, the most illustrious of
Irish-born Protestant clerics, will remember how bitterly he lamented his loss
of an English episcopal career, the great object of his ambition, and how dis-
appointed he felt when he realised that he would never rise above a Dublin
deanery. Condemned to the career of an Irish Protestant clergyman, he
attacked England with his wonderful vigour and bitterness, inflicting deeper
wounds than many an indignant patriot. And most Irish Protestant clergy-
men knew, like Swift, that for them there was very little prospect of ever
attaining a higher position.

Through all the years of the Tudor despotism; of the Parliamentary
struggle in England ; of the terrible Cromwellian usurpation, the worst tyranny
of all for the Irish Catholic Church, when we are assured that only two priests,
"disguised as hawkers and pedlars,"* dared to remain in the city of Dublin;
of the new usurpation of William of Orange ; of the degrading century and
more of Penal Laws, which were a consequence of his triumph, the Irish
Catholics had remained steadfast in their faith and their support of the
Roman Church. Their many long and cruel persecutions have been admirably
recorded by Cardinal Moran, and even now the process of canonization of their
many martyrs is in progress at Eome. Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin,
warmly advocated the Disestablishment of that Church which had been to the
Irish people a foreign and insulting glorification of ascendency, a mere official
department of the British Government which was supported by the forced
contributions of Catholics. Its clergymen, in some instances, were not con-
tented with doing the only good thing they could have done in their radically
false position towards the Irish people, namely, leaving them alone and
attending to the care of their own small flocks, but insisted on taking a leading
part in that contemptible system of proselytism which has so long disgraced
Protestantism ; forcing the poorest of the poor, out of their very poverty, to
sacrifice for some wretched material bribe that faith which they believed in
their hearts to be the one thing needful for themselves and their children.
That apotheosis of dishonesty and meanness is the only thing which has ever
made the Irish Catholic an enemy of the Irish Protestant as such.

All Irish Protestants who have placed Ireland before England, and
remembered that they were Irishmen first, have held a high place in the

* Most Rev. Dr. Donnelly, Bishop of Canea. Introduction to Roman Catholic
Chapels in Dublin, A.D. 1749, p. 8. (Catholic Truth Society of Ireland.)

844 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

honour and affection of the Catholic people of Ireland. When Swift and
Molyneux attacked England they became popular idols in Ireland. The
strongest proof of this feeling is the regard in which the memory even of such
men as Charles Lucas and Foster is held, men who, though strongly attached
to the cause of Ireland, were yet unwilling to bestow civil rights on their
Catholic fellow-countrymen. The latter has been forgiven and forgotten to
them by Irish Catholics, who have chosen only to remember that they stood
up for Ireland. Well may Irish Catholics be called the most tolerant and
least bigoted of all men. But such exclusive Protestant patriots as those
just named were exceptions. For it is remarkable that, as long as the
Irish Protestant Parliament was subservient to that of England, it was
intolerant and persecuting towards the Catholic majority. But as soon
as the Volunteers arose, when Grattan, Flood, Charlemont, and Hussey
Burgh, with their fellows, declared that Ireland was independent of Eng-
land, a new spirit of friendship towards Catholics animated Irish Pro-
testants. The greatest champion of Irish freedom, Henry Grattan, was also
the foremost advocate of Catholic Emancipation. The members of the Irish
Parliament who, for selfish motives, advocated the Union, did so to preserve
their religious ascendency. In all the nineteenth century Irish Protestants
have shown the greatest ability, but have given it all to the service of the
British Empire. It is a pity that the abilities of the Wellington?, the
Dufferins, the Wolseleys, and many others were lost to their own country.
For every man who left the ranks of the Unionists to join those of his own
fellow-countrymen has been welcomed with open arms. William Smith
O'Brien, John Mitch el, John Martin, Thomas Davis, Thomas Clarke Luby in
1848 and 1867, Isaac Butt and Charles Stewart Parnell in later days, are
instances in point. Besides these many Protestant Home Rulers have been
elected to Parliament since the Home Rule Party was first formed. There are
at present about a dozen Protestant members of the Irish Party, all of them
elected by Catholic constituencies. But it must be said that the like liberality
and tolerance have never yet been shown by Protestant constituencies, none of
which has ever yet elected a Catholic member, even a Unionist. These seats
are confined to the Orange north-east corner of Ireland, and the Orangeman is
still of the same mind as his grandfather in 1848, who, being supplied with
arms to help the Government against the rebels, decided to shoot the Under-
secretary first because he was a Catholic. It is true that the Protestants of
the rest of Ireland are not so benightedly bigoted, but tolerance and liberality
in Irish politics are almost exclusively Catholic virtues.

The agitation lor the .Disestablishment of the Protestant State Church in
Ireland was conducted by Irish Catholics, especially Cardinal Cullen and the
other Catholic Bishops, in conjunction with English Liberals. The latter,
with their Liberation Society, would have wished also to disestablish the
English Protestant State Church, but Irish Catholics had no grievance to
charge upon it. It was, no doubt, sad from a Catholic point of view that

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 845

England should have left the Catholic faith. Still, England had left it,
whereas Ireland had not. The disendowment of the Irish State Church was
not likely to benefit the Irish Catholic except in so far as it made its revenues
available for the use of all Ireland. If the Protestant landlord had still to
support his clergyman it was certain that he would do so, even after Dises-
tablishment, at the expense of his Catholic tenant. But it was hard that the
funds of the State Church, once Catholic, should now be to some extent em-
ployed in proselytism or unprincipled attempts to make the Catholic renounce
his faith. It was hard, too, that the ancient cathedrals and churches in every
diocese of Ireland, built originally for the Catholic worship, and so used for
centuries, should now be devoted to Protestant worship. The latter change
had also taken place in England; but there the nation had acquiesced in it;
not so here.

The Irish Catholic Bishops re-opened communication with the English
Liberals on this question in the end of 1864. John Blake Dillon, who had
returned to Ireland in 1856, on the one side, John Bright, the famous
Liberal orator, on the other, started the movement. But the historical
writings of William Joseph O'Neill Daunt, a county Cork gentleman, had
for some years been paving the way. His long life, like that of the
O'Gorman Mahon, was almost contemporaneous with the nineteenth century.
He was elected member for Mallow as a Repealer in the first Parliament after
the Reform Act. When his leader, O'Connell, died, he retired into private
life, and after some time he exchanged the writing of Irish novels, of which
he produced several, for that of Irish history, and especially Irish contro-
versial church history. His Catechism of Irish History is an excellent
manual.

But the man who did most to bring about Disestablishment was Sir John
Gray, editor and proprietor of the Freeman's Journal, the great daily
Nationalist organ of Ireland. Sir John Gray was a Protestant. Born at
Claremorris, Co. Mayo, in 1815, he became qualified as a physician, but early
in life abandoned his profession to devote himself to journalism and politics.
In 1839 he became joint proprietor of the Freeman, even then a valuable
property, and in 1850 sole proprietor. Under his management it rapidly
outdistanced all competitors. As already mentioned, he was a fellow-
prisoner of O'Connell in 1844, and a leader of the Tenant Right party in
1852. He did not, however, enter Parliament until the General Election of
1865, when he was elected for the city of Kilkenny, which he continued to
represent as a Home Ruler until his death ten years later. For the succeed-
ing thirteen years his position was ably filled by his eldest son, Edmund
Dwyer Gray. Both the Grays, father and son, were ineu of unusual talent,
great experience in public life, and untiring energy. Sir John Gray was the
most active and useful member of the Dublin Corporation for many years.
He procured for that city the splendid water supply from the River Vartry
in Wicklow, and was, in recognition of this, knighted by Lord Carlisle in

846 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

1863. Gray, who was brought up a Conservative, but had become a
Nationalist, probably knew more of the Irish State Church question than any
other Irishman then living. His Irish Church Commission, an exhaustive
account of that Church in all its branches, appeared in his newspaper, the
Freeman's Journal. It was very ably written, and became a kind of text-book
with advocates of Disestablishment. Gray's industry and energy secured
in the course of three or four years the success of the cause he had at
heart.

The Irish people and their clergy would scarcely have consented to form
an alliance with any Liberal leader except Bright, who had always shown
himself conspicuously friendly towards Ireland. But Gladstone had never
shown himself unfriendly, and it was plain that he would soon lead his
party. Palmerston, the Premier, was disliked by Irish Catholics as the
friend of anti-Papal revolutionists in Italy, but he was very old, and in fact
he died Prime Minister at the age of eighty-one on the 18th of October, 1865.
He was succeeded by Earl Russell, who was still more odious to Irish
Catholics as the author of the malignant yet impotent Ecclesiastical Titles
Act. But he too was well over seventy, and, after his resignation in 1866, he
retired from the leadership of the Liberals and left it to Gladstone. The
Conservatives held office until 1868. They had not a majority, but the
Liberals were too disunited to oust them from power.

For years there had been an annual motion in Parliament for the aboli-
tion of the Irish State Church. But this was moved by English or Welsh
Liberationists like Miall or Llewellyn Dillwyn, and excited little public
interest. On the 28th of March, 1865, the first such occasion since the for-
mation of the alliance between Bright and the Irish Catholics, Dillwyn pro-
posed the annual motion. It was observed that Gladstone, then Palmerston's
Chancellor of the Exchequer, spoke of Disestablishment as a thing which might
come in the future. This was a great step forward for a Cabinet Minister.
On the 10th of April, 1866, Sir John Gray proposed the motion. This time
Chichester Fortescue, afterwards Lord Carlingford, then Chief Secretary for
Ireland since November 1865 (when he succeeded the irresponsible Sir Robert
Peel), wished God speed to the Irish anti-State Church movement. The
Liberal Ministry was obliged to resign two months afterwards.

The Liberals had actually a majority, but they were baffled by the great
ability of the new Conservative leader, Benjamin Disraeli. The Liberals
raised the Reform question, but Disraeli adroitly made his own of it, and in
1867, as has been mentioned already, granted a most radical extension of the
franchise. Unlike some of his successors nearly forty years later, he was not
mean enough to attempt to reduce the Irish representation on the plea that
the population had diminished, a diminution brought about by the Union
which this party supported. The most Disraeli dared to do in the Irish
State Church question was to appoint a Commission of Inquiry on the 30th of
October, 1867, under the presidency of Earl Stanhope, a Conservative peer

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 847

of great literary ability.* The Manchester rescue came on the 18th of
Septernbt-r, 1867. The great uprising of anti-English feeling in Ireland
followed on the execution (Nov. 23) of the brave young Irishmen who had
effected it. The lamentable Clerkeuwell explosion took place on the 13th of
December. These tragic events happening in their midst induced English-
men to think that after all there must be many things radically wrong in
Ireland. Gladstone, as he afterwards publicly declared, participated in this
feeling.

On the 10th of March, 1868, a debate on the condition of Ireland began
on the motion of John Francis Maguire. On the 16th Gladstone, taking
part in this debate, said that the Irish State Church must be abolished. On
the 23rd he introduced resolutions on the subject. On the 1st of May the
first resolution was carried. Disraeli could not venture to appropriate this
question as he had that of Eeform, for his party would not follow him in
such a course. He tendered his resignation, but said that the Queen wished
him to remain in office " until the state of public business would admit of a
dissolution." This could not take place until autumn. It is well known that
of the many Prime Ministers of Victoria's long reign Disraeli was personally
the greatest favourite with his sovereign. On the 16th of May Lord Stan-
hope's Commission reported, recommending sundry reforms in the Irish State
Church. But events had moved rapidly, and the question had got far beyond
such a solution. Gladstone's Suspensory Bill to prevent new interests being
created pending Disestablishment passed the Commons on the 22nd of May,
but was rejected by the Lords on the 25th of June. Between that time and
the enactment of Disestablishment, about twelve months, nt-w interests
were largely created, numbers of young Protestants in Ireland securing ordi-
nation in their Church in order to become entitled to compensation on its
abolition, an event now inevitable and soon to come. The Liberal party
had become reunited and powerful on the Church question. It only
remained to secure victory at the polls, of which there could be little doubt.

On the llth of November Parliament was dissolved. This General
Election of 1868 was the last fought in Ireland between Liberals and Conser-
vatives. It was also the last fought on the old system of open voting before
the introduction of the ballot. The Irish Protestants fought hard against
Disestablishment, for it is not in human nature to part easily with privilege.
Already tkey had seen a great change in the spirit of the times. In March,
1868, when their own Conservative Government, Disraeli's Ministry, was in
office, William Johnston of Ballykilbeg, Co. Down, a prominent Orange
leader, was imprisoned for defiantly breaking the Party Processions Act.
No wonder the Orange clergyman, Flanagan, reminded the Queen, when
Disestablishment was seriously spoken of as enacted and about to receive the

* His sound historical works are to be commended for their honesty and impartiality.
He gives the Irish Brigade due credit for its share in obtaining the success of the French
arms at Fontenoy, a credit withheld by most English and many French historians.

848 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

royal assent, that the Ulstermen had already "kicked a crown into the Boyne."
But the more enlightened Irish Protestants and Conservatives fought the
proposed change on the ground that it was a distinct violation of the Union,
as it undoubtedly was. This alteration of the Union was easily defended on the
ground that it was made with the assent of the majority of the Irish people.
The Irish Protestants were now to learn that the Union, to which they had
agreed in order to preserve their own ascendency, was now to be broken to
deprive them of it. The mess of pottage for which they had sold their birth-
right was to be at least reduced if not altogether withheld. It will be seen
presently that the effect of this was to make many Irish Protestants think
it the better policy to throw in their fortunes with the Irish nation rather
than continue to be an outlying garrison of Great Britain.

The Liberals triumphed in both England and Ireland. Disraeli resigned and
Gladstone became Premier for the first time. Earl Spencer was Lord Lieutenant
of Ireland until Gladstone resigned in 1874. The Chief Secretaryship was
held first by Fortescue again until 1871, and afterwards by the Marquess of
Hartington, now Duke of Devonshire. The Irish Lord Chancellor was
Thomas O'Hagan, created Lord O'Hagan in 1870, the first Catholic who
held that office since the reign of James II. The clause of the Emanci-
pation Act forbidding Catholics to hold that office had just been repealed.

On the 1st of March, 1869, Gladstone introduced his Bill to Disestablish
the Irish State Church. On the 23rd it passed the second reading by 368
votes to 250. Ou the 31st it passed the third reading by 361 to 247. It
was believed that the House of Lords would throw out the Bill. They did
no more, however, than propose certain amendments which the Commons
rejected. But a settlement was effected between the two Houses by the
good offices of Earl Granville on the part of the Liberals, and Ear] Cairns on
that of the Conservatives. The third reading took place on a significant
date, the 12th of July, and the royal assent was given on the 26th. Tnis Act
disestablished the Irish Protestant Church ; its bishops ceased to sit in the
House of Lords from the 1st of January, 1871 ; the annual grant to Maynooth
College and the Eegium Donum to the Ulster Presbyterians also ceased from
that date. Generous compensation was made ; and the surplus of the State
Church revenue was set apart for the relief of unavoidable calamity in Ire-
laud.

Irish Protestantism has lost in some measure its anti-Catholic character
since it ceased to be a State Church, and there are not wanting signs that
some of its adherents are moving in the direction of the Catholic Church.
As for the great measure which disestablished the State Church its effects
can hardly yet be estimated. It was the first genuine effort made by Par-
liament to ameliorate the condition of Ireland since the Emancipation Act of
1829> and Gladstone at least deserves credit for bringing in such a measure
without that amount of pressure from Ireland which was exercised in
O'Conuell's time. Yet Gladstone confessed that his generous impulses, too,

TO THE KND OF THE CENTURY. 849

•were quickened into action when the conviction was forced on him that the
gravest discontent existed in Ireland.

A General Convention of Irish Protestants was held at Dublin in 1870 to
make arrangements for the government of their Church. Since that time it
has been in the hands of a General Synod, composed* of 208 clergymen and
416 laymen. The absentee Protestant landlords have always been the worst
supporters of their Church and clergy.

After the Church Act came Gladstone's first Land Act. The land ques-
tion has always been the life and death question in Ireland. The Irish
tenant represented the old Irish nation, the conquered Milesian population.
It is curious to think now that Gladstone should have supposed that he had
settled the Irish Laud Question by the Act of 1870, but we have his own
admission that he did suppose so. Like the Church Act the Land Act was
more or less forced from Gladstone by incidents which occurred shortly
before. William Scully, a Tipperary landlord of most violent character, a
cousin of John Sadleir, the banker of 1856, was the man more responsible
than any other for the Act of 1870. Twice before he had come prominently
before the public on account of his illegal violence in carrying out evictions.
In 1849 he was tried for shooting two sons of a Tipperary tenant whom he
was evicting. He was acquitted of the charge. But in 1865 he was con-
victed of wounding the wife of one of his Kilkenny tenants and sentenced to
twelve months' imprisonment. In 1868 he framed a most oppressive lease
for his tenants at Ballycohey, a place near the town of Tipperary. Anybody
who objected to sign the lease was to be evicted, for that and no other
reason. Whether he paid his rent or not he would be evicted all the same.
Nobody would sign. On the 14th of August Scully, in an attempt to carry
out an eviction, was severely wounded, as were many others, and three were
killed. This lamentable conflict aroused attention in England, and had much
to do with the introduction of the Land Act of 1870. The Ballycohey diffi-
culty was settled by the purchase of Scully's property by Charles Moore of
Mooresfort, originally an Antrim Protestant. His son, the late Count Moore,
a Catholic and a Papal Count, was the last member for Clonmel as a Home
Ruler, and afterwards represented Derry City.

A tenant-right agitation was begun all over Ireland as in 1852. Again
the three F's were demanded, that is, Fixity of Tenure, Free Sale, and Fair
Rents. Sir John Gray led this agitation with his usual energy. But Isaac
Butt, already prominent as leader of the Amnesty movement, warned the
farmers that Gladstone and Parliament would not grant their demands. He
proved a true prophet. It is true that the Act of 1870 did some good, but
it was a mere small instalment of reform. It legalized the Ulster custom in
that province, and attempted to introduce something like it in the other pro-
vinces, by giving the tenant a legal right to compensation for improvements
effected by him. Hitherto the landlord usually raised the rent if the tenant
made his holding more valuable. If the tenant would not pay the increased

850 FROM THK DISRUPTION OF THE TKNANT LEAGUE

rent the, landlord evicted him. The Act of 1870 tried also to restrain capri-
cious evictions, but in this particular it must be pronounced a failure.

The new spirit of understanding which was growing up in England
regarding the condition of Ireland cannot be better illustrated than by the
following comment of the Saturday Review, the well-written Conservative
organ, on William Scully's oppressive conduct towards his tenants : "Landlords
are not a divine institution any more than the Irish Church. They exist for
Ireland, not Ireland for them; and where the genius and circumstances of a
country are so widely different from ours, its laws and institutions without
any want of reason might well differ too." In Ireland the tenant was the
Catholic Celt, the landlord the representative of the foreign conqueror, in
most cases of the Cromwellian conqueror.

A larger question even than that of the relations of landlords and tenants
was now to come to the front. This was the question of the government of
Ireland. Irish Catholics had never accepted the Union of 1800. They had
had no part in passing it. Now, as in the time of O'Connell, they would
undo it if they could. Protestants had been set thinking of the Union by
the disestablishment of their Church, which was undeniably a breach of it.
They begati to think that it would be better to trust their own Catholic
fellow-countrymen than the British Government, which, they now saw, could
no longer be relied upon to preserve them in their monopoly of privilege.
Protestants, and even Orangemen, were the chief opponents of the Union in
1800, and in 1810 at the Dublin meeting in which O'Connell took part.
That great man is said to have regretted that he did not begin his Repeal
agitation before the Emancipation movement. He would then have secured
the support of the Irish Protestants. The latter did not and do not in their
hearts believe that Irish affairs can be better managed from London than
from Dublin, but many of them have always been afraid of the Catholic
Church and the great political influence of the clergy.

To this section the Longford Election of January, 1870, came as a great
surprise. The clergy of that county put forward the Hon. Reginald Greville-
Nugent, son cf Lord Greville, a popular landlord, as their candidate. He was
a Gliidstonian Liberal. Some Nationalists, led by that typically good Catholic,
A. M. Sullivan, opposed their own clergy and put forward John Martin, the
Young Ireland leader, a consistent and honourable advocate of Irish nationality
in unfavourable times. Both candidates were Protestants. The clerical can-
didate won by a very large majority. But the possibility of such independence
seems to have reassured that section of Protestants who appear to think that
Catholics are as bigoted as Orangemen. As has been already noticed, Irish
Catholics in civil and political affairs are liberal and tolerant in the extreme as
regards the religious belief of any genuine supporter of Irish nationality. The
Longford contest was the result of a misunderstanding. Had the Martini tes
known, as they did not, that the clergy were irrevocably committed to support
(ireville-Nogent, they would not have started John Martin. Had the priests

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 851

known, as they did not, that some of the Catholic lay electors wished to start
John Martin, they would not have committed themselves to support Greville-
Nugent.

On the 19th of May, 1870, a remarkable meeting was held at the Bilton
Hotel, Dublin. It was a very unusual kind of political meeting in Ireland.
The Protestant Conservative, the staunch Catholic, the Gladstonian Liberal,
the ex-Repealer, and the ex- Fenian were all present. It was the outcome of
that new spirit in Irish Protestants urging them to emulate their ancestors
who had opposed the Union. There were such Conservatives at this confer-
ence, for such it really was, as the Lord Mayor Edward Purdon, Edward
Hudson-Kinahan, Joseph Allen Galbraith, Fellow of Trinity, Major Knox,
proprietor of the Conservative Irish Times, and Dr. Maun sell, editor of the
Conservative Evening Mail. There was also Colonel King-Harman, afterwards
prominent in opposition to the Home Rule party. But the opposition or
secession subsequently of many Conservative Home Rulers like him must be
ascribed to their natural dislike as landlords to the Land League agitation and
to its head and front — the leader who succeeded Butt.

By this time Isaac. Butt had become the most prominent man in Ireland.
He was born at Glenfin, Co. Donegal, on the 6th of September, 1813, being
son of the Rev. Robert Butt, Protestant rector of Stranorlar, in that county.
He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was distinguished as a
classical scholar, and was appointed Professor of Political Economy. He was
also editor for some years of the Dublin University Magazine, to which he con-
tributed many tales and sketches. One of his successors in this position a few
years later was Charles Lever, then living at Templeogue House, near Dublin.
Butt was called to the Irish bar in IbSt*, and became Queen's Counsel in 1844,
earning his silk gown in the almost unprecedentedly short period of six years.
During the forty years of his career at the Irish bar there was scarcely a
famous trial, civil, political, or criminal, in which he was not engaged. But
tlm great ability of Butt was shown in the field of politics even more than in
thai of law or literature. As a political orator or writer he was in the first
rank. Born and educated amongst Irish Conservatives who supported the
Union, he was in his youth the ablest champion of that party in Ireland. He
was elected an alderman on the Conservative side in the reformed Dublin
Corporation. He was .-elected by his party to reply to Daniel O'Connell, also
a member of the Corporation, when the Liberator initiated a great debate on
Repeal of the Union. Butt leplied with the greatest ingenuity, but it is note-
worthy that he confined himself to arguing that the experiment of Parlia-
mentary Union with England had not, been fully tried. O'Connell prophesied
that Butt would yet be found in the ranks of the great majority of Irishmen
in opposition to the Union. In 1870 that prophecy was fulfilled, and Butt
became the leader of his countrymen on this question. His splendid defence of
the Fenian prisoners, his generous advocacy of Amnesty, his intimate know-
ledge of Irish Protestants and of their feelings when their Church was dis-

892 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

established, ai once marked him out for this position. Above all, his under-
standing of his Catholic fellow-countrymen, whom he trusted and by whom he
was trusted, placed him immeasurably above any of the other Protestant
advocates of Irish nationality. Butt is said to have been the author of the
phrase "Home Kule," as he was certainly the first who revived organized
opposition to the Union since the death of O'Connell, or public confidence in
a National Parliamentary Party since the betrayal of 1852. He was fur too
large-minded a man to entertain any distrust of the Irish Catholic clergy.
Again, he realised thoroughly how much the Land question stood in need of
settlement, and how little was effected by the Act of 1870. He was in Par-
liament, as has been mentioned, from It52 to 1865, representing Harwich for
a few months and Youghal for thirteen years as a Liberal Conservative.

As a result of the Bilton Hotel conference the Home Government Associa-
tion of Ireland was founded. At that conference there were two men also
present who had hitherto been Fenians, and who, when that movement failed,
were willing, like many of their fellows, to give Parliamentary agitation a
chance. They were Mr. James O'Kelly and Mr. James O'Connor, both now
Members of Parliament. The Association produced a scheme of Home Kule
by which the Irish Parliament, was to manage Irish affairs and the British
those of the Empire. O'ConnelFs Kepeal scheme had failed to secure Irish
Protestant support, partly at least because he had made no mention in it of any
arrangement as to imperial affaii s. This omission was suggestive of total separa-
tion from England. O'Connell forgot to provide for a responsible Irish
Cabinet, the want of which had been sadly felt in the Irish Parliament before
1800, in which ministers were altogether independent of any control by the
majority in Parliament. This defect culminated, as is well known, in ministers
purchasing a majority and abolishing the Parliament. That catastrophe had
also been brought about by Pitt's settled resolve to force a Union since 1789,
when the Irish Parliament opposed the British on the Regency question.
What was even worse in Pitt's eyes was the power the Irish Parliament then
possessed of voting supplies for Imperial purposes altogether unconnected with
Ireland. Butt saw that the British Parliament would never consent to grant
Home Rule if that power of Imperial control were claimed by Ireland. He
also saw the intrinsically faulty character of a Parliamentary system without a
responsible Cabinet, and framed his Home Rule scheme accordingly.

The Home Rule agitation of Butt at once became a success. The great body of
the Catholic people of Ireland welcomed it with acclamation, and supported it as
they had supported O'ConnelPs Repeal movement. Most of the Piotestant Con-
servatives remained Conservatives, and the Whig Catholics who had had things
their own Avay since O'Connell's time, were unfriendly to it at first. The Catholic
Bishops, who were grateful to Gladstone for his great act of justice in 1869,
and who hoped also, unavailingly as it proved, that he would settle the peren-
nial grievance of Iiish Catholic L^niversity Education, were at first disposed to
treat the Home Rule demand as inopportune. But a remarkable series of bye-

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 853

elections in 1871-2 showed clearly the strong feeling of the country in favour
of Home Rule. On the 5th of January, 1871, John Martin was elected in
Meath by a majority of two to one over the Hon. George Plunkett, an estim-
able Catholic Whig, brother of Lord Fingall, who was supported by the
Catholic clergy. It is admitted, however, that the priests of Meath did not
attempt to influence their people to vote against John Martin. On the 21st
of February Mr. Mitchell Henry, a wealthy and popular gentleman, whose
father, an Ulsierman of Scotch extraction, had been a successful merchant in
Manchester, was returned unopposed as a Protestant Home Ruler for the
Catholic county of Gal way, just as John Martin, another Protestant, had been
returned for Meath. On the 17th of June Patrick Jajnes Smyth, who had
be<-n a Young Ireland rebel in 1848, and had afterwards assisted his leaders in
successive escapes from Tasmania, was returned unopposed for Westmeath.
Lastly, on the 20th of September Isaac Butt was returned unopposed for the
city of Limerick.

In tlie month of February of the following year the Home Rulers were
triumphant in two important election contests. The last of these was a
typical fight. In Kerry there was a vacancy caused by the succession of
Viscount Castlerosse to the Earldom of Kenmare on the death of his father.
For thirty years the seat had been regarded as a Catholic Whig seat,. the pro-
perty of Lord Kenmare. The new earl selected his cousin, James Arthur
Dease, a worthy Catholic gentleman. But the H^me Rulers determined to
oppose him. They selected another candidate, Mr. Rowland Ponsonby
Blennerhassett, a young Protestant landlord. The Kerry landlords as a body
supported Dease, a serious consideration, for this was the last contested elec-
tion fought in Ireland on open voting before the introduction of the ballot.
The Whig had also the powerful support of the Catholic Bishop, Dr. Moriarty,
a man of exceptional ability and a consistent supporter of the Whigs. But
the Home Rule candidate won. The day of Catholic Whigs was over. It was
plain that in two-thirds of the constituencies of Ireland no candidate would b«
returned unless he supported the Home Rule movement.

In the county of Galway there was an equally momentous contest on the 7th
of February, 1872. Captain, now Colonel, John Philip Nolan, until recently
the senior Irish Nationalist member, sought the representation as a Home
Ruler. He was opposed by Major the Hon. William Le Poer Trench, a son
of the Earl of Clancarty, as a Liberal Conservative. Major Trench was sup-
ported by all the Galway landlords, Catholic and Protestant, Whig and Tory.
As the open voting system was still in force they thought they could defeat
the Home Ruler, for whom, as they believed, their tenants would be afraid to
vote. On the other hand, the Catholic Bishops and clergy supported the
Houie Ruler. After a violent and embittered contest the figures were —
Nolan, 2,578 ; Trench, 658.

The defeated party petitioned. The judge who tried the petition was no
other than Mr. Justice Keogh. Captain Nolan was unseated on the ground

854 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

of clerical intimidation. This decision was most absurd, for the figures show
that the Home Ruler was the choice of the overwhelming majority of the
electors. Although Major Trench was thus awarded the seat, it need scarcely
be said that in the next General Election, two years later, Captain Nolan headed
the poll for the county of Galway, a division of which he represented until
lately. But the manner of announcing this decision, on the 27th of May, 1872,
caused Judge Keogh's long and deep unpopularity to reach its zenith. He
reviled the bishops and priests concerned in the most offensive manner.* He
seemed to take a positive pleasure in insulting the clergy of that Church, of
which he still professed to be a member, and of which he had formerly po>ed
as the principal lay defender. Keogh's language on this occasion appeared
doubly odious when men reflected that he had had the support of the local
bishop in securing re-election at Athlone after his betrayal of the Irish cause,
and that but for the support of Irish bishops and priests, he would never have
become a judge or had an opportunity of making them the victims of his
unique vituperative powers. His whole public career was consistent in its
audacity. After this judgment he was burned in effigy in Ireland, and £14,000
was speedily subscribed to defray the now enormous election expenses of
Captain Nolan. Keogh visited London afterwards and was made much of by
some prominent men in England, where his slanderous attack on the Irish
clergy was read with the greatest gratification. In this case the truth was
made manifest of Moore's line about Ireland : —

Unprized are her sons till they learn to betray.

A few years later Keogh went abroad for the benefit of his health. On
the Continent he became insane and tried to kill his attendant. He died at
Bingen on the Rhine on the 30th of September, Ib78. An Englishman, who
again unconsciously illustrated the truth of the line quoted above, erected
a monument to him bearing the words of Horace, Justum et tenacem propositi
virum.

Shortly after the Home Rule victories in Kerry and Galway secret voting
became law in the United Kingdom. The Ballot Act, passed by the Commons
but rejected by the Lords in 1871, was in 1872 read a third time in the
Commons on the 30th of May, in the Lords on the 25th of June, and received
the royal assent on the 13th of July. It was a charter of independence in
Ireland where tenant-voters were always in danger of electoral intimidation by
their landlords, although, as we have seen, they bravely defied it on many
historic occasions in the nineteenth century, as when O'Connell was returned

* The popular opinion of this episode in Keogh's career may be gathered from the
following lines of a ballad of the day : —

Lord Norbury of old was something in the style of him,

If you heard him slanging clergymen in Galway and Mayo;
But Norbury himself lacked the venom and the guile of him*
And neither he nor Jeffreys was a patch on Billy Keogh.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 855

for Clare in 1828, when the Tenant Leaguers were elected in 1852, and in
Kerry and Gal way just before the passing of the Ballot Act. In 1853, after
the Sadleirite party had betrayed their political trust, many landlords retaliated
by evicting tenants who had voted for the Tenant Leaguers. That could no
longer be done after the Ballot Act, and this was the chief benefit that
important measure brought to Irish voters.

Gladstone dissolved Parliament on the 24th of January, 1874. This was
not expected by anybody, and the General Election thus suddenly precipitated
found Butt and the Home Rule party almost totally unprepared. There was a
sad deficiency in funds, and, what was even more serious, in suitable candidates.
Notwithstanding all this, sixty members were returned pledged to support
Home Rule. Many of these were Liberals who adopted Home Rule to secure
re-election. The names of no fewer than twenty-two may be enumerated who
sat as Liberals for Irish seats before the General Election and as Home Rulers
after it.* The Kerry Election had placed Whig principles at a discount. But
it is plain that such men were not likely to form an earnest Nationalist party.
They miyht perhaps be relied upon to support the annual academic debate on
Home Rule initiated by Butt, which was always voted down by the huge
English majority. Of Ireland's support of the principle of Home Rule the
General Election of 1874 left no further doubt. In the last Parliament just before
the General Election Ireland had been represented by fifty-five Liberals, thirty-
eight Conservatives, and ten Home Rulers. In the General Election there
were returned twelve Liberals, thirty-one Conservatives, and, as has been
mentioned, sixty Home Rulers. Cavan, the Ulster county which has the
largest Catholic population, returned two Home Rulers, one of them Joseph
Gillis Biggar who will be mentioned again presently. The defeated candidate
was the gentleman who had represented Cavan as a Liberal before the General
Election, Colonel Saunderson, who has since become a Conservative. Many
of the Liberals sat for Ulster seats, for before the rise of Parnell and the
Franchise Act of 1884 the Ulster Catholics could do no more than return
Liberals. But when a broader franchise was granted, and when all Ireland
supported with enthusiasm the Parnell movement and the Parnell leadership,
even the most unexpected seats in Ulster were captured by the Nationalists.

The Louth Election of 1874 was a great victory fi.r Home Rule.
A. M. Sullivan, one of the most earnest and brilliant of the Home Rulers,
headed the poll in that county, while Chichester Fortescue, a Gladstonian
Cabinet Minister who had been twice Chief Secretary and twenty-seven years
member for Louth, was defeated. Nearly all the Home Rule members were
pledged to support amendment of the Land Act of 1870, a better provision by
the State for the education of Irish Catholics, and Amnesty for the Fenian
prisoners. Eleven of the Home Rulers returned were Protestants, who had
as usual in tolerant Catholic Ireland, been elected by the most Catholic con-
stituencies.

* Thorn's Directory, 1875.

I II iM THE DISRUPTION OF THE ^NANT LEAGUE

In England there was an immense Conservative majority. After the
General Election there were about three hundred and sixty Conservative
members and about two hundred and forty Liberals. The Home Rulers
determined to act as a separate party in the House <>f Commons. Disraeli
became Premier once more, and lield that office until the next dissolution and
General Election in 1880. In 1876, when two years Premier, he was raised
to the peerage as Earl of BeaconsfieM, and sat thenceforth in the House of
Lords. The Lords Lieutenant of Ireland during the Beaconsfield administra-
tion were the Duke of Abercorn once more for the first two years, 1874-6,
and from 1S76 to 1880 the Duke of Marlborough, whose brilliant son, Lord
Randolph Churchill, acquired a considerable knowledge of the condition of
Ireland during his father's Viceroyalty. The Chief Secretaries were Sir
Michael Hicks-Beach for the first time from 1874 to 1878, and James Lowther
from 1878 to 1880.

Some of the Home Rulers first elected in 1874 were genuinely attached to
the cause of Iiish nationality, such as A. M. Sullivan, Biggar, Richard Power,
and Edwiird Sheil. Some who had been elected also to the preceding Parlia-
ment mi^ht be numbered in the same category, as John Martin, Sir John
Gray, Joseph Philip Ronayne, and Captain Nolan. But when these names
and a few others have been mentioned the list of sound Nationalist members
is exhausted. Most of the others were really Liberals or Conservatives who
hail adopted Home Rule in order to be returned. They expected places from
English Minister?, and in many instances ultimately succeeded in obtaining
them.

Nor was Isaac Butt the man to lead as strenuously as was necessary a
small party in a hostile House of Commons. He could hardly have done so
with the heterogeneous party of which he was the titular leader. He was
sixty-one years of age. He had lived hard and worked hard. In the end his
leadership showed extreme weakness. Both his mental and physical powers
were decaying. It is said that he was arrested for debt on the morning when
he was making his arrangements for the General Election of 1874, and was
thus prevented for some time from personally attending to that important
struggle. It is well known that he was more than once confined in the Dublin
Marshalsea, which, by the irony of fate, ceased to be used as a debtors prison
in the very year of the General Election, as imprisonment for debt in Ireland
was then abolished. Butt's long career as a Conservative and Protectionist
member prevented the active exercise of his profession in Dublin, and made
his debts heavier. He was even more willing to lend than to borrow, and it
is likely that his liabilities barred his promotion to legal office by his party.
As leader of the first Home Rule party he was for some time intensely popular
in L eland. It was however impossible for him both to attend Parliament
constantly and at the same time to look after his professional duties, an absolute
necessity as he was always in debt and had to support his family. His health
was not good. Another drawback to his leadership was- that he was a very

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 857

kindly man, too indulgent to himself and to others. Such a temperament did
not suit the necessarily strenuous position of leader of the Home Rule party.
It should always be remembered to his credit that he tried as hard as he could
to obtain some redress for Irish tenants. He wrote and spoke with the
greatest energy in their favour. Between Gladstone's two Land Acts, 1870
and 1881, there were no fewer than twenty-eight Land Bills proposed by Irish
member?.* They were all voted down, or else dropped or withdrawn because
they would have been voted down. So was the annual Home Rule motion.
So were many other Irish Bills relating to municipal franchise, registration,
Grand Jury reform, railways, fisheries, and other Irish business.!

Butt could do nothing against all this. A new leader soon arose, however,
the greatest Parliamentary leader of the nineteenth century, and the greatest
leader of the Irish people since the days of O'Connell. As a Parliamentary
leader he was far beyond O'Connell, and as a popular leader outside Parliament
he had a much more difficult position, as every Irish leader of our days must
have. For the Irish in America, England, Australia, and other English-
speaking countries are a larger factor in public life than in O'Connell's time,
when emigration was only in its beginning. Above all, O'Connell had no
such difficulty to deal with as the Fenians or the American Clan-na-Gael,
extreme Nationalists, who believed in nothing but revolution and complete
separation from England, and were prepared to oppose any leader who advo-
cated ;i more moderate system of reform for Irish affairs such as Home Rule,
particularly if he was successful, as Parnell was, in gaining the confidence of
the country.

The new leader's was a name to conjure with in Ireland. He came of a
family whose members had been distinguished for many generations. The
Parnells were originally settled at Congleton in Cheshire, from which town the
ennobled branch of this family takes the title of Baron. Several members of the
family heLl the office of mayor of the town in the late Tudor and early Stuart
days. In the Civil War the Parnells were strong supporters of the Parlia-
ment, and were on terms of intimacy with the famous Speaker Bradshaw.
Thomas Parnell, one of the family, settled in Ireland in the reign of Charles II.
His son, Thomas, was the poet, the friend of Pope, the author of many excel-
lent poems in the style of that age, including the well-known Hermit, a tale
exemplifying the doctrine of Providence. Parnell, the poet, died vicar of
Fingla.*, near Dublin. His brother, John, was a judge of the King's Bench in
Ireland. The judge's son, Sir John Parnell, was created a baronet and died mem-
ber for Maryborough, near to which town, at Rathleague, the senior branch of
the family still resides. The first baronet's son, the famous Sir John Parnell,
immediately succeeded his father in the representation of Maryborough in the

* Mr. T. M. Healy's Why there is an Irish Land Question, p. 67.

•fThe only measure beneficial to Ireland which was passed at this time was the
Municipal Privileges Act, by which Irish corporations were enabled to confer the
freedom of their cities and to appoint sheriffs.

858 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

Irish Parliament. Sir John was made Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland
in 1787, and filled the office with the greatest distinction until he was deprived
of it for refusing to support the Union, when it was conferred on Isaac Corry,
with whom it will be remembered that Henry Grattan fought a duel. Sir
John Parnell continued his consistent opposition to the nieasuie which was to
abolish his country's liberties, and in the observations of Sir Jonah Barrington
on his Red List of those who opposed the Union, the single word Incorruptible
stands opposite Parnell's name. Had there been more Sir John Parnells the
Union could never have been carried. Sir John was elected for the Queen's
County amongst the first members returned by Ireland to the Imperial Parlia-
ment, but he died in 1801. His son, Sir Henry, who had also been a member
of the Irish Parliament, and a steady opponent of the Union, succeeded his
father as member for the Queen's County. Sir HeuTy was famous for his
generous advocacy of Catholic Emancipation, and wrote a History oj the Penal
Laivs. In Imperial politics lie was an advanced Liberal, and advocated the
abolition of the Corn Laws, extension of the franchise, vote by ballot, and the
abolition of flogging in the army and navy. It was his distinguished grand-
nephew who procured the abolition of flogging in the army in 1880. Sir
Henry was created Lord Congleton in 1841, and died in the following year.

The estate of Avondale, in one of the most beautiful districts of Wicklow,
was left in 1796 to Sir John Parnell. On his death it passed to his younger
son, William, who was well known as an author. Although a Prote.-tant, he
had a great respect for the Irish Catholic clergy, as he showed in the Priest of
Bakery, a tale published in 1819. He died in 1821, and was succeeded ab
Avondale by his only son, John Henry Parnell. This gentleman married
Delia, daughter of Admiral Charles Stewart of the United States Navy, and,
dying in 1859, was succeeded by his second son, the future Irish leader.

Charles Stewart Parnell was bom at Avondale on the 27th of June, 1846.
Of his distinguished paternal ancestry enough has been said. But his American
mother, who survived to the great age of eighty-six, dying in 1898, was a
remarkable woman and daughter of a famous man. Charles Stewart was born
in Philadelphia in 1778. His father had emigrated from Ulster, being a
descendant of Scottish settlers. Charles Stewart was one of the most distin-
guished naval commanders of the American War of 1812-14, and was
victorious in many sea-fights. His greatest victory was gained after the peace
was signed. He knew it was signed, but his British enemy did not. Wh«-n
Stewart was attacked, however, on this occasion he felt bound to fight, and in
the end captured two British vessels. Old Ironsides, as he was called, died at
Bordentown, New Jersey, in 1869, aged ninety-one. His famous grandson was
said to resemble him in character.

It is singular that Parnell, who was so intensely anti-English, should have
been brought up almost altogether in England. When only six years old he
was placed at, a school in Yeovil, Somersetshire, and afterwaids with the Rev.
Mr. Barton, at Kirk Langley, Derbyshire, and the Rev. Mr. Wishaw, at

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 859

Chipping Norton, in Oxfordshire. Parnell then lived with his family who
resided at 14 Upper Temple Street, Dublin, from 1862 to 1867. In 1865 he
matriculated at Cambridge University, and was, like his father, a student of
Magdalen College. He does not appear to have been distinguished here, and
left it in 1869 without a degree. He came home to Avondale and lived
quietly there for some year?. He was captain of a Wicklow county cricket
eleven, and held a commission in the Wicklow militia. He took much
interest all his life in mechanics and engineering, and established saw-mills and
made experiments in mining. In 1871-2 he travelled in America. In these
early years he was elected a member of the Synod of the disestablished Pro-
testant Church to which he belonged.

It was, as has been already observed, the execution of Allen, Larkin, and
O'Brien which first determined him to devote himself to the cause of Irish
nationality, and which perhaps inspired him with that hatred of English
domination in Ireland which was so marked a trait in his character. He
always admired the Fenians, and, if he did not think their methods practicable,
he at least always tried to gain them over to his views, regarding them as most
earnest and patriotic Irishmen. It was probably the victory of Mr. Blennei -
bassett, a young Protestant gentleman like himself, in Kerry which finally
decided him to try to enter Parliament. When the General Election of 1874
suddenly ensued upon Gladstone's unexpected dissolution of Parliament,
Parnell was High Sheriff of Wicklow. He wished to represent his native
county, but a sheriff cannot be a candidate in his own shire without the per-
mission of the Government to resign. This permission was refused. Parnell's
elder brother, Mr. John Howard Parnell, contested Wicklow, but polled only
a few votes.

An opportunity soon came to Parnell to contest a seat as a Home Ruler,
but it was a forlorn hope. Colonel Taylor, many years Conservative member
for the county of Dublin, was appointed to a position in the Cabinet in
Disraeli's new Administration, the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster,
which he had held previously in the last Conservative Government. This
necessitated his seeking re-election, and the Home Rule League thought it
right to contest the seat, although it would be a very expensive contest and
quite hopeless. For the county of Dublin before the Franchise Act of 1884
was as sure a Conservative seat as the county of Antrim. At the last contest
before that Act, which took place in 1883, Colonel King-Harman was returned
as a Conservative by a large majority over a Nationalist.* Parnell came for-
ward, quite an unknown young man, and undertook to fight this thankless
electoral battle at his own expense. He introduced himself to Butt one day
in March 1874. Butt at once conceived a favourable opinion of him, and the

* Some of King-Harnmn's previous electoral experiences had been strange. He was
defeated in Longford as a Conservative in 1870, aud in Dublin as a Home Ruler later in
the same year. He was c4ected for Sligo as a Home Ruler in 1877, and defeated by Mr.
Thomas Sexton in 1880.

860 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THK TENANT LEAGUE

Home Rule League gladly accepted him as a candidate. A public meeting
•was held in the Rotunda, and here Parnell made his first political speech. It
was a complete failure. He broke down. He never became an orator, but he
was afterwards complimented by Gladstone on possessing a rare faculty which
Gladstone did not claim for himself. The great orator acknowledged that
Parnell was one of the very few men who could say what they meant to say.
In spite of his want of success in speaking at the Rotunda meeting, other
prominent members of the Home Rule League, John Martin and A. M. Sullivan,
agreed with Butt in thinking favourably of him. But many regarded him as
a young aristocrat and landlord who had no great ability and Avhose only
object in entering Parliament must be social distinction. As a matter of course
he was badly beaten in the Dublin Couaty election (18th March), and Colonel
Taylor went in triumphantly, as he did for more than forty years.

A better opportunity occurred about twelve mouths later when there was
a vacancy in Meath owing to the death of the honest and patriotic John
Martin, which occurred under circumstances deserving some notice in a sketch
of Irish history. John Mitchel, having escaped from Van Diemen's Land,
had settled, as has been said, in America. He remained to the last a consistent
advocate of rebellion and an irreconcilable enemy of the British connection.
His lifelong friend and brother-in-law, John Martin, returned to Ireland, and
when Butt began the Home Rule movement, accepted its programme. But
this made no difference in their friendship. In the General Election of 1874
Mitch el was proposed as a candidate for Cork City and for Tipperary. Neither
attempt was in earnest, and he was defeated in both. He returned to Ireland
later in that year for the first time since he was brought away as a felon in
1848, and having gone back to America for a few months, he returned to
Ireland finally early in 1875, to die, as it turned out. There was a vacancy in
Tipperary for one of the Parliamentary seats. Mitchel was proposed, and on
the 16th of February elected unopposed. The House of Commons of course
declared him disqualified, and a second election took place. At this election,
on the llth of March, Mitchel was returned by an immense majority over the
Conservative candidate, Stephen Moore of Barne, a local landlord. The Court
of Common Pleas decided on the 25th of May that Mitchel's election was
void, and that Moore was elected, so that the latter actually sat for Tipperary
for five years, a seat to which he would not have had the most remote chance
of beiug elected. But a higher court had already given judgment as regarded
Mitchel, for he died at the home of his boyhood in the County Down on the
20th of March. His old friend, Martin, then very ill, had, against the advice
of friends, hurried from London to see the last of his beloved leader and
friend. Martin died on the 29th of March. There is something dramatic in
the completeness of the lives and deaths of these two sincere and patriotic
Irishmen.

The election to the seat vacant in Meath by the death of John Martin
took place on the 19th of Apiil, 1875. Parnell was elected by a large

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 861

majority, his principal opponent being James Len»x Naper of Loughcrew; a
Conservative landlord, one of whose family in the eighteenth century is said
to have been the man whose eviction clearances are pourtrayed and lamented
by Goldsmith in the Deserted Village. Parnell took his seat on the 22nd of
April.* When he took it Parliament was engaged in a manner of almost
prophetic significance as regarded the new member. Biggar was making a four
hours' speech against time to obstruct an Irish Coercion Bill. Butt asked
Biggar to speak against the Bill, and the latter more than fulfilled his leader's
instructions. The numerous Coercion Bills passed for Ireland in the nine-
teenth century, like the useful measures rejected, could not be done justice to
in the limits of the present historical sketch. Paruell spoke several times that
session, but attracted attention on the 30th of June in the following year,
1876, by replying to the Irish Secretary, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, who,
speaking of the case of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien, said he hoped no member
of that house would defend murder. Parnell said " I do not believe, and I
never shall believe that a murder was committed in Manchester on that occasion.''
This bold defence of the Fenians, whom Parnell always liked, made him. popular
with that body. In the same year he joined tlie Amnesty Association.! He was
quite willing to accept the Fenian solution of the Irish problem, but he did
not think it practicable. He was determined to conciliate the extreme men,
but he was equally determined on doing first a work which lay nearer to his
hand. This was to force the British Parliament to grant Home Rule. He
determined, as a step to this, to make the transaction of British business
impossible in Parliament by obstructing it. He was disgusted at the contempt
shown for the Home Rule Party and Irish business. This was caused partly
by the intrinsic wurthlessness of many members of the Party and partly by
the weakness of Butt's leadership.

Obstruction had been counselled by Joseph Philip Ronayne, a sincere
Nationalist who died member for Cork City in 1876. It had been <. ccasionally
practised by Biggar who, like Parnell, was disgusted with the treatment
accorded by the House of Commons to Irish members. Biggar was born in
Belfast in 1828. He was a Presbyterian like the other members of his family,
which was of Scotch extraction. Always inclined to be liberal in. his senti-
ments, he became a Home Ruler, and, having prospered in business, he devoted
himself to public life. Before he was elected for Cavan in 1874 he had been
a candidate in Derry City in 1872, the first election in Ireland which took
place under the Ballot Act. The vacancy had been caused by the promotion

* He was introduced by Colonel Nolan and Nicholas Ennis, the senior member for
Meath.

+ In October 1876 Parnell and Mr. O'Connor Power were deputed by the Fenians who
met at Harold's Cross, Dublin, to present an address to President Grant congratulating
the American people on the centenary of their independence. They met Grant at New
York, but declined to present the address through the British Ambassador, the usual
channel. Parnell returned in November. The Legislative Assembly afterwards ac-
cepted the address.

862 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TKNANT LEAGUE

to the Bench of Eichard Dowse, a Protestant Whig lawyer. A Catholic Whig
lawyer, Mr. Christopher Palles, now Lord Chief Baron, became a candidate
for the vacancy. He was opposed by a Protestant Conservative, Mr., after-
wards Sir Charles, Lewis, an Englishman. Biggar stood as a Home Kuler only
to keep out the Whig by diverting some votes from him, but, as the figures
show, his intervention was quite needless. Lewis received 696 votes, Palles,
522, and Biggar, 61. It is true that Dowse, also a Whig lawyer, had already
been twice elected in Deny, but then Dowse was a Protestant, whereas Mr.
Palles was a good Catholic, which makes all the difference in the world in an
Ulster Protestant constituency. If a candidate there is a Conservative or a
Liberal Unionist, the strongest anti-Home Kuler conceivable, but at the same
time a Catholic, he is doomed. No such candidate was ever yet elected by
Protestant Ulstermen. But among the "obscurantist" Papists of Catholic
Ulster, or in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, if a candidate is a good
Nationalist nobody asks what his religion is.

Parnell found in Biggar the most useful auxiliary in obstruction. Parnell
said truly that he had learned the rules of the House of Commons by breaking
them. It had hitherto been the custom that Irish members should not speak
on English business. Parnell soon abolished this custom. He and Biggar
became quite obnoxious to the House and immensely popular in Ireland for
talking against time, keeping the House sitting all night, adjourning the
debate, moving a count, and other obstructive tactics. On the Army and
Navy Mutiny Bills, the Prisons Bill, the South Africa Bill, and other measures
in 1877 there were exciting scenes, Parnell and Biggar being in conflict
with all the British members, Government and Opposition. On the 2nd of
July there was one memorable scene, the House having been kept sitting for
many hours by Parnell's methods. The majority of Butt's party held aloof
from him. Some openly censured him, including Butt himself. It soon
became clear that Ireland was with Parnell and not with Butt. The public
opinion of Dublin went unmistakably with the new leader at a meeting on
the 21st of August, 1877, and at a conference in 1878. Some of the more
earnest of Butt's party helped him sometimes. Amongst those who did so
may be mentioned Colonel Nolan, Eichard Power, A. M. Sullivan, Edmund
Dwyer Gray, John O'Connor Power, Edward Sheil, George Harley Kirk,
F. H. O'Dounell, and Major O'Gorman. Although the amendments of the
obstructionists were primarily intended to waste Government time it is
admitted that they often did much good. But Parnell's peculiar manner
contributed to alienate the majority of the House of Commons. It was
openly contemptuous. In his exterior the greatest Irish leader of his day
was intensely un-Irish. He was unexcitable and unirnpassionerl, distant
towards the other members of his Party, and apparently without intimate friends.
With him conviction and determination seemed to be everything, and feeling
counted for nothing. He told the Government in 1877, when obstructing
their South Africa Bill for annexing the Transvaal, that as an Irishman he

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 863

felt a special satisfaction in thwarting them on that Bill. He was ordered
to withdraw while his conduct in saying so was considered. He withdrew to
a gallery, and watched the debate which ended, as he knew it would, in the
discovery that he was perfectly in order. He stood up and resumed his
speech at the point where he was interrupted. On the 31st of July Parnell
kept the House sitting from a quarter to four until ten minutes past two the
next afternoon. The sitting had lasted twenty-six hours. One of the
spectators was ParnelPs sister, Miss Fanny Parnell, well known in those days
for her patriotic lyrics and the help given by her pen to the cause her brother
led. She died young in 1882.

In the end of 1877 Parnell was elected President of the Home Kule Con-
federation of Great Britain, which -was the association of the Irish in England,
always the most extreme Nationalists. After this Butt practically retired. Not-
withstanding their differences of opinion on the merits of the policy of obstruc-
tion, Butt and Parnell always treated each other personally with the greatest
consideration and politeness. On the 5th of May, 1879, Butt died at Roebuck
Cottage, Clonskeagh, near Dublin. He had done good service to Ireland,
although his career ended in eclipse owing to the success of the more active
young leader. With all its faults Butt's Irish Party made Parnell's Irish
Party possible. William Shaw was elected Chairman of the Party after
Butt's death, but, as will be seen, he and his followers were destined to dis-
appear completely in a few years before the great and growing power of Parnell.

Beaconsfield's Government, as has been shown, steadily voted down
measures useful to Ireland while Butt's policy prevailed. Parnell's active
policy induced it to change its ways in this respect and bring in some legisla-
tion for Ireland's benefit. Two of these measures related to education, and
are of such importance as to deserve some notice.

By the Intermediate Education Act passed in 1878 one million sterling
was set aside from the surplus of the Disestablished Church to assist second-
ary education in Ireland. The students were paid in money and books, and
their teachers received results fees. Public examinations were held every
summer. The first took place in June 1879. The system continues in force
still with a few modifications. Before it was instituted it was generally
supposed that Catholic schools were altogether inferior in merit to their
Protestant competitors, from which Trinity College derived the bulk of its
students. But the success of the Catholic schools in these examinations was
remarkable, and greater than might have been expected from the percentage
of Catholic candidates.

The Royal University was established by an Act passed in 1879. Its
charter was granted in April 1880, and its first examination held in 1881.
The Queen's University was abolished, and the degrees, exhibitions, and
honours of the new University were granted not to the students of the three
Queen's Colleges only, although these continued to receive their very large
grants from the public funds, but to all persons who passed the appointed

864 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

examinations. It was only an examining University, but throwing open the
examinations to all comers at least secured efficiency. The Koyal University
was of some advantage to Irish Catholics, as it was the first such institution
in Ireland where they might receive degrees without attending colleges like
Trinity or the Queen's Colleges, which were disapproved by the authorities
of their Church. Half the members of the Senate, or governing body, are
Catholics and half the fellowships are allotted to the Catholic College. The
Fellows must teach and examine.

The Catholic University, St. Stephen's Green, founded by the Irish
Bishops in 1852, after the establishment of the Queen's University, began a
new career of usefulness on the foundation of the Royal University. As
University College, Dublin, it was entrusted by the Bishops to the care of the
Jesuit Fathers, who rent the buildings of the Catholic University. Under its new
constitution it surpasses every year for many years past all other Colleges which
compete in the Royal University examinations. In the number and distinc-
tion of the degrees, exhibitions, honours, and prizes which it gains yearly it is
easily first. Yet it receives no direct endowment. The only one of the
Queen's Colleges which is fairly efficient, that at Belfast, is always second to
it in the examinations, while those of Cork and Gal way are excelled by many
other unendowed Catholic colleges, and secure no place worth mentioning in
the lists. Yet large sums of public money are voted yearly to those two
colleges, while the college of the Catholic people of Ireland receives not one
penny of direct endowment. The Catholic University grievance, its long
standing and hopelessness of redress, are enough to make every Irish Catholic
a Home Ruler; for an Irish Parliament would not allow such a state of
things to continue one week. Apparently the Imperial Parliament cannot,
or will not, rectify it. Ireland contributes immense sums to the Imperial
revenue, and might fairly expect in return such a University as she wishes.
Now, above all, when the Local Government Act of 1898 has thrown all the
power formerly deposited with the Grand Juries into the hands of the people,
an adequate provision for University education is indispensable. The record
of University College in the Royal University examinations shows what Irish
Catholics can do. The Archbishop of Dublin and others have recently estab-
lished several scholarships in the College as some slight contribution to the
need which exists and which it is the duty of the State to supply.

Parnell continued his obstruction campaign in 1878 and 1879. On the
12th of April in the former year there was a debate on the murder of the Earl
of Leitrim, which occurred some ten days earlier. He was perhaps as bad a
specimen of the oppressive Irish landlord as the nineteenth century could
show. On account of some observations made by Parnell in this debate
some of Butt's followers charged him a second time with defending murder.

In 1878 a Committee was appointed to consider the question of obstruc-
tion. Parnell was one of its members. As the object of the Committee was
to find the means of suppressing obstruction, Parnell, in his skilful cross-

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 865

examination of the Speaker and Conservative Ministers, asked them what
obstruction was and made them define it exactly. He showed them, out of
their own mouths, that it was impossible to abolish it without altogether
abolishing the rights of members.

In the following session he showed the truth of his contention by obstruct-
ing with more vigour than ever some clauses of the Army Discipline Bill.
He advocated the abolition of flogging in the army, a course in which he was
followed first by Mr. Chamberlain and the Eadicals and afterwards by Lord
Hartington and the official Liberals. The reform was carried in the following
year. On this Bill Parnell brought about by his obstruction one memorable
all-night sitting on the 5th of July, 1879. In the same year Parnell's first
Parliamentary supporter was elected, James Lysaght Finegan, who was re-
turned for Ennis, defeating William O'Brien, a Whig lawyer, afterwards a
judge.

In the meantime Parnell continued his efforts to secure the support of the
extreme Nationalists or Fenians. On the 19th of December, 1877, one
notable Irishman, who had been a Fenian, was released from prison in
company with three military Fenians — Mr. Michael Davitt and Charles
McCarthy, Chambers and Bryan. On the 15th of January, 1878, McCarthy
died suddenly at Morrisson's Hotel, Dublin, to which he had been invited to
breakfast by Parnell along with the three others. It was well known that
his death had been accelerated by the severity of the treatment he had re-
ceived in prison. His funeral in Dublin was a great demonstration of
sympathy.

Having mentioned this tragic incident attending his release, it will be
well to give some account of Mr. Davitt, as he immediately became one of
the most prominent figures in Ireland. Mr. Michael Davitt was born at
Straide, Co. Mayo, on the 25th of March, 1846. In 1852, when he was six
years old, his father, Martin Davitt, was evicted, all the family sharing in
his fate, and their home was razed to the ground. Martin Davitt went with
his family to England, and settled at Haslingden, in Lancashire. Michael
went to work in 1856 in a mill, and in the following year lost his right arm
by an accident. Thus " physically disabled for life," as he has said himself,
he has nevertheless succeeded in attaining a prominent position in the
world. The ability of the evicted tenant's son as a writer and speaker is
universally recognised. His accident was the means of his obtaining some
addition to the slight education he had received, but the greater part of his
education he owes to his own efforts. Such an able and energetic young
man, with such a family history, and living amongst the exiled Irish in
England, was sure to find his way into the ranks of the Fenians. He was
one of those Lancashire Fenians who went to Chester to seize the Castle,
as already described. Mr. John Devoy tells us of Davitt: — "Unable to
shoulder a rifle with his single arm, he carried a small store of cartridges in
a bag made from a pocket-hankerchief." On the Hth of May, 1870, he

866 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

was arrested along with John Wilson, and both were, on the following 18th of
July, convicted of treason-felony, mainly on the evidence of the spy Corydon.
They had been engaged for some time in buying arms and secretly trans-
mitting them to Ireland. Mr. Davitt was sentenced to fifteen years' penal
servitude, and, as we have seen, had served more than seven years, when he
was amnestied, a process which meant the same to a political prisoner as a
ticket-of-leave does to an ordinary convict. Like other Fenian prisoners, he
was subjected to the greatest severities of prison treatment. Dartmoor was
the Siberia of England. Mr. Davitt was one of the last of the Fenians to
be released, for, according to a Parliamentary return of the 3rd of March,
1878, there were then only eight Fenians in prison, and the last of them,
Edward 0' Kelly, of Dublin, was released early in 1879.

After the sad death of his comrade M'Carthy, Mr. Davitt went to America,
where his mother and sister resided. He met the chief men amongst the
Clan-na-Gael, as the Irish-American revolutionary society had come to be
called. With some of these, notably with Mr. John Devoy, he began a new
era in the relations of moderate and revolutionary Nationalists. Mr. Davitt,
as we have seen, had met Parnell and been impressed by his remarkable
character and by the work he had been doing in Parliament. He knew that
Parnell thought, like him, that the unwise feud between extreme and
moderate Nationalists ought to be ended. With this view he organised the
New Departure, whose outlines were published in the Freeman's Journal of
the llth of December, 1878. The two sections were to co-operate heartily.
ParnelFs Parliamentary policy was to be supported. Above all, and this
was what Mr. Davitt principally had at heart, both sections were to unite in
a vigorous effort to improve the condition of Irish tenants and to root the
Irish people in the soil of Ireland. Mr. Davitt's own remedy for land tyranny
would have been the total abolition of landlordism. When he returned to
Ireland he found that some of the Irish Republican Brotherhood at home
were not so willing to co-operate with other Nationalists as were most of
their brethren in America. It is significant that Richard Pigott, editor of
the Irishman, then supposed to be the organ of physical force, was one of
those who denounced most strenuously the New Departure as treason to
Fenianism. It was really a movement honourable alike to the Fenians and
to Parnell and Davitt.

The time was ripe for such a great agitation of the Land question as Mr.
Davitt had conceived. The Land Act of 1870 had been tried and found
wanting. The seasons of 1877, 1878, and 1879 were exceptionally bad, and
the bad harvest soon brought about great distress, especially in the western
counties. It seemed as if the horrors of 1847 were about to be repeated.
Evictions increased in number with the increase of distress. Many men, like
Davitt, thought there was no remedy for arbitrary eviction and the exaction of
exhorbitant rents except the compulsory expropriation of landlords. They
contemplated some such remedy as had been applied by Parliament in the

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 867

abolition of slavery in Jamaica and other West Indian colonies in 1833, when
the slave-owners had been granted £20,000,000. To show clearly the import-
ance of the Land question in a country like Ireland, which is almost exclu-
sively agricultural and without industries, the following words may be quoted
from A Plea for the Celtic Race, published in 1866 by Isaac Butt, who always
declared the Act of 1870 to be comparatively worthless as a remedy : " To say
that the Land question is the most important part of all Irish public questions
but feebly expresses its magnitude. It would be nearer the truth to say that
it forms the whole." This question of land tenure has been the most powerful
factor in keeping asunder those classes in Ireland who, after all, have one common
country. The condition of Irish tenants was a standing badge of conquest.

A tenants' protection society had existed for some years at Ballinasloe, Co.
Galway, under the direction of Matthew Harris, who afterwards represented a
division of that county in Parliament. But it was in the neighbouring county
of Mayo, Mr. Davitt's native county, that the first historic meeting of the Irish
Land war was held, for the state of Ireland for the next three years was little
short of a state of war. The meeting was held at Irishtown, in Mayo, within
sight of the spot where Mr. Davitt had been born, and from which his family
had been evicted. The Mayo Land League was formed. Soon the West was
very much awake. Another bad harvest would mean ruin. Parnell and
some other Irish members saw the strength of the movement. It was Parnell's
obstruction in Parliament which inspired Irish tenants to talk at last of resist-
ance rather than of dying without hope, as in 1847. The only way to avert
the violence of the movement was, if possible, to induce the Government to
do something to relieve the existing distress. On the 27th of May, 1879, an
effort was made by Parnell, A. M. Sullivan, and other Irish members to induce
the Chief Secretary, James Lowther, to do this. But Lowther coolly replied
that the depression in Ireland " was neither so prevalent nor so acute as the
depression existing in other parts of the United Kingdom." After such
a reply from the Chief Secretary, Parnell saw that there was no hope for the
tenants but in agitation. It may be mentioned that amongst the Irish mem-
bers who supported Parnell on this occasion was Mr. Justin M'Carthy, who
had just entered Parliament as member for Longford. He was already well
known in England as a most able and successful author and journalist.
Parnell at once determined to join the western land movement. He had
always been in favour of peasant proprietorship as the solution of the difficulty,
but was reluctant, until thus forced by circumstances, to allow the Land ques-
tion or any other to be taken up before that of Home Rule. On the 7th of
June he took the decisive step by appearing and speaking at a meeting in
Westport. Already the most popular man in Ireland, he put himself at the
head of the movement. Along with Mr. Davitt he took a most active part in
the agitation. At the Westport meeting he used a phrase which became
historic. He advised the tenants in these terms : " You must show the land-
lords that you intend to hold a firm grip of your homesteads."

868 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

On the 21st of October, 1879, the Irish National Land League was
founded at a meeting in Dublin, Mr. Andrew J. Kettle presiding. This was
probably the most powerful and successful political organization ever founded
in Ireland. Its object was to reduce rackrents and to obtain the ownership
of the soil for the occupiers. The circular summoning the meeting was
issued by Parnell. He was elected president of the Land League; Mr.
Kettle, Mr. Davitt, and Mr. Thomas Brennan were elected secretaries ; Mr.
Patrick Egan, and Messrs. Biggar and W. H. O'Sullivan, M.P.'s, were elected
treasurers. Mr. Brennan was acting secretary, and Mr. Egan acting treasurer,
and it was to the strenuous exertions and great organizing ability of the last-
named gentleman that much of the marvellous success of the Land League was
due. Another cause of this success was the active co-operation of the Catholic
clergy, who knew well that such a movement was necessary and even inevit-
able.

At the meeting founding the Land League a resolution was passed calling
on Parnell to go to America to collect funds on behalf of the tenants, and on
Mr. John Dillon to accompany him. Mr. Dillon is a son of John Blake
Dillon, the Young Ireland leader, and has followed in his father's footsteps
as an upholder of the gospel of Irish nationality. ParnelPs mission to
America had a two-fold purpose, to collect money for the relief of distress,
which had now become acute, and to arouse sympathy for the Land League
programme. He sailed with Mr. Dillon on the 21st of December, 1879, and
was joined after a time by his private secretary, Mr. T. M. Healy, a name
destined soon to become famous. Parnell, like Mr. Davitt two years pre-
viously, had interviews with the leading men and also with the rank and file
of the Clan-na-Gael, or extreme Nationalists ; and they were impressed by
his remarkable personality and evidently earnest exertions to serve Ireland.
His visit made the New Departure more popular than ever with the Irish in
America.

But he attended above all to the object of his journey, and that with such
success that a sum of about 250,000 dollars was subscribed altogether for the
relief of distress in Ireland, as well as a very large sum in support of the Land
League. From this time forward the Irish in America have subscribed most
generously and steadily for the furtherance of the Home Rule movement in
Ireland. With the lailure of the harvest of 1879 famine re-appeared in the
West, but, unlike 1847, eviction clearances were resisted. On the 2nd of
January, 1880, and the few days following, bailiffs and police attempted to
serve processes for rent at Carraroe in Connemara, but the tenants resisted
successfully. Parn ell's tour and the Carraroe struggle convinced even the
Government that distress existed. Notwithstanding the famous denial of its
existence by Chief Secretary Lowther, it was remembered that he was not a
very capable man, and that his appointment to the post was even considered
by some to have been a characteristic joke of Lord Beaconsfield's. The
Government passed a Eelief of Distress Bill, which unfortunately was so

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 869

framed as to relieve the distress of landlords, then a negligible quantity,
while doing very little for the distress of tenants, which was real enough. A
much better thing was done by the Duchess of Maryborough, the kind-hearted
wife of the Lord Lieutenant, who initiated a successful fund for the relief of
distress. Great political rivalry existed in this relief of distress movement,
for the largest sum was collected for another fund, that inaugurated by
Edmund Dvvyer Gray, M.P., proprietor of the Freeman's Journal, and Lord
Mayor of Dublin in 1880. Thanks to this generous emulation another 1847
was averted in Connaught.

Parnell's tour in America was a great success. He was received every-
where with the greatest honour. His distinguished American ancestry and
connection with that country had something to do with this, but his earnest
pleading for Irish nationality, and the emancipation of Irish tenants from
famine and oppression, was the chief cause. Such men as Wendell Phillips
and Henry Ward Beecher appeared on his platforms. He was even invited
to address the House of Representatives on the Irish cause. Such an honour
had been accorded only twice previously, to Louis Kossuth, the veteran
Hungarian patriot, and to Dr. John England, the distinguished Irishman who
was Catholic Archbishop of Charleston. From the States Parnell went to
Canada and was equally successful there; when he was obliged to return
owing to a startling piece of news which reached him when he was speaking
at Montreal on the 8th of March. He sailed at once for Ireland and landed
on the 21st.

The news was that Lord Beaconsfield intended to dissolve Parliament
immediately. The dissolution took place on the 24th of March, and Lord
Bea«onsfield's election watchword was that Gladstone and the Liberals were
friendly to Home Rule, or " a policy of decomposition."

The General Election of 1880 was the last in Ireland on the old restricted
franchise before Household Suffrage was conferred. It was also the last
before the Redistribution Act, so that many an Irish borough returned its
last member on this occasion. Parnell's activity was seriously crippled in
this General Election by two circumstances. One, of course, was his absence
in America at the time when preparations for the struggle ought to have been
made. Another was want of funds. Parnell fought the elections with a sum
of £1,250, £1,000 which was lent to him personally, £100 sent him from
Liverpool, and £150 which his secretary, Mr. Healy, had actually contrived
to obtain from political opponents. Parnell, accompanied by his energetic
secretary, Mr. Healy, contested the elections with the greatest determination.
He was prevented by the causes mentioned from starting candidates for
many seats which he might have won, for even in 1880, and on the old fran-
chise, nearly every seat returning any kind of Home Ruler could have been
captured by him. He was more determined to fight Whigs or worthless so-
called Home Rulers than Tories. Almost all the candidates nominated under
his auspices were successful. The only notable defeat was that of Mr.

870 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

Kettle in Cork County. Sixty-two avowed Home Rulers were elected in
Ireland.* Parnell was nominated in three seats, Meath, which he had repre-
sented since he had first entered Parliament as its member in 1875, Mayo,
and Cork City. He elected to sit for the latter constituency, and was
member for Cork for all the rest of his extraordinary political career until his
death. His victory in Cork was the most notable in this General Election.
He succeeded, against the expectation of all, in defeating Nicholas Daniel
Murphy, a respected member of a respected family, but a Whig, and there-
fore politically most distasteful to Parnell. Parnell's contest was regarded as
utterly hopeless, and only two of the Catholic clergy of Cork supported him.
Of the Home Rulers elected in Ireland only a few were avowed adherents of
Parnell. A larger number were known to favour Shaw, who had been made
Chairman on Butt's death a year previously. Many of those elected had not
definitely decided which leader they should support.

In England and Scotland the General Election resulted in an overwhelm-
ing Liberal majority. In Parnell's absence the Home Rule leaders had advised
the Irish voters of Great Britain to support the Liberals, which they did ;
and the Liberal Party owed between thirty and forty seats to this cause.
When Parnell returned it was too late to countermand this advice to Irish
voters, but he would have done so if he could. He thought it would have
been better policy for the Irish to vote Tory, notwithstanding Beaconsfield's
anti-Irish manifesto, as the Liberals were certain to have a majority in any
case ; and he judged wisely that it would be better for Ireland's interests that
the two British parties should be more evenly balanced. The events of the
next five years showed that he was right.

Beaconsfield resigned as a result of his defeat at the polls and Gladstone
became Prime Minister a second time. His Cabinet contained such a member
of the old Radical party as John Bright, and such members of the new as Mr.
Joseph Chamberlain, and from 1882 to the end, Sir Charles Dilke. All three
were supposed to be friendly to Ireland. Earl Cowper was appointed Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland, and William Edward Forster Chief Secretary, with a
seat in the Cabinet, which the Lord Lieutenant had not. Forster was not
unknown in Ireland. He had visited it with his father during the famine in
1847, and had afterwards been engaged in the collection and distribution of
the relief fund subscribed by the English members of the Society of Friends,
to which he belonged. On this account he was rather popular in Ireland,
and this was, in some measure, the cause of his subsequent great failure.

It has been mentioned that some of the extreme Nationalists did not
agree to the New Departure. Parnell met with serious opposition from them
at Enniscorthy on the 28th of March, and at Dublin on the 30th of April.
A meeting of Home Rule members elected was held on the 17th of May in

* Mr. T. P. O'Connor says 68 {Parnell Movement, p. 313) and A. M. Sullivan says 65
(New Ireland, p. 448). I have followed Thorn's Directory, 1881, which is probably
accurate.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 871

the City Hall, Dublin. Parnell, Shaw, and forty-one others attended. The
names of both were proposed for the position of Chairman of the Party.
Parnell received 23 votes and Shaw 18. Most of the Irish members after-
wards prominent as supporters of Parnell voted for him, although two who
did so were supporters of the Liberal Ministry afterwards, James Carlisle
M'Coan and Captain William Henry O'Shea, whose name must be mentioned
again. The majority of those who supported Shaw were, like M'Coan and
O'Shea, thick and thin members of the Gladstone Whig party in the fierce
struggle of the next five years. But a few of them were good Nationalists
who afterwards supported Parnell most loyally. Such were Richard Power,
John Aloysius Blake, Sir Joseph M'Kenna, and Gray of the Freeman's Journal.
When Parliament assembled Shaw and his supporters sat and voted, as has
been said, with the Liberal Government, but Parnell at once adopted and
maintained an attitude of independent opposition of both English parties.
Many of Shaw's party obtained places from Gladstone, and their seats, thus
vacated, were filled by supporters of Parnell. The rest of them, almost to a
man, disappeared from public life at the next dissolution of Parliament, as
none of them dared to face the Irish constituencies. Gladstone described
them by a felicitous name which was generally adopted. He called them
" the nominal Home Rulers."

Some well-known Irish public men were first returned to Parliament in
1880. Amongst them was Mr. Thomas Sexton, who defeated Colonel King-
Harman in Sligo, and who soon upheld in Parliament the best traditions of
Irish eloquence, and at the same time showed a very dissimilar talent, a
mastery of facts, figures and statistics. Mr. T. D. Sullivan, the bard of the
Nationalist Party, first entered Parliament as member for Westmeath with
Henry Joseph Gill. Mr. Arthur O'Connor, the keen critic of the estimates,
was elected for Queen's County. Mr. James O'Kelly, an ex-Fenian, a
daring and adventurous journalist, was elected for Roscommon, defeating the
O'Conor Don, a Catholic Whig and a most able man. Mr. John Dillon was
returned for Tipperary. He might easily have entered Parliament earlier had
he wished. Richard Lalor, also elected for the Queen's County with Mr.
Arthur O'Connor, was brother of James Fintan Lalor, the Young Ireland
writer. Another brother, Peter Lalor, lost his arm in a famous conflict at
Eureka Stockade near Ballarat in the early fifties, shortly after the discovery of
gold. He afterwards became Speaker of the Victorian Parliament. The only
Irish Nationalist member who has sat in Parliament continuously since the
General Election of 1880 was not the least distinguished of the new recruits.
This was Mr. Thomas Power O'Connor, a brilliant author and journalist, whose
pen has done so much in the Parnell Movement and other works to make the
Irish national cause known to the world. Yet when Mr. T. P. O'Connor was
elected for Galway City by a majority of only half a dozen votes over
Alderman Hugh Tarpey of Dublin, he was a comparatively unknown young

872 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

Parnell's name was proposed for the Chairmanship by the O'Gorman
Mahon, whose eventful life unites the Emancipation agitation of O'Connell
with the Home Rule agitation of Parnell. It was he who had proposed
O'Connell in the memorable Clare election of 1828, which gained Catholic
Emancipation. He succeeded O'Connell as member for Clare, his native
county, in 1830. With the exception of the five years, 1847-52, when he had
represented his native town of Ennis; he was out of Parliament until 1879,
when he was again elected for Clare. He was re-elected in 1880 at the
General Election, and, retiring in 1885, he re-entered Parliament in 1887 as
member for Carlo w, and died in 1891. As he had been born on the 17th of
March, 1800, his life was almost contemporary with the century. In his
youth a well-known duellist, a familiar figure in the Ireland of that day, much
of his later life was taken up with the wildest adventures in almost every
part of the world. In countries as far apart as could be on the surface of the
globe he had served with distinction on both land and sea. He was the
patriarch of Irish Nationalism, as he had been its defender with his duelling-
pistol in early youth.

When Parnell had been elected Chairman he had to be reckoned with
more than ever by British statesmen and parties. All the farmers and
peasantry of Ireland were at his back. The Irish clergy, too, from this time
forward supported him strongly. Many of the bishops, most of the priests
were even now his adherents, and it may be said of him that he received
stronger support from this powerful factor in Irish public life than any leader
in history except O'Connell. In return for this he always advocated support
from the Government for Catholic education, primary, intermediate, and
university, and, although a Protestant, became the champion of Irish Catholic
interests.*

Although the Irish Land question had now reached a crisis unexampled in
history, the new Ministry, as Gladstone confessed in 1884, did not realize this
fact. Some of its members were hostile to land reform, others indifferent.
The Queen's speech contained no allusion to it. Tenants might still be
arbitrarily evicted, rackrented, and reduced to starvation ; but the Land

* In August 1879, when the Royal University Bill was passing through Parliament,
Parnell supported the extreme Catholic policy of a University for Catholics, but Edmund
Dwyer Gray and other Catholic members favoured some such compromise as the Royal
University. Gray in his newspaper incorrectly ascribed the expression " Papist rats "
to Parnell. It was in fact used by a Catholic member at a meeting of Irish members on
the Royal University Bill. Gray was hostile to Parnell both before and after this
occasion, but Archbishop Croke effected a reconciliation between them. Parnell gave a
true account of the incident to Mr. W. J. Corbet, M.P., declaring that he never used
the expression, that nothing could be more foolish than for a Protestant Nationalist to
insult the Irish Catholics, and concluded by saying, " No, I would not insult the priests."
—Barry O'Brien, Life of Parnell, vol. i., p. 192. On a previous occasion he replied to one
of his supporters in England, who wished him to attack some of the Catholic clergy in
that country who supported the Conservatives for the sake of Catholic education, "I'm
not going to fight the Church."— Idem. vol. i. p. 172.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 873

League was stronger and more determined than ever. The Irish party pro-
posed an amendment to the Queen's speech. Parnell pointed out to the
Government the imminence of the crisis, and said he trembled to think what
would happen if the soldiers and police were sent to assist evictions. The
Irish party brought in a Suspension of Evictions Bill, for it was certain that
the landlords would evict the famine-stricken tenants who had been unable
to pay rent. The Irish managed that the second reading should come on at
two in the morning ; and Gladstone, under this pressure, announced that the
Government would bring in a Bill on the same lines as ParnelFs. This was
the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, brought in by Forster, and so called
because it enabled an evicted tenant to sue for compensation if he was
evicted for non-payment of rent, which eviction was to be made a disturbance
of tenure under the Land Act of 1870. It soon came to be understood that
Gladstone meditated bringing in a much greater Land Bill in the following
year. It was during the debate on this Bill of 1880 that Gladstone declared
a sentence of eviction as " coming very near to a sentence of death." This
Bill was violently opposed by the Conservatives in the Commons, but passed
there by large majorities. It was thrown out by the Lords on the 3rd of
August. There was a very large muster of peers who were Irish landlords ;
and this was probably the worst service they ever did to their cause. For it
roused the tenants to the point of fury. The motive of the landlords in secur-
ing the rejection of this Bill was generally believed to be the desire to be free
to carry out wholesale evictions of the tenants in arrear with the rents of the
last three years of bad harvests, before Gladstone should introduce his great
Land Bill in the following year. The action of many of them shows too
plainly that this was their motive.

When the Irish party saw that the Government intended to acquiesce in
the rejection of this Bill, and to do nothing more for the tenants, they per-
ceived that no policy was left but to advise the people to defend themselves
and to resist unjust eviction by every means in their power. Gladstone had
admitted that about 15,000 tenants were to receive "sentence of death" in
1880 alone. There had been distress for two or three years, the tenants were
rackrented, as the Land Courts afterwards proved, very many were in arrear,
as the Arrears Act applications of landlords showed, and a revolutionary
remedy was needed for a great evil, such a remedy as next year's Land Act.
But that remedy had not yet been supplied. A Commission of Inquiry was
appointed, but that could not help the heavily-pressed tenants. It was the
violence of the Land League, and the outbreak of lawlessness which must
accompany a period of disturbance in any country, that extorted the Land
Act of 1881 from the Government.

Parnell in this crisis advised the people to rely upon themselves and their
organization. In a famous speech at Ennis on the 19th of September he
advocated the system which some six weeks later became known as " boy-
cotting." The conditions of Irish land tenure resembled those of capital and

874 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

labour in some of the great industries of England. It must always be borne
in mind that the population of Ireland is three-fourths rural and agricul-
tural, while that of England is, almost in the same proportion, urban and
industrial. Such isolation and ostracism as Parnell proposed of those whose
action prevented the redress of their fellows' wrongs had often been practised
in English strikes. Now a great strike against the oppressive Land system
had at last occurred in Ireland. It must, however, be admitted that boycott-
ing, although a much better remedy than crime, was sometimes abused. It
sometimes led to crime, it was sometimes practised to gratify private resent-
ment. It was a violent remedy for a desperate evil.

This new word "boycott" was derived from the surname of the first person
who was subjected to this process after Parnell's speech. In the month of
November, 1880, Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott of Loughmask House,
Mayo, an Englishman, agent for the Earl of Erne's Mayo estate, was thus
isolated. Tradesmen refused to supply him, and his work was done by im-
ported Protestant labourers from Cavan, called emergencymen. It is pleasant
to add that Captain Boycott, a worthy man, was afterwards on friendly terms
with his neighbours. Although he returned to his native country some years
afterwards to reside there permanently, it was his habit to spend his vacations
in Ireland.

In the meantime a great change had taken place in Forster. The few
crimes — they were as yet but a few — that had been committed were
magnified by the English and landlord press, and the Chief Secretary was
accused of sympathy with lawlessness. He was determined to show that
this was not the case, and from this to the end of his term of office he was
an advocate of coercion. The outcry in England for coercion became greater
each day, and Parnell, speaking at Galway on the 24th of October, fixed
upon Forster the nickname of Buckshot, as the Constabulary, who carried
out his behests were required to use that kind of shot. But John Bright,
still true to his old principles as regarded Ireland, declared on the 16th of
November that '' Force is no remedy." Mr. Chamberlain spoke to the same
purpose.

Nevertheless Forster persisted. On the 27th of October Mr. Healy was
arrested on a charge of justifying an attempt to murder, but was acquitted
on his trial. On the 2nd of November an information was filed against
Messrs. Parnell, Biggar, Dillon, T. D. Sullivan, and Sexton, M.P.'s, members
of the Land League Executive, Mr. Egan, the treasurer, Mr. Brennan, the
secretary, five organizers, and two others, not officials. These fourteen
traversers were charged with seditious conspiracy to impoverish landlord?,
and to induce tenants not to pay rent. The trial, which began on the 28th
of December, 1880, was held at Bar in the Queen's Bench Division. As the
Lord Chief Justice of that Court had publicly spoken against the traversers
he retired, and the trial was held before the puisne Judges, Fitzgerald, after-
wards a Lord of Appeal, and Barry. There was never the least expectation

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 875

that Parnell and his fellows would be convicted by any impartial jury, and
the trial concluded on the 25th of January, 1881, by a disagreement of the
Dublin jury empanelled. Ten were for acquittal, two for conviction.
Amongst the ten were Conservatives and Protestants. On the 24th of
November, 1880, Mr. T. M. Healy, then awaiting trial on the charge made
by Forster, was elected member for the town of Wexford without opposition.
The vacancy was created by the death of William Archer Redmond, father
of Messrs. John and William Redmond.

The next great phase of the Land League struggle took place within the
walls of Parliament. Forster in December showed his colleagues a long list,
which must be spoken of afterwards, of alleged outrages in October and
November. Up to this it is said that John Bright, Mr. Chamberlain, and
Sir Charles Dilke had held out against the employment of coercion, but after
this they yielded to the majority of the Government. The English press
still clamoured, and Gladstone decided to bring in first a Coercion Bill, and
then a Land Bill. It was this unfortunate coercion policy which brought
about the crimes of 1881 and 1882 and the dynamite outrages in London
and other parts of Great Britain in the next few years. For coercion in
Ireland always means renewed activity of the secret societies. Parnell de-
termined to obstruct as much as possible. Parliament met on the 6th of
January, 1881. Every member of the Irish party was to speak, and to
speak as long as he could. On the 12th Shaw and the other "nominal Home
Rulers" formally abandoned the Home Rule party, and joined the Liberal
party. The passage of the Bill was marked by scenes of the wildest excite-
ment. It was English passion against Irish. Parnell's action was endorsed
by Irish opinion both at home and in America. He was in a very different
position now from that of two years before, when, assisted by Biggar alone,
and occasionally by two or three others, he had often defied Parliament.
Now he was at the head of a party, small it is true, but consisting of earnest
and energetic men, many of them of first-class ability. By amendments from
Parnell, Mr. M'Carthy, Mr. Charles Dawson, Mr. O'Kelly, and others, the
Queen's Speech debate was protracted to the 20th of January. On the 24th
Forster introduced the Coercion Bill. It soon appeared that more than half
of his list of alleged outrages consisted exclusively of threatening letters.
Both Forster and Lord Hartington admitted that there were very few cases
of murder. Unfortunately there is a different story to tell of Ireland under
the Coercion Act they were engaged in passing. On the 25th of January
the Irish party kept the House sitting for forty-one hours consecutively by
their obstructive methods. It was a struggle of all of both English parties
against Parnell's small party. Mr. Labouchere showed the absurdity of
Forster's list of outrages. All admitted that outrages were diminishing in
number, and yet they went on with the Bill. The Radicals with one or two
exceptions supported the Government, although they had professed great
sympathy for the Irish people, and many of them owed their seats to the Irish

876 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

vote. At length Speaker Brand summarily closed the debate. A new bitterness
was infused into the Irish party by the news of the arrest of Mr. Davitt, which
took place on the 2nd of February, when he was sent to Portland Prison.
On the day after this Parnell and thirty-five other Irish members were sus-
pended for persistent obstruction. The Coercion Bill was read a third time
on the 26th of February, and received the royal assent on the 2nd of March.
An Arms Bill was next introduced. It was also obstructed, but passed the
third reading on the llth of March, and received the royal assent on
the 21st.

The Land Bill was introduced by Gladstone on the 7th of April. It was
at once seen that it was the best measure for Irish tenants ever hitherto brought
into Parliament although it had many faults. The Houses adjourned for Easter,
a Convention of the Land League was held in Dublin, and it was evident
that there was an extreme party, a minority who would have nothing but
complete abolition of landlordism. It was decided that Irish members should
be free to support the Bill or not according as they should choose. In the
meantime Forster began to exercise the free hand Gladstone had given him
with regard to the Coercion Act. Some of his subordinate officials were very
violent. The most notorious perhaps was Clifford Lloyd who exercised great
tyranny at Kilmallock, Co. Limerick, and at last secured the arrest of Father
Sheehy, a popular priest, a step which exasperated the people greatly. For-
ster justified all such acts in Parliament. Evictions and coercion both
increased, but so did the power of the Land League. The City of Dublin
was proclaimed under the new Act, although it was admitted that no agrarian
crime was or indeed could be committed there. Forster explained that this
was done to prevent the Dublin meetings of the Land League. On the 2nd
of May Mr. John Dillon was arrested, and the Irish party accordingly, on
Parnell's proposal, decided to abstain from supporting the second reading of
the Land Bill. That Bill, as has been said, did much good by recognizing
tenant-right, and setting up Land Courts to fix fair rents, which in most
cases substantially reduced them. But it left untouched the question of
arrears, and this had to be dealt with a year later, as the Irish party warned
Gladstone. Gladstone's Bill gave the tenant the right to sell his interest in
the open market. Gladstone's ablest coadjutor in managing this Bill was the
Irish Attorney-General, Hugh Law, afterwards Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
The landlord opposition was ably led by Mr. Edward Gibson, now Lord
Ashbourne, who also became subsequently Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
Although ParnelFs ideal of peasant proprietorship was not attained by the
Bill, he proposed some useful amendments; so did Charles Russell, after-
wards Lord Russell of Killowen, a very able Irishman, who was Liberal
member for Dundalk. But the best clause for the tenants was the famous
one proposed by Mr. T. M. Healy that no rent should in future be
chargeable on tenants' improvements. Mr. Healy showed the most
wonderful acquaintance with every detail of the Bill, as Gladstone

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 877

acknowledged, and has been regarded ever since as perhaps the greatest
authority on Irish land law. Whatever may be thought of the Bill as a
settlement, it was not a final settlement, for there were Bills in 1885, 1887,
1896, and 1903. But it is an imperishable monument to the genius of
Gladstone. Unfortunately the impatience of the Land League leaders and
their slighting references to his great measure early began to manifest them-
selves as Mr. Dillon had been arrested for telling the tenants on the day
before his arrest to depend on the Land League.

The Bill passed its second reading in the Commons on the 20th of May
by 352 votes to 176, a majority exactly twice the number of the minority.
It was read a third time on the 29th of July. The Conservative peers who
threw out the Disturbance Bill a year earlier had acted under the leadership
of Lord Beaconsfield. He died on the 19th of April, 1881. Shortly before
his death he described Gladstone's Land Bill as " legalized confiscation."
The Marquess of Salisbury succeeded him as leader of the Conservative
party. Owing to the violence of the League the Lords had now to accept
this revolutionary measure. So little service had Irish landlords done their
class in rejecting the Disturbance Bill ! The third reading in the Lords with
amendments in Committee passed on the 8th of August. The Commons
rejected some amendments on the 12th, the Lords resisted on the next day.
The Commons modified some amendments on the 15th. The Lords yielded
the next day; and the royal assent was given on the 22nd. Short of abolish-
ing landlordism, it was really a good and even a great measure, but the
accompanying Coercion Act damaged its popularity in Ireland.

While the Land Act was passing through Parliament Parnell decided to
establish a weekly newspaper. With the funds of the League, of which he
was trustee, Bichard Pigott's two papers, the Irishman and Flag of Ireland
- and the Shamrock magazine were purchased. The Flag of Ireland ceased, the
Irishman was carried on for four years longer, dying in August 1885. Along
with it was published the new organ, United Ireland, which first appeared on
the 13th of August, 1881. Parnell placed it under the editorship of Mr.
William O'Brien, a brilliant journalist, whose name has since become
so widely known. Under his direction it achieved great success and
maintained a position of great political prosperity as long as Parnell
himself did.

Another Land League Convention was held in Dublin on the 15th
16th, and 17th of September. The extreme party, pointing out that
Forster's coercion was in full swing, were for boycotting the Land Act and
the Land Courts. Why, they asked, should not landlordism be completely
abolished when Mr. Davitt and Father Sheehy were in prison 1 Parnell saw
that some tenants would resort to the Courts in any case, and, by his advice,
a middle policy was adopted, of bringing test cases to the Courts, and cases
of no extreme rackrenting. This annoyed Gladstone exceedingly, who
thought his Land Act was not getting fair play in Ireland owing to Parnell's

878 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

intervention, forgetting that Parnell, and not he, was the leader of the Irish
people, who, besides, could not forgive him for the Coercion Act.

Gladstone attacked Parnell violently in a speech delivered at Leeds on
the 7th of October. He significantly added, " the resources of civilization are
not yet exhausted." Parnell replied at Wexford on the 9th of October. He
had a most enthusiastic reception. Crowds came in special trains from great
distances. Parnell described Gladstone's attack as unscrupulous and dis-
honest, and called him a masquerading knight-errant. On the next day at a
banquet he prophesied that more stringent coercion than ever was coming.
On Wednesday, the 12th, he reached Morrisson's Hotel, Dublin, where he usually
stayed while in that city, intending to attend the Kildare County Conven-
tion at Naas the next day. Another event of Wednesday the 12th, was the
holding of a Cabinet Council in London at which Forster was given authority
to have Parnell arrested. On the next morning Parnell was arrested at his
hotel and conveyed to Kilmainham Gaol, where he remained over six months.
On the same evening Gladstone attended at the Guildhall, London, to receive
the freedom of the city. This was the scene of a piece of histrionic display.
Although everybody there was aware that Parnell had reached Kilmainham,
from a telegram received before Gladstone was handed the city address, and
although that gentleman must have authorized the arrest eighteen hours earlier;
before he rose to reply a Treasury messenger came forward and presented him
with a dispatch formally announcing the news. Gladstone in his speech said
he had just been informed of " the arrest of the man" — Here there was a wild
outburst of cheering for several minutes. Gladstone went on to describe
Parnell as most prominent in imposing anarchical oppression on the people of
Ireland, which was certainly the climax of absurdity. The arrest was almost
universally approved in Great Britain. It was, of course, deplored in Ireland.
On the 27th of October Gladstone described Parnell as " marching through
rapine to the disintegration and dismemberment of the empire." Gladstone
thought his Land Act was a panacea for Ireland, and he felt its want of
success more keenly because it had already cost him one old and valued
Cabinet colleague, the Duke of Argyll, who resigned rather than approve of
it, being himself a great landlord in the Scottish Highlands.

Parnell, on the day of his arrest, said to a representative of the Freeman's
Journal, " If I am speedily released I shall take it as an evidence that the
Irish people did not do their duty." His arrest was soon followed by others.
Mr. Sexton was arrested the next day, Mr. Dillon on the 16th (he had been
released on the 7th of August), and Mr. O'Kelly and others soon after.
There was some rioting in Dublin, very cruelly repressed, on the occasion of
these arrests. Messrs. Healy, Arthur O'Connor, and Biggar were directed by
Parnell to remain in England and thus avoid arrest. Mr. Egan, the League
treasurer, wisely withdrew to Paris, bringing the account-books, but Mr.
Brennan, the secretary, was arrested. So were all prominent persons con-

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 879

nected with the Land League throughout Ireland. At last, on the 20th of
October, the Land League was suppressed.

On the 18th the No Rent manifesto was issued. This step had been
counselled by the extremists at the September Convention, but Parnell had
successfully opposed it. Gladstone and Forster had now imprisoned him and
the other leaders, and thus those statesmen had played into the hands of the
extremists. The manifesto was the result. Forster's Coercion Act allowed
the arrest of any person "reasonably suspected" by the Chief Secretary,
and the extremists resolved now to pay no rent, at least until the suspects
were released.

Forster now ruled by coercion alone. This Liberal statesman was the
most violent coercionist of the nineteenth century. Instead of the "village
ruffians " he had mentioned in Parliament, he arrested representative men
and filled the prisons with them, leaving at large the really dangerous men,
to whom, indeed, he practically delivered over the rule of the country. It
appeared subsequently that Forster, during the next six months of violent
coercion, was in the greatest personal danger of assassination. It is instruc-
tive to note that in November, 1881, the month after the arrest of the leaders
and the suppression of the League, the Invincibles were founded.

There was a Ladies' Land League, and its members were sent to prison
under a statute of Edward III., raked up for the purpose. It was at a meeting
of this body in Dublin on the 2nd of January, 1882, that Parnell was styled,
as O'Connell had been, " the uncrowned king of Ireland," an epithet which
was generally taken up, for he was never more respected than when in prison.
On the following day the Dublin Corporation resolved to confer the freedom
of the city on him and on Mr. Dillon. Evictions became so numerous that
Land League huts were erected for the victims. Forster's deputies ruled
country districts with an iron rod. Troops were employed, marines as
well as land-forces, in carrying out evictions. The natural result of all
this repression followed. Murders increased alarmingly in number. It was
now war, thinly veiled as agrarian outrage and murder, and no longer agita-
tion. In 1880 there were eight agrarian murders, in 1881 seventeen, in
the first half alone of 1882 fifteen. Where coercion was fiercest crime became
worst. Clare reached an appalling total as long as Clifford Lloyd was there.
The historic crime that closed the Forster period was the best proof of the
stimulus coercion had given to secret societies in Dublin.

At last the people of England began to see plainly that the coercion policy
was a failure, and was becoming a public calamity. It was hard to see where
crime would stop if coercion were continued. The Irish party continued to
show up Forster's government. The suspects were elected everywhere to
public positions. But the coercion policy received its finishing stroke in Par-
liament when Mr. Sexton produced a circular issued to the police of Clare by
the County Inspector, telling them that it was likely some attempts would be
made to murder Clifford Lloyd, and that if any constable should by mistake

'8

880 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

shoot some wrong person on suspicion of his being about to make such an
attempt, the County Inspector would exonerate him by producing this
circular. Such a document damaged Forster in the House of Commons irre-
trievably. The Conservative Opposition now joined the Nationalists in the
attack on Forster. It was evident that his repressive system was unpopular
in England. The Conservatives pointed out also that the Land Act had
failed so far in abolishing agrarian trouble. The Opposition tactics alarmed
the Government, and the Kilmainham Treat}', of which Mr. Chamberlain took
the initiative, was the result. Parnell was willing to make the Treaty, for
he knew the arrears of rent question would have to be dealt with immediately,
he saw evictions on the increase, and was aware that the Land League funds
would not suffice to carry on war for the tenants.

The intermediary between Parnell and Gladstone was Captain William
Henry O'Shea. He it was who negotiated and concluded the Treaty of Kil-
mainham. The son of an eminent solicitor of Limerick, he was for some
years an officer in the cavalry. Leaving the army he married a lady of
a wealthy family, the daughter of a baronet who was also* a clergyman.
O'Shea was engaged in commerce with Spain, having some family connection
with that country. He was returned for Clare as colleague to the O'Gorman
Mahon at the General Election of 1880. Although a professed Home Ruler
he was politically rather a Gladstonian Liberal than a Rationalist. O'Shea
wrote to the Premier and to Mr. Chamberlain, and the first result of the
correspondence was that Parnell was, on the 10th of April, released on parole
to attend the funeral of his nephew, James Henry Livingstone Thomson, who
had died in Paris. The parole lasted a fortnight. Parnell did not interfere in
politics while on parole. Mr. John Edward Redmond introduced the Arrears
Bill on the 26th of April. Mr. Redmond had been elected for the first time
to Parliament on the 31st of January, 1881, being returned unopposed for
New Ross, replacing a member of the Shaw party who resigned.

After some correspondence between Messrs. Gladstone, Chamberlain and
O'Shea, the Kilmainham Treaty was concluded. Gladstone was to pass an
Arrears Act, and Parnell to use his great influence to stop the outrages
coercion had occasioned. On the 2nd of May Messrs. Paruell, Dillon and
O'Kelly were released from Kilmainham. On the same day Forster resigned
his office, as he would not give up coercion. He paid a great tribute to the
power of Parnell. He quoted the words of Henry VII. about the Earl of
Kildare — "If all Ireland cannot govern this earl, this earl shall govern all
Ireland." "If," sail Forster, "all England cannot govern the hon. member
lor Cork, then lut us acknowledge that he is the greatest power in Ireland
to-day."

The good effects of the abandonment of coercion may be seen from the
statistics of agrarian outrages. In the first half of 1882 the number oi agrarian
outrages in Ireland was 1,010, in the second half 365. In Clare especially
where the Laud War reached its extremest development — for the most violeut

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 881

coercion, the largest number of evictions, and the greatest outbreak of retaliatory
crime were to be found there — the improvement was most manifest.

Earl Cowper resigned with Forster. He was succeeded by Earl Spencer,
already a Cabinet Minister, who had been Viceroy during all Gladstone's last
term of office, from 1868 to 1874, and who was now to retain his seat in the
Cabinet. Forster's place was taken by Lord Frederick Cavendish, son of the
Duke of Devonshire and brother of Lord Hartington. He had already occupied
some minor places in Liberal Governments, and was known as an amiable man
and a painstaking official. It was understood that Gladstone, turning to
courses which must have been more congenial to his principles and traditions,
had determined to try a policy of conciliation. In one hour all this was changed.
A. great crime was committed and conciliation and treaties became forgotten.

On Saturday, the 6th of May, Mr. Davitt was released from Portland
Prison after an imprisonment of a year and a quarter. Parnell met him at
the prison, and they both went to London. On the next day appalling news
reached them from Ireland. On Saturday the new Viceroy made the usual
State entry into Dublin. The new Chief Secretary, having taken the oath
in Dublin Castle, walked out to the Phoenix Park, the large and beautiful
pleasure-ground north-west of the city, near whose main road the official
residences of the Lord Lieutenant, Chief Secretary, and Under Secretary are
situated. The way was familiar to Lord Frederick Cavendish, for he had
visited the Chief Secretary's Lodge often when his elder brother, Lord
Hartington, occupied it ten years before. At about a quarter past seven
that evening, while it was still daylight, Lord Frederick Cavendish and
Thomas Heury Burke, the permanent Under Secretary, were murdered.
They were stabbed to death with long sharp knives by two men, who then
jumped upon a car on which two others and a driver were seated. The
assassination took place on the main road within sight of the Lord Lieu-
tenant's official residence. Lord Spencer, who had entered the house
but a few moments before, actually heard the dying shriek of one of
the victims. The car was very rapidly driven off by a side road, and all
that the authorities could discover of its subsequent movements was that it
left the Park, crossed the Liffey at Chapelizod, and appeared to have been
driven into the city when night was closing in. Several persons who were
passing through the Park as usual noticed a party of nearly a dozen men
lounging about for about two hours previously. A reward of ten thousand
pounds was offered for information on the 9th of May, but, as far as the
public knew, no solution of the mystery was arrived at until eight months
afterwards. An inquest was held, but no fact of importance was elicited
save the statement that Burke got upon a car at the gate of the Park and
dismissed it when he overtook the Chief Secretary,* with whom he walked
on to the spot where both were murdered. The bodies were first discovered
* Mr. Morley states in his Life, of Gladstone, Vol. III., p. 67, that Burke learned at the gate
that the new Chief Secretary had passed into tbe Park, and took the car to overtake him.

882 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

by two tricjclists, Burke on the footpath, Cavendish on the carriage-way.
The authorities, nevertheless, had obtained some information as to the
attacking party, and were certain of the cardriver's identity. It afterwards
appeared that quite a large number of persons had witnessed the crime or
seen some of the assailing party, and that these had at once given private
information. But they feared to appear publicly, and no arrests were
made, as there was not enough of evidence to convict. It is true that two
months afterwards several men, who were afterwards proved to be con-
nected with the conspiracy, were arrested on suspicion, but this was after
another murder of one John Kenny in Dublin with which they had had
nothing to do. The three Dublin morning papers of that time, in their
accounts of the crime, purposely omitted one item of information. This was
that on the fatal Saturday night a card had been dropped into the letter-
box of each on which was written words stating that the crime had been
committed "by the Irish Invincibles." But until the new year the Phoenix
Park murders remained a complete mystery.

The effect of this crime was very great. Irishmen everywhere were
plunged in grief and shame. Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and Davitt issued
on the next day a manifesto denouncing the murder and expressing the
indignation of Irishmen that a man who landed in Ireland that very day on
a mission of conciliation should have been so cruelly assassinated. Parnell
told Gladstone that if the latter wished he would retire from public life.
This Gladstone would not consent to. But the passion which was shown
when the news reached England convinced the Premier that conciliation
and the treaty must be given up. On Monday, the 8th of May, Gladstone
said all arrangements fur the government of Ireland must be recast. In
accordance with a furious cry from the indignant country it was announced
that the Government meant to bring in another Coercion Act more stringent
than that in force. The editors of some English newspapers lost their heads
completely, accused all Irishmen of complicity in the crime, and for some
time Irish residents in English towns had a hard life.

Lord Frederick Cavendish had been on terms of the most intimate
friendship, personal as well as political, with Gladstone, for his wife was a
niece of Mrs. Gladstone. "When the perpetrators were discovered in the
following year, this lady, thus tragically left a widow, wrote a letter
breathing the most forgiving spirit towards her husband's assassins. Lord
Frederick was buried at Edensor, near Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, on the
llth of May; more than three hundred members of the House of Commons
attended his funeral. Burke's funeral at Glasnevin, Dublin, was also very
largely attended. He was a Catholic, grauduephew of Cardinal Wiseman,
and paternally of an old Galway family which enjoyed a baronetcy, to which
la; was heir at the time of his death. After long service in the Chief
Secretary's Department he was appointed Under Secretary in 1869 by
Gladstone's first Government. Cavendish's place was filled by Mr., now

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 883

Sir George, Trevelyan, distinguished in the literary world as author of a life
of his uncle, Lord Macaulay, and other works. Sir Robert Hamilton was
appointed Under Secretary. It is worth noting that he and his two
immediate successors in the office, General Sir Redvers Buller and Sir West
Eidgeway, all became convinced that the present system of governing
Ireland was radically wrong and that Home Eule ought to be conceded.

The Phoenix Park Murders Coercion Act brought back the feelings of
intense hostility between Irishmen and the Ministry. It was introduced
on Thursday, the llth of May, by Sir William Harcourt, the Home Secre-
tary, then very unpopular with Nationalists. There were some violent
scenes on its discussion, as it was stubbornly resisted by the Irish Party.
On the 1st of July Parnell and twenty-four other Irish members were
suspended, although some of them had actually been absent from the sitting.
It was strange that many Englishmen believed Forster and his policy
to have been vindicated by the great crime that had been committed,
although it afterwards appeared that it was the outcome of that policy.
The new Coercion Act passed its third reading in the House of Commons
on the llth of July, and went through its final stages in a short time.
It was to last for three years.

In those three years the fight went on between the Liberals and the
Irish Party in Parliament. But it raged more fiercely in Ireland. Lord
Spencer and Mr. Trevelyan became intensely unpopular. The new Act was
put in force in some respects with great rigour. Although crime diminished
greatly after the dismissal of Forster and the release of Parnell and the
popular leaders, the Phoenix Park murders seem to have provoked the
most drastic reprisals on the part of the Government. Jury-packing became
common again, and the men charged with agrarian crimes in the West and
South, when tried by selected Dublin juries, were almost invariably found
guilty. Those charged with murder were, of course, sentenced to death
when convicted, and most of them were executed. There is no doubt that
some at least of those executed and imprisoned were innocent of the crimes of
which they were accused.

The Arrears Act was introduced by Mr. Redmond on the 15th of May,
Its final stage, the royal assent, was reached on the 18th of August. This
excellent measure which Parnell had assured Gladstone a year before to be
absolutely necessary, was drafted, every clause and every line, by the Irish
leader in his cell in Kilmainham. It wiped away all arrears of rent incurred
before the Land Act was passed. Gladstone and Forster spoke in its favour.
So did Mr. Trevelyan who had to administer it. Captain O'Shea admitted
that the settlement of this question was a greater anxiety to Parnell, when
he interviewed him in prison in connection with the Kilmainham Treaty,
than his own release or that of the other suspects. The Lords had to pass
the Bill in 1882, although they had rejected such a demand in 1881. There
was a contest between the Houses, it is true, but the Commons triumphed.

884 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

Notwithstanding the gloomy character of the time a great demonstration
of a threefold significance was held in Dublin on the 15th of August, 1882.
It Avas the commemoration of the centenary of the historic Declaration of
Independence of the Irish Volunteers, as well as the occasion of the unveiling
of a statue of O'Connell on the most conspicuous site in Dublin, and of the
opening of an exhibition in Dublin of Irish Arts and Manufactures by
Mr. Charles Dawson, M.P., Lord Mayor.

On the day after this great display Edmund Dwyer Gray was sent
to prison by Mr. Justice Lawson for contempt of court. The contempt
consisted of some comments in his newspaper, the Freeman's Journal, founded
on a letter from Mr. William O'Brien, detailing the uproariously convivial
conduct of a Crown jury the night before they convicted one Francis Hynes
of an agrarian murder in Clare. Judge Lawson, who presided at the trial,
sentenced Hynes to death and sent Gray to prison, where he remained until
the 30th of September, when he and many other prisoners of the Coercion
suspect period were released. Mr. O'Brien had been a suspect, too, for he was
arrested the day after Parnell's arrest. His paper was often suppressed
in these days.

On the 17th of October, 1882, Parnell founded the Irish National League
as a successor of the Land League. Its objects were declared to be Home
Rule, land reform, local self-government, extension of the franchise, parlia-
mentary and municipal, improvement of the condition of the labourers, and
promotion of Irish industries. This organization was almost as successful as
its predecessor had been.

It has been said that agrarian crime diminished on the dismissal of
Forster. Unfortunately the activity of the secret societies in cities and
towns did not. In January, 1883, occurred the first of a series of dynamite
explosions in Great Britain which went on for more than two years, the most
serious being the attempts on the Houses of Parliament and the Tower on the
24th of January, 1885.

In Dublin, too, there were still some crimes in the latter half of 1882
committed by secret societies. Some of them had no connection with
the historic crime of the year, the Phoenix Park murders, but two of them
had; and it was these two outrages, committed six months later, which
ultimately led to the arrest of those who had perpetrated that deed. The
first of these was an attempt, or rather a pretended attempt, to assassinate
Mr. Justice Lawson, who had become very unpopular, outside the Kildare
Street Club, Dublin, on the llth of November. The four men specially
protecting the judge, seized one Patrick Delany, who was armed with a
revolver. He was convicted on the 3rd of January and sentenced to ten
years' imprisonment. It will be afterwards seen that there was a group of
men in Dublin to whom the arrest and conviction of this man were necessarily
a source of the keenest anxiety.

The second such incident was a desperate attempt to murder a man named

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 885

Denis Joseph Field outside his house in North Frederick Street, Dublin, on
the evening of the 27th of November. Field had served on one of tho
Crown juries which tried and convicted, two months before, one Michael
Walsh for the murder of a policeman in Galway. Lord Spencer commuted
the death sentence on Walsh. Special attention had been directed to Field in
the public press during the course of this trial. It was pointed out that,
although forbidden as a juror in a capital case to communicate with the public,
he had sent a note to a gentleman in court, who was prevented by the sub-
sheriff from sending a reply. It was explained at the time that the note
related to his business, and the recipient of it had his office over Field's
stationery shop. As Field had been stabbed by two men with long sharp
knives, who afterwards escaped on a car, the authorities believed, with good
reason as it turned out, that the men engaged in it were the same who had
perpetrated the Phoenix Park murders. Field ultimately recovered, and left
Ireland. He received a large sum of money as compensation. Information
as to the crime was soon forthcoming.

A few days after the attack on Field one of the Dublin police magistrates
was appointed by the Government to hold a special secret inquiry which
continued for two or three weeks. All persons believed to know anything
of the recent events, whether as members of the conspiracy or as independent
outsiders who could give evidence as to facts, were summoned before this
tribunal, and there is no doubt that here the web of the mystery first began
to be unravelled. One man, Kobert Farrell, who seems to have believed
erroneously that he was not the first informer, disclosed all he knew. It was
not very much, compared to the knowledge of some of his associates, but he
was able to give the names of all the chief members of the conspiracy. It is
believed, too, that Patrick Delany, after his conviction, told something at least
of what he knew. This belief receives strong confirmation from his sub-
sequent conduct and career.

In consequence of the evidence at the secret inquiry, and chiefly of that
of Farrell, the authorities at last took a bold step which convinced the public
that the Phoenix Park tragedy was not forgotten. Sixteen men Avere seized
at their houses in the night and charged on Saturday, the 13ih of January.
1883, with conspiracy to murder certain Government officials. They were
remanded for a week to Kilmainham after some formal evidence had been given.
Amongst them was Kobert Farrell who was thus treated as a prisoner, just as
Pierce Nagle, the spy, who informed upon the Fenians, had been in 1865,
although he had already secretly turned Queen's evidence and told all he knew
against his associates. In the course of the week five others were arrested.
On that day week, the second sitting held in the case, Farrell appeared in the
witness-box instead of in the dock. He deposed that he had joined a secret
society to which all the prisoners belonged, and some other persons, the total
of members being little more than thirty. He detailed various attempts to
shoot Forster, who, as long as he remained in Dublin, seems to have been the

886 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

principal object of the vengeance of the society. As Farrell was not present
at the Phoenix Park murders or the attack on Field, the two crimes of which
the authorities believed the prisoners to be guilty, he did not, after all, implicate
the others very deeply. But he was the first informer. He told when he had
no very powerful motive for telling, for his life was not in danger from the
scaffold, like the lives of all those who had been in the Park on the occasion of
the crime. He received £1,000, the only very large reward granted to any
witness. Fairell admitted in cross-examination that he had already, before the
arrests, given his information to the magistrate at the secret inquiry and to the
able police officer who was investigating the case. He assigned as the reason
why he was so ready to turn approver his disgust when he found that the society
he had joined existed only for assassination of unpopular Government officials,
unlike the old Fenians, to whom he had also belonged, and who murdered
nobody except informers. He gave one piece of information which turned out
to be important. This was that he had been told that one Michael Kavanagh was
the card river who accompanied the assailants of Field. Kavanagh was at once
arrested and appeared with the others in the dock at the next three sittings.

The remaining sittings of the court were held in the Courthouse,
Kilmainham, immediately adjoining the prison. At the next three sittings,
27 Jan., 3 Feb., and 5 Feb., the most important evidence was that of three
independent witnesses, two on the 27th of January and one on the 5th
of February, Avho identified Kavanagh as having been present when Field was
attacked. The last witness had even spoken to him several times on
the occasion. This showed Kavanagh that he might be convicted of that
offence at least, and he had been present at a much greater crime for which
his life would be forfeited. Although after the 6th of May, and also at the
secret inquiry, after the Field attack, he had strenuously denied all knowledge
of these crimes, his constancy was now shaken by the testimony produced.
On the 8th of February he told the authorities, privately, all he knew and at the
next sitting of the court, Saturday, the 10th of February, he appeared in the
witness-box. As regarded the prisoners this was the beginning of the
end.

Interest in the Field case was altogether superseded when Kavanagh told
all he knew of the Phoenix Park murders. He deposed that he too was
a member of the society, that on the fatal evening he had driven several
of the prisoners to the Park, that he was not allowed to know much of
what was to be done, that he had waited at a certain point, a little beyond the
Gough statue, that one of the prisoners, James Carey, along with another man,
had got upon his car when the two gentlemen who were murdered walked past,
and that he had driven Carey and the other to where the rest of the group
were standing, awaiting the approach of their victim. He said that Carey, and
also the other man and himself, by Carey's directions, all three gave a signal, by
displaying their handkerchiefs, that the victim was approaching. He identified
several of the prisoners as present on the occasion. There were three who left

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 887

in a cab. The driver of the cab was arrested on Kavanagh's information.
Kavanagh said he was then ordered to wait for the others, sitting on his car
with his back to them. He did so ; and, hearing a groan, turned round and
saw Burke lying dead on the footpath. Four of them then jumped upon his
car and he drove them rapidly by a long roundabout route of several miles,
re-entering the city on the south-east at a point distant from the Phoenix
Park. The man who acted as guide on this route, one of the four on his car,
was Patrick Delany, who had been convicted only ten days before the arrest
of the prisoners in the dock, of the attempt to murder Judge Lawson. After
this information Delany, in his convict dress, was placed on a chair in front of
the dock, and charged with the Phoenix Park murders along with the rest of
the prisoners whom Kavanagh swore to have been in the Park. Kavanagh, when
he first turned Queen's evidence, drove the investigating police officer early
in the morning over the roads they had traversed in their escape, a route
comprising roads to the south-west, south and south-east of Dublin. The
men he drove were Brady, Kelly, Delany and a fourth man, Thomas Caffrey,
not then in custody but arrested on Kavanagh's information. Kelly left the
car earlier than the others and, taking a tramcar they passed, reached
his home comparatively early. On the night of the attack on Field he also
drove Brady and Kelly to and from the spot. He identified two others
as having been present. The knives used then were thrown into the
Grand Canal Dock at Bingsend. The Crown was able to produce an
independent witness, another cardriver, who deposed that he saw Kavanagh
in the Park at the time of the murders. It will be seen that Kavanagh's
evidence seriously implicated several of the prisoners. After his evidence the
only witness worth securing by the Crown would be plainly one who was
present in the Park and thus competent to corroborate Kavanagh, and also
high in authority in the society and capable of giving an account of its origin,
organization and history, as that informer was not. There were only
two such men amongst the prisoners, and, a week after Kavanagh appeared as
an approver, one of them succeeded him in the witness-box.

The reader will have noticed that Kavanagh's evidence gravely com-
promised James Carey. This man, a master builder, was in rather a
more prosperous worldly condition than most of the prisoners. He had
contrived, about two months before his arrest, to have himself elected
a member of the Dublin Corporation, defeating a Protestant Conservative and
a Catholic Liberal. Like Kavanagh he had long strenuously denied all
knowledge of the crime, but that informer's evidence showed him that he was
in the greatest danger of death. Even then he was still unwilling to
come forward ; but the magistrates, on the 15th of February, a few days after
Kavanagh's appearance, held another sitting of the court at which an independent
witness was produced, an acquaintance of Carey's, who swore to having met
him in the Park that evening. That seems to have decided Carey. On the
next day he gave his information; and on the day after (Sat., 17 Feb.)

FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

he entered the witness-box to give evidence against his former associates, who
were now lost indeed. His story, which Mr. T. D. Sullivan is probably right in
thinking was not all that he could have told if he would,* ran as follows : —

He was for many years a member of the Fenian Brotherhood, and
treasurer, but he left it about two or three years earlier. When, however, in
November, 1881, one of the prisoners brought a certain man to his house
who invited him to join the new secret society, he did so. This man
and three or four others whose names he mentioned, high in authority
in secret societies, were the real founders of the new body which was
called the Irish Invincibles. They fled to America when the others were
arrested in Dublin. There did not appear ever to have been more than
about thirty members. One of the members alluded to paid the prisoners
from time to time, but Carey did not know where he got the money, nor was
this ever established. The society was governed by a committee of four, one
of whom was chairman. All the committeemen were amongst the prisoners.
The chairman first elected was imprisoned as a suspect in March; and
at the time of the murder Daniel Curley was chairman, and was present in
that capacity in the Park. The other committeemen at that time were
Carey himself, Brady and another prisoner who was not in the Park.
Carey corroborated in general the evidence of Farrell and Kavanngh.
For many months, as both of them had said, Forster was the object of
attack ; but when he resigned and left Ireland the Invincibles decided,
on account of an article in a Dublin paper of the 2nd of May, which merely
said that the Under Secretaryship ought to be changed with each change of
Government, to murder Burke, the Under Secretary. This decision was
arrived at on the 3rd of May, three days before the murder. The actual
time of the murder was the fourth occasion of their going to the Park
to murder Burke. They were there on the morning and evening of the day
before and on the morning of that day, but were unable to carry out
their dreadful purpose until the evening, when Lord Frederick Cavendish
accompanied him. Burke escaped on the first three occasions by the accident
of his walking through the polo ground instead of by the road. On
the 6th of May, the fatal evening there were eleven of the prisoners,
including Carey himself and Kavanagh, in the Park. All were Invincibles
except the cabdriver. It seems to have been understood that Joseph Brady
and Timothy Kelly, both very young men, were to be the actual perpetrators.
Carey admitted that it was he who had originally suggested the use of knives.
The knives used were surgeons' amputating knives, purchased from a London
firm. Brady and Kelly were also to have acted as principals against Forster,
according to Farrell's evidence, and other witnesses swore that it was
they who stabbed Field. Carey was to give the signal that the victim
was approaching. He watched a game at polo until Curley recalled him
to his post on the main road. There he watched with one Joseph Smith for
* Rerollfctionx of Troubled Times in Irixh Politic*, p. 204.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 889

the approach of Burke from Dublin. Smith was a workman at the
Castle. One of the prisoners had brought him to the Invincibles, and
he was sworn in because he alone of all the society knew the appearances of
Forster, Burke and other officials. His duty on this occasion was to
point out Burke to Carey. Burke dismissed his carmnn, as had been
mentioned at the inquest, and joined Lord Frederick Cavendish. The
meeting was fatal to both; for had Burke driven past the conspirators on
a car they would scarcely have attacked him, and they had no design against
Cavendish. The only fact that relieves the gloomy story is that the
murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish was not premeditated: They were
ignorant of his identity, and he was murdered because he was in Burke's
company. It may be parenthetically mentioned here that Mr. John Morley,
who, as Chief Secretary some three years later, had exceptionally reliable
sources of information, assures us, in a footnote to his Life of Gladstone,*
that Burke was unattended by a police guard on this occasion only because
he left them behind him on engaging the car. Carey went on to say that
Smith pointed out Burke to him. Then Carey, Smith and Kavanagh gave
the signal as Kavanagh described, and Carey told those waiting which of
the two gentlemen was Burke. Smith was sent away. Carey walked
aAvay, too, but looked back and saw the two gentlemen meet a group of seven
of the party. Next he saw Brady stab Burke. He walked away, saw
no more, and joined Smith. Both went to Inchicore and from that back to
Dublin by tram. On that evening Carey met first Curley and then Brady,
and both described the crime to him. On the next evening Brady made his
report to Tynan, or " Number One," the man who acted as paymaster of the
Invincibles. Carey heard him describe the tragedy. It appeared that Lord
Frederick Cavendish, on seeing Burke attacked, attempted to defend him and
struck Brady. The latter, being infuriated, murdered Cavendish while Kelly
completed the murder of Burke. Then they drove off, as described by
Kavanagh. Curley, the chairman, and two others drove away in the
cab. It was not until a few hours later, when the dreadful tidings began to
be spread throughout the city, that the Invincibles learned that they had
committed a much greater crime than they had intended, and that the
gentleman in Burke's company was no other than the new Chief Secretary.
Carey left the Invincibles in June and knew nothing of the Field affair.

It need scarcely be said that the astounding revelations of Carey created
a great sensation. He was universally condemned for betraying his associates
in order that he might save his own life. This he did not succeed in
doing. After his evidence the prisoners were committed for trial. The
Commission which tried them opened on the 9th of April and sat for
nearly six weeks. Besides Farrell, Kavanagh, and Carey, there were
three additional informers at the trials, transferred like, the first three,

* Vol. III., p. 67. All the other facts elicited at the magistrate's investigation and
the trials are taken from the sworn evidence as reported in the Freeman's Journal, 1883.

890 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

from the dock to the witness-box. These were Joseph Smith, who pointed
out Burke, Peter Carey, a brother of James, and Joseph Hanlon. The
]ast was one of those who left the Park in the cab with the chairman,
Curley. His life was spared on condition of his appearing as a witness
against the prisoner Kelly. As the latter was one of the actual perpetrators
the Government seem to have been determined to have him convicted.
He was a mere lad, however, and he had really returned to the city
on the 6th of May, earlier than the others, so that two juries that tried
him disagreed. On the third trial Hanlon appeared to corroborate Carey
and Kavanagh, and Kelly was convicted and sentenced. Hanlon and Fagan
had left the Park in the cab with Curley. Concerning this journey a
sensational story had already been mentioned by Carey as told to him by
Curley. This was that the two in the cab along with Curley had, on Cm-ley's
orders, drawn their revolvers and covered two cyclists who had witnessed the
murder and passed and repassed the cab. Curley gave orders that, if they
attempted to follow the cab, they were to be shot, but they did not attempt to
do so. It was Curley also who had written the cards and dropped them into
the letter-boxes of the newspaper offices.

Another device had been employed to secure the conviction of Kelly.
Patrick Delany pleaded guilty to the murder and said that Kelly was
one of the perpetrators. This was after the two juries had disagreed,
but before Kelly's third trial. Another prisoner, Thomas Caffrey, pleaded
guilty along with Delany, but did not incriminate any of his associates.
Both were, of course, sentenced to death, but Delany's sentence was
commuted, being the only death sentence of this Commission commuted.
Caffrey was hanged. It did not, therefore, excite much surprise when
Delany, in his convict garb, was publicly produced as an informer on the trial
of a Fenian named Patrick X. Fitzgerald, in 1884, or when still as a convict,
although not so clothed, he appeared as one of the chief witnesses for the
Times before the Commission which tried its accusations against Parnell and
the other Irish leaders, in 1888-9. It was said that Delany's life sentence
was reduced to one of ten years, and he was speedily released.

There was a very large number of independent witnesses at these trials,
whose evidence told against the prisoners more strongly than that of the
informers. The Phoenix Park murders had long been regarded as an
impenetrable mystery, but, when the trials came on, it was evident that a
great many people knew something about them. It appeared, when the bills
were presented to the Grand Jury, that there was some independent witness
to identify every one of the eleven who formed the party in the Phoenix
Park. The trials showed that many of the prisoners had been seen
by several persons. Five of the prisoners who received capital sentences
were executed, with intervals of a few days between each. These five
were Brady and Kelly, the actual perpetrators, Curley, the chairman,
and Fagan and Caffrey, who were amongst those present but had taken

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 891

no active part. There were also three prisoners sentenced to penal servitude
for life, one for aiding and abetting after the murders, and two others
for the attempt to murder Field. These three were released in 1900.
Five others pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to murder, and all
received sentences of ten years. These were prisoners who had not
been present in the Phrenix Park on the 6th of May. For all who
had there was no mercy.

The gradual manner in which the mystery was unravelled until it
reached the climax of Carey's appearance in the witness-box, caused the
eyes of the public to be turned with great interest to this inquiry. But
the sad spectacle of half a dozen men in rapid succession purchasing safety at
the price of the lives of their associates, of five of the latter sent to
an early grave, and many others to long terms of imprisonment, all for
the same great crime, seems to constitute one of the most impressive
lessons that can be conceived of the awful consequences that may be
incurred by those who become connected with conspiracies. Apart from their
connection with the Invincibles the prisoners were all men of good character.
It was stated that Curley, Fagan, and Caffrey, at their deaths, said they hoped
it would be a warning to others against entering secret societies.

There was a sequel to the Phoenix Park trials. The authorities, having
kept James Carey for some weeks in Kilmainham for his own safety,,
at last sent him away with his wife and family on board a ship bound
for JS~atal. He assumed the name of Power and adopted the slight disguise
of shaving off his beard. There was another Irish passenger on the same
ship, named Patrick O'Donnell, whose passage was to have terminated in
Cape Town, and had been arranged for long before the Government in Ireland
had decided to what colony they should send their inconvenient auxiliary,,
of whose safety they had undertaken the troublesome burden. As far
as Cape Town the two were on not unfriendly terms. But in that city
another passenger, an Englishman named Robert Cubitt, showed O'Donnell a
portrait of Carey in a weekly newspaper, and pointed out its remarkable
resemblance to their fellow-passenger Power. O'Donnell agreed with
Cubitt, and, having made some inquiries of the younger children, was convinced
that Power was Carey. He then booked his passage on the ship for Xatal, and
on Sunday, the 29th of July, when a few miles off Port Elizabeth, he
shot Carey dead on board the Melrose Castle. As this was done at some
distance from land the law considered it "murder on the high seas."
Accordingly O'Donnell was not tried in JSTatal, but brought back to London
where he was tried, convicted, and finally executed on the 17th of December.
It was the last act in the tragedy of the Phoenix Park.

Strong reference was made in Parliament to the Kilmainham inquiry.
On the 22nd of February, a few days after Carey's evidence was first
given, Forster, whose policy some people perversely regarded as vindicated
by the revelations, made a violent attack on Parnell and accused him.

892 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

of fomenting crime and outrage. At the time Parnell merely interjected :
"It is a lie." But on the next day he answered Forster and pointed
out that his coercion of Ireland was mainly responsible for the foundation
of the Invincibles. This was plain from the evidence of Carey himself
when under cross-examination. He was being questioned about the
condition of Ireland when he joined the Invincibles : —

" The Coercion Bill was in force and the popular leaders were in
prison 1 Yes."

"And was it because you despaired of any constitutional means of serving
Ireland that you joined the Society of Invincibles 1 I believe so." *

The enemies of Parnell and the Irish Party hoped that it might
be possible to prove some connection between them and the Invincibles.
They were altogether disappointed in this. But the subject was revived
in a very striking manner some four years later by the Pigott forgeries,
when Pavuell had a signal triumph and his enemies a signal discomfiture.
In Ireland he was as popular as ever and the results of several bye-elections
at this time were strongly in his favour. Oti the 24th of January,
1883, Mr. William O'Brien, editor of United Ireland, who was then
being prosecuted for attacking the Government in his paper, was elected
for his native town of Mallow by the considerable majority of 72, in
a total poll of 250, over John Naish, the Attorney-General, afterwards
Lord Chancellor of Ireland. The last member was also a Whig Attorney-
General who had been raised to the Bench. Mr. O'Brien soon showed
in the House of Commons that he could speak as well as he could write.
The Mallow Election heralded a great change in Ireland. From that
time it has become well-nigh impossible for a Catholic Law Officer of
the Crown to be elected to Parliament in Ireland. A Protestant Law
Officer may of course still be sure of return in Dublin University or
in one of the Protestant seats in Ulster. A few weeks after the Mallow
Election, on the resignation of Mr. H. J. Gill, Mr. Harrington was
returned unopposed for Westmeath, being at the time a Coercion prisoner in
the County Gaol at Mullingar, charged with intimidating the farmers
because he urged them to do their duty to the labourers. The Labourers
.(Ireland) Act was passed this year. It empowered Boards of Guardians to
build cottages for labourers.

One of the most remarkable Irish elections of the nineteenth century was
that in Monaghan on the 2nd of July, 1883, occasioned by the acceptanco
by the Whig member of a Government position. Mr. Healy resigned his
seat for Wexford to become the Nationalist candidate, John Monroe, after-
wards a judge, was the Conservative, Mr. Henry Pringle, the Liberal.
The author of the Healy clause of the Laud Act of 1881 received 2,376
votes, the Conservative 2,011, the Whig 274. Mr. Healy's popularity
.as a tenants' ulvocate had much to say to this. To appreciate the signifi-
* Freeman's Journal, 20 Feb., 1883.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 893

cance of this victory it should be mentioned that this was the only
time, before the new Franchise became law, when any Ulster county, except
Cavan, ever returned a Nationalist; and that Isaac Butt had, in 1871,
been defeated by a large majority in this county of Monaghan, by a
Conservative.

The seat left vacant in Wexford by Mr. Healy's resignation was
contested by the O'Conor Don, one of the most able members of the
Catholic Whig party in Ireland. He was defeated by Mr. William
Eedmond, then a very young man, absent in Australia. Mr. Eedmond
received 307 votes, the O'Conor Don 126. On the 12th of June, 1884,
Mr. Justin Huntly M'Carthy was returned unopposed for Athlone as
a Nationalist, the vacancy having been created by the death of Sir
John Euuis, a Catholic Whig.

A stronger proof than any bye-election of the attachment of the
Irish people to Parnell at this date was the Paruell Testimonial. After
Forster attacked Parnell the subscriptions for this began by a letter
from the Most Rev. Dr. Croke, Archbishop of Cashel. Parnell was
not wealthy. He had inherited liabilities and his generosity to his tenants
even before the days of the Land League, had made his resources still
more slender. The Parnell Tribute reached a total of about £38,000,
subscribed by Irishmen all over the world. It was presented to him
at a banquet in the Rotunda, Dublin, on the llth of December, 1883.

Ireland was included in the benefits of Gladstone's great Franchise
Act of 1884, which conferred Household Suffrage. As this change
was certain to increase the number of Nationalist members the Hon.
William Brodrick who; though sitting for an English constituency, was
eldest son of an Irish peer, Viscount Midleton, proposed an amendment that
Ireland should be excluded from the Act. But he received very little
support even from his own party, the Conservatives. A hundred members
of that party refused to vote for the amendment, some of its most
prominent members even voted against it and for the rights of Ireland.
It was rejected by 332 to 137. Thus the Irish masses first came to
be represented. The Irish labourer and artisan were now electors.

In December, 1884, the House of Lords accepted the Franchise Bill
on condition that it should be accompanied by a Redistribution Bill.
Gladstone brought forward such a Bill. The Cabinet Minister in charge of
it was Sir Charles Dilke, who showed the most minute acquaintance
with its complex details ; it was said, however, that a member of the
Irish Party, Mr. Thomas Sexton, was scarcely less conversant with it.
Gladstone announced that the number of the Irish members, one hundred
and three, was to remain unchanged. There were a few attempts by private
members to upset this arrangement, but they were voted down by overwhelm-
ing majorities. It is said that Lord Salisbury, the Conservative leader, dis-
countenanced such attempts by members of his party. Their arguments weie

894 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

based on the unfair hypothesis that Ireland's representation should be reduced
because of the reduction in her population, a reduction due to the Union
system of government. These theorists did not take into account the clause
in the treaty of Union, which treaty they professed to be the corner-stone of
their Irish policy, which forbade any such reduction of the number of Irish
seats. They also conveniently neglected to remember the period before the
Famine when the number of Ireland's representatives was greatly inferior
to that which she might fairly claim on the basis of population.

The Kedistribution Act of 1885 effected, nevertheless, a radical change
in the Irish constituencies. Under the old system all the Irish counties,
and six of the cities, were two-member constituencies. Under the new,
the only such constituencies left in Ireland were Cork City and Dublin
University. All the rest are now single-member constituencies, divisions of
counties or cities. The old representation was as follows : — 64 members
representing the thirty-two counties, 2 representing Dublin University,
12 representing the boroughs of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Waterford
and Galway, which had two members each ; and 25 representing the
boroughs of Derry, Newry, Kilkenny, Armagh, Athlone, Bandon, Carlow,
Carrickfergus, Clonmel, Coleraine, Downpatrick, Drogheda, Dundalk,
Dungannon, Dungarvan, Ennis, Enniskillen, Kinsale, Lisburn. Mallow,
New Ross, Portarlington, Tralee, Wexfbrd, and Youghal, which had one
member each. The representation of the one-member boroughs, except
those of Derry, Newry and Kilkenny, whose population exceeded 15,000,
was abolished. There were twenty-two such boroughs abolished. Limerick,
Waterford and Galway each lost one member, while the representation
of Dublin and Belfast was increased from two to four. Under the
new Act there were nine boiough constituencies in Ireland. The re-
presentation of Dublin University remained unchanged, but an attempt
to secure a representative for the Royal University failed, Gladstone stating
that, while he would not abolish the representation of any University, he
would add no new University members. London University, an examining
body like the Royal, had been granted a member of Parliament by Disraeli's
Reform Act of 1867.

Under the old system every county in Ireland had two members,
whatever its population or extent. Under the new, Cork County has
seven members, the following counties, naming them in the order of
their extent, have four each : — Galway, Mayo, Donegal, Kerry, Tipperary,
Tyrone, Antrim and Down. Armagh has three and the following counties
have two each : — Cavan, Clare, Dublin, Fermanagh, Kildare, Kilkenny,
King's County, Leitrim, Limerick, Londonderry, Longford, Louth, Meatb,
Monaghan, Queen's County, Roscommon, Sligo, Waterfoid, Westmeath,
Wexford and^Wicklow. Carlow has one member. The representation
of Ireland is now distributed as follows: — Counties, 85 members, Dublin
University 2, and Boroughs 16 members.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 895

In the Session of 1885, the Irish Party, by voting against the Govern-
ment in several critical divisions, had brought the Ministerial majority
down considerably. This was notably the case in the division of the 27th
of February, 1885, when a vote of censure on the Government was proposed
for its conduct with regard to General Gordon, who had been despatched
to Khartoum, then deserted, and finally killed by the Soudanese. The
defection of many Liberals and the hostile Irish vote left the Government a
majority of only fourteen. But in a few months more it was to be shown
more strikingly what even Parnell's small party could do because it was well
disciplined and attending regularly.

On the 15th of May Gladstone announced the intention of the
Government to re-enact some clauses of the violent Coercion Act which
had been passed in the passion created by the Phoenix Park Murders.
It had been passed for three years and would have expired three months
after Gladstone's announcement, but he said he would not allow it to
expire. Parnell and the Irish Party replied to this by uniting with
the Conservatives to defeat the Government on the 8th of June. On
that day the second reading was taken of the Customs and Inland Eevenue
Bill. As the beer and spirit duties were to be increased the Conservatives
opposed the Bill. The Government was defeated by twelve votes, the
figures being 264 to 252. Parnell with his party, numbering 39, had
effected the defeat of the strongest Liberal Government of the century.
This the Irish Party did as a protest against the coercion policy.

The Government resigned and the Conservatives re-entered office
with Lord Salisbury as Premier for the first time. Lord Spencer was
succeeded as Viceroy by the Earl of Carnarvon, and Mr., now Sir Henry,
Campbell-Bannerman, who in October, 1884, had replaced Mr. Trevelyan, as
Chief Secretary, was succeeded by Sir William Hart Dyke. The Con-
servative Government showed itself conciliatory. The Coercion Act
was allowed to expire on the 14th of August. An inquiry was granted
into the case of Myles Joyce, wrongfully executed by the late Government.
An excellent Land Purchase Act was passed at the instance of Lord
Ashbourne, the Irish Lord Chancellor. Parliament was prorogued on
the 14th of August on the understanding that there would be a General
Election in November. In the end of July Parnell met Lord Carnarvon,.
the Conservative Viceroy, on the invitation of the latter, in an empty
house in London. Parnell stated subsequently that Lord Carnarvon
promised at this interview that the Conservative Government would,
if successful, grant Ireland a Parliament, protection of Irish industries,,
and a liberal scheme of land purchase. Lord Carnarvon said that he
had sought this interview on his own responsibility and not on behalf
of his Government, but, although his recollection of the details did
not agree with Parnell's, he did not deny that some such proposals
had been made. Thus Parnell was most successful in his policy of playing

9

£96 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

off the British parties against each other, and getting the Conservatives
to make the running for the Liberals.

In Ireland he formulated his demands. At a great meeting in Dublin
on the 24th of August he declared for Grattan's Parliament. Three
days earlier at Arklow he said there should be legislative protection
of Irish industries against British competition. Although Paruell de-
manded Grattau's Parliament as something that might be granted, he
preserved his hatred of British domination of Ireland, and had shown his
symptthy with complete separation from England in January, 1885, when
he said at Cork, speaking ot himself and the Irish Party, " \Ye have never
attempted to fix ne plus ultra to the progress of Ireland's nationhood."

The cold shade of opposition had its usual effect of making the
Liberals more liberal. Mr. Chamberlain said he was in favour of a
large measure of local self-go vernineut for Ireland. Mr. Morley, with
more sincerity, for he was even then a Home Kuler of many years' standing,
said he was in favour of granting Home Rule as in Canada. Hugh
Childers, another member of Gladstone's Cabinet, who had begun his
political life in Australia, also declared himself a Home Ruler. In addition
to all this Lord Salisbury, the Conservative Premier, delivered a speech
at Newport ou the 7th of October, which was certainly not that of
an uncompromising opponent of Home Rule.

The General Election began in November. Gladstone in Midlothian
called upon the electors of Great Britain to give him such a majority
as should render him independent of the Irish vote. When Parnell
asked Gladstone to state formally his views on Home Rule, the latter
replied that the Irish constituencies had not yet spoken on the question
by their votes. Parnell retorted by issuing directions, published on
the 21st of November, to the Irish voters in Great Britain, to vote against
the Liberals. This was no idle menace, but had an immense effect on the
result. The Irish vote in English and Scotch towns had been organized
since about two years previously in the most energetic manner by the
Irish National League of Great Britain, of which Mr. T. P. O'Connor
was then, and has been now many years, President. Some Liberals,
recogniziug this potent force, had descended to the most abject appeals
for suppoit from it. But only five Liberal candidates in England,
men who had been consistent supporters of Ireland's rights against their
party, weie excepted from the Irish decree against Liberals.* The
borough elections came first, and, under the new Franchise and Redistribu-
tion, the Irish vote told heavily against the Liberals. Several Coercioni&t
L berals of great mark in their party were rejected. Of the nine Liverpool
members not one was a Liberal, of the six Manchester members but
oue. In several London constituencies the small majority by which

* The five excepted were Messrs. Labouchere, Joseph Cowen, T. C. Thompson,
Lloyd Jones and Samuel Storey.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 897

the Liberals were defeated was the Irish vote of the district. Speaking
of the Liberal defeats in the boroughs, Gladstone said : — " The main
cause is the Irish vote." He said, too, that Lancashire had spoken, but
that her accents were tinged strongly with the Irish bro«ue. Writing
to Midlothian about the Conservatives he said : — " They know that,
but for the imperative orders, issued on their behalf by Mr. Parnell
and his friends, whom they were never tired of denouncing as disloyal
men, the Liberal majority of forty-eight would at this moment have
been near a hundred."

In Ireland^the result of this General Election, the first on the extended
franchise and in the new one-member constituencies of redistribution,
was overwhelmingly in favour of Home Rule. 85 Nationalists were
returned, and only 18 Unionists. There was also a Nationalist returned
in Great Britain, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, who was elected for the Scotland
Division of Liverpool, where there is a large Irish population. In Leinster,
Munster and Connaught Nationalists were elected by enormous majorities,
while their Unionist opponents polled in some cases an absurdly low
number of votes. Thus in North Kilkenny, Mid-Cork, South Mayo
and East Kerry the totals of votes recorded for Nationalist and Unionist
candidates respectively, were: 4,084 and 174, 5,033 and 106, 4,900 and 75,
and 3,169 and 30. These are merely instances of what went on in
all the elections in these provinces. Dr. Kevin Izod O'Doherty, the
Young Ireland^editor of '48, was elected for North Meath. In Ulster
alone were there close contests. But here, too, the Nationalists generally
triumphed. Only in two considerable contests were they defeated,
and the majority in each was very small. Mr. Justin M'Carthy was
defeated in Derry City by a majority of 29 in a total poll of 3,619, and
Mr. Sexton in West Belfast by 35 in a poll of 7,523. But these were
counterbalanced by the capture of South Derry and South Tyrone.
Mr. Healy won South Derry by a majority of 565 over Whig and
Tory combined, although Catholics are in a minority in the division.
Mr. William O'Brien defeated the landlord nominee in South Tyrone
by 52. Like Mr. Healy he had a majority partly composed of non-Catholic
voters. The old fiction that Ulster belonged entirely to the Unionists
was exploded. It should be remembered that, on the old franchise, of
all the Ulster constituencies only Cavan twice and Monaghan once,
had ever returned Nationalists. Now of the 33 Ulster seats 17 were
won by Nationalists. In only one constituency outside Ulster were
Unionists returned, that of Dublin University. In only two did they
make any serious fight. These were Stephen's Green, one of the new
divisions of the City of Dublin, where there was a Nationalist majority
of nearly 2,000, and South County Dublin, where the Nationalist
majority was 1,378. On the oil franchise Parnell was defeated by
a large Unionist majority in his first election fight in 1874, in the

898 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

County of Dublin, then as safe a Tory seat as Antrim. Parnell headed
the poll as a matter of course in Cork City. Four of his lieutenants
were elected now for two constituencies. His party numbered eighty-
six. Owing to the Irish vote in Great Britain the Liberals had
not that majority, independent of the Irish, which Gladstone had
called for.

When the General Election was over the numbers stood thus : — Liberals
335, Conservatives 249, Nationalists 86. The Nationalist total evenly
balanced the majority of Liberals over Conservatives, while Liberals and
Nationalists combined had a majority of 172 over Conservatives. Parnell's
strategy had triumphed. He was universally recognized by Tory and Whig
newspapers in England as master of the situation.

Events moved rapidly towards the adoption of Home Kule by a
British Party. On the 17th of December an inspired paragraph appeared
simultaneously in the Standard and the Leeds Mercury, stating that
Gladstone had determined to concede Home Eule. He denied the report
guardedly, but the manner of his denial was proof that there was some
ground for it. Lord Salisbury and the Conservatives abandoned their
attitude of opportunism and began to declare decidedly against Home
Rule. On the llth of January the newly-elected Irish Party met in
Dublin, and, although Parnell was absent, he was unanimously elected
Chairman. On the following day Lord Carnarvon, the Viceroy, resigned,
and so did the Chief Secretary. Lord Carnarvon was personally disposed
towards a policy of conciliation if not of Home Eule. William Henry
Smith was appointed Chief Secretary, but, as will be seen, he was a very
short time in office.

On the 21st of January, 1886, Parliament assembled. On the 26th
a Coercion Bill was promised early in the day. On that very evening
Parnell united his party with the Liberals and turned the Government
out. The vote was on the amendment to the Address by Mr. Jesse
Collings. The figures were 329 to 250. It was universally understood
by this time that Gladstone had become a convert to Home Rule.
Gladstone became Premier for the third time. It need scarcely be
said that his Government was very popular in Ireland. The Earl of
Aberdeen became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Mr. John Morley, Chief
Secretary.

About this time there was a painful inteilude in Nationalist polices
which seemed to foreshadow other events which came nearly five yt>.-ir.s
later. Captain O'Shea, the negotiator of the Kilmainham Trnfy of 1882,
being a Gladstonian Liberal rather than a Nationalist, had not sought
re-election in Clare but had stood as a Liberal fur the Exchange Division
of Liverpool, where he had been beaten by a small majority. The seat
for Galway City was vacant, as Mr. T. P. O'Connor, its member, had
been returned for a division of Liverpool, also, and had elected to sit

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 899

for it. The news that Parnell intended to make O'Shea member for
Gal way > without his being pledged to sit, act and vote with the Irish
Party, as all other Nationalist members were, caused Messrs. Biggar
and Healy to go to that town and start a candidate to oppose him.
But Parnell went there and by appealing to the necessity for unity
and obedience to his leadership, quelled the revolt, and O'Shea was elected
on the llth of February, 1886. It need only be added that, when the
fateful division on Home Kule came on a few months later, O'Shea
voted neither for nor against it but walked out of the House of Commons.
That was the end of his Parliamentary career. In the General Election of
the next month he did not seek re-election.

On the 8th of April, 1886, Gladstone introduced his first Home
Rule Bill. He proposed to establish an Irish Parliament consisting of
two chambers and an Irish Executive to manage Irish affairs. The
Imperial Parliament was still to control the succession to the crown,
peace or war, the army, navy, militia, volunteers, defence, foreign and
colonial relations, dignities, titles of honour, treason, trade, post office,
coinage. The Irish Parliament was not to make laws as to the endowment
of religion, or against educational freedom, or as to customs or excise.
The Dublin Metropolitan Police were to remain under Imperial control for
two years, and the Royal Irish Constabulary indefinitely; but eventually all
Irish police were to be under the control of the Irish Parliament. Constitutional
questions as to the powers of the Irish Parliament were to be submitted
to the Judicial Committee of the English Privy Council. Ireland's contribu-
tion to the Imperial revenue was to be in the proportion of one-fifteenth to
the whole. The Irish members were no longer to sit in the Imperial
Parliament.

The last clause was vehemently opposed on many sides. Parnell
found himself obliged for the present to give up protection of Irish
industries in the Bill. He accepted the financial arrangement with
reluctance, justly declaring that it was a "hard bargain" for Ireland.
It was always his custom to drive the hardest bargain possible in favour of
Ireland.

Gladstone succeeded in carrying the bulk of his party with him in
his advocacy of Home Rule, but the proposal cost him the support of
some of the leading members of that party, notably of Lord Hartington,
Mr. Chamberlain and John Bright. They were followed by about ninety
others who henceforth became known as the Liberal Unionist Party.
When the crucial division on the second reading of the Bill took place
on the 7th of June, 1886, it was defeated by a majority of 30 votes,
the numbers being 343 to 313, the 343 who voted against it being composed
of 250 Conservatives and 93 Liberal Unionists. Gladstone at once dissolved
Parliament and the results of the General Election were unfavourable
to him. There were 315 Conservatives and 78 Liberal Unionists returned

900 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

against 191 Liberals and 86 Nationalists. In Ulster South Deny and
South Tyrone were lost by the Nationalist s, but Mr. Sexton succeeded
in capturing West Belfast,* and Mr. Justin M 'Garth y was awarded the seat
for Derry City on petition, so that (he Nationalist total remained unchanged.
The great majority of the Irish people are quite unchangeable in this
matter. From this time forward the Liberal Opposition and the Nationalists
were in alliance. AVhen Gladstone did take up Home Rule it must be
admitted that he advocated it with splendid energy and ability. Sir George
Trevelyan was for a time a Unionist, but soon returned to the Liberal
fold. If Gladstone had lost John Bright, Mr. Chamberlain and the
present Duke of Devonshire, he had retained such old Liberals as Sir
William Harcourt, Hugh Clulders, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Sir
Charles Dilke, Earl Granville, Earl Spencer, the Marquess of Ripon and the
Earl of Kimberley. Of all these men Lord Spencer deserved the greatest
credit for standing by his old leader in support of Home Rule ; for he showed
much magnanimity in forgetting the violence with which he had been
assailed by both the tongues and the pens of Irish Nationalists, when he was
Viceroy of Ireland.

Owing to the Conservative victory at the polls Lord Salisbury became Premier
for the second time. The Lords Lieutenant of Ireland during this administration
were the Marquess of Londonderry from 1886 to 1889, and the Earl, now
Marquess, of Zetland from 1889 to the dissolution of Parliament. The Chief
Secretaries were Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, a second time, until March, 1887r
Mr. Aithur James Balfour from that date to the close of 1891, and Mr. William
Lawies Jackson, now Lord Allerton, from that time until the dissolution
of Parliament. The Conservative Government soon showed the truth
of ParnelFs saying that there was no alternative between granting Home
Rule and governing Ireland as a crown colony. This Ministry went as
near the latter course as any Government could, in a country which still
preserved some semblance of respect for constitutional methods of ruling.
This was done rather out of opposition to Gladstone and Home Rule
than from principle. Lord Randolph Churchill, one of the most brilliant
members of the Government party, told Mr. Justin M'Carthy that, having
done all he could for the Nationalists and failed, he now intended to
do all he could against them. As there did not soem to be much hope
of redress for the grievances of tenants, some of the Nationalist leaders took
an extreme step in proposing a system of banking the rents of tenants,
which were to be placed in the care of a managing committee of tenants
on the estate, when the landloid refused to give the reduction of the
half-year's rent which the tenants demanded. This was called the Plan
of Campaign. The scheme appeared in United Ireland of the 23rd of

* Mr. Sexton's victory in West Belfast so enraged the Orange party that the most
violent Orange riots of the century occurred in that city for weeks afterwards.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 901

October, 1886. Parnell stated some months afterwards that this was not
done with his snnction or approval.

In the following year, which was the Jubilee or fiftieth anniversary
of the succession of Queen Victoria to the throne, the most stringent Coercion
Act of the century was introduced. It was to remain in force for an
indefinite period. It was, of course, opposed by the Irish Party and the
Liberals with energy, but carried through by the huge Government majority.
On the 10th of June Parnell and the Irish Party retired as a protest
of Ireland's representatives agahut the proposal of William Henry Smith,
who was leader of the House of Commons, that the Committee in charge
of the Coercion Bill should report to the House within a week. On the
8th of July the Bill passed its third reading. It was not long in passing
through its final stages. Although a Land Act was introduced at the
same time which benefited leaseholders, the Irish policy of this Government
was unfortunately mainly composed of Coercion. On the 19th of August
the National League was suppressed as an illegal association, and soon
the Government rivalled Forster in 1881-2 in its drastic application of
Coercion. Many Irish members of Parliament were imprisoned under
this Act, some of them several times during the next four yea;s.* On
the 9th of September the police fired in order to disperse illegally a
Nationalist meeting at Mitchelstown, Co. Cork. Three men were killed
and many wounded.

In the July of this year Monsignor, afterwards Cardinal, Persico visited
Ireland on a special mission from Pope Leo XIII. He was sent to ascertain
the state of the country.

At the opening of the session of 1888 the Liberals and the Irish Party,
opposing the Government on the Address, were defeated by 319 votes
to 229. On the 2nd of February two members of the late Home Rule
Cabinet, the Marquess of Ripon and Mr. Morley, received an enthusiastic
welcome at a great meeting in Dublin. On the 20th of April a Papal
rescript was issued condemning boycotting and the Plan of Campaign.
On the 8th of May Parnell, speaking at the Eighty Club, a Gladstonian
body, declared that he had never sanctioned or approved of the Plan
of Campaign. In June Parnell announced that Cecil Rhodes, the great
British potentate of South Africa, had sent him £10,000 as a contribution
to the Home Rule Party's funds, but that he had stipulated that Parnell
should support the retention of the Irish members in Westminster in any
future settlement of the question.

On the 7th of March, 1887, a series of articles entitled Parnellism and
Crime began to appear in the Times newspaper. This series at: erupted

*Mr. William O'Brien was imprisoned five times; Mr. Condon three times; the following
members twice :— Messrs. David Sheehy, Cox, Patrick O'Brien, Gilhooly, John Dillon,
Redmond, John O'Connor and Tanner; the following once :— Messrs. O'Kelly, T. D.
Sullivan, T. Harrington, Kilbride, Carew, Flynn, E. Harriogton, Hooper and Pyne.

902 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

to prove that the Irish leader and his colleagues were actively employed
in fomenting crime in Ireland. It closed on the 18th of April, which,
by a coincidence evidently not accidental, was the day on which the division
on the second reading of the Coercion Bill was to be taken in the House
of Commons. On that day the facsimile of a letter, alleged to have
been written by Parnel1, and the handwriting of which certainly bore a
close resemblance to his, was published in the newspaper. This letter,
dated the 15th of May, 1882, nine days after the Phoenix Park murders,
purported to be an apology from Parnell to some unnamed person, apparently
in sympathy with the Invincibles, in which Parnell was made to excuse
himself for' his condemnation of the crime on the plea of necessity. It
contained the following sentence, "Though I regret the accident of Lord
F. Cavendish's death I cannot refuse to admit that Burke got no more
than his deserts." On the following day Parnell, in his place in Parliament,
denied the authenticity of the letter. He contented himself with simply
asserting that it was an "audacious fabrication" and took no further action
about it. Owing to the traditionally high reputation of the Times many
believed that the letter was authentic, in spite of Parnell's denial.

The subject was not revived until more than a year afterwards when
Mr. F. H. O'Donnell, a former member of the Irish Party, took an action
against the Times for libe', as his name had been mentioned amongst others
in the series of articles. The leading counsel for the Times, Sir Richard
Webster, the English Attorney General, in the course of his addivss for
the defendant, read aloud a whole series of new letters, besides that already
published. They purported to have been written by Parnell and sympathized
•with crime. On the 5th of July, 1888, the jury returned a verdict for
the Times. This caused a large number of the English public to believe
more strongly than ever that the letters were authentic. On the 6th
of July Parnell asserted, in the House of Commons, that all the letters
quoted at the trial were forgeries. The Irish Party and the Liberals
demanded the appointment of a Committee of the House of Commons to
investigate the authenticity of the letters printed by the Times. The
Government would not consent to this, but proposed, instead, a Bill appointing
a Commission of three judges to investigate the truth or falsehood of all
the charges made by the Times against Parnell and his colleagues, including
the letters. Parnell objected and said that the case of the letters alone
should be gone into. The Government, persisting in its own couise,
introduced a Bill ou the 16th of July, which finally passed the House
of Lords on the llth of Augu.-t. The three judges who constituted the
Commission weie Sir James, afterwards Lord, Hannen, Mr. Justice Day and
Mr. Justice Smith.

The Commission met on the 17th of September to determine its pro-
cedure. The actual sittings began on the 22nd of October. Parnell and
sixty-four other Iri h members wers afftcted by the charges, as well as

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 903

Mr. Michael Davitt, who was not then in Parliament. Both sides were
represented by counsel, Sir Richard Webster and Sir Henry James being
the leading counsel for the Times, Sir Charles Russell, afterwards Lord
Russell of Killowen, Lord Chief Justice of England, and Mr. Asquith
for Parnell, and Mr. Reid and others for the other Nationalists. All the
Nationalists were represented by counsel except Mr. Davitt and Joseph
Gillis Biggar, who appeared for themselves. The general charges were
first gone into and the Times produced many witnesses, including Patrick
De!any, the Invincible, who was brought from prison to give evidence.
His evidence did not connect any of the accused Nationalists with the
Invincible conspiracy.

The only remarkable witness fur the Times was the spy Thomas Miller
Beach, who was known as Major Le Caron. This man, an Englishman, had
served in the Northern army in the great American Civil War of 1861-5.
He had also entered the Fenian Brotherhood, of which lie had been a
highly-placed and trusted member, until he appeared in the witness-box.
He had all alung been betraying the secrets of the Fenians and Clann-na-Gael
to the British Government, in whose pay he had been for a quarter of a
century. He swoie that he had had a conversation with Parnell in 1881, in
the House of Commons, in which the feasibility of uniting the open
and revolutionary Irish movements was discussed. His evidence did not
compromise Parnell, for the latter, even on Beach's admission, did not
say much, and the spy had to admit that the interview was of his own
seeking. But his history shows how much a clever spy can do in betraying
the affairs of a secret society. Apparently his treachery would never
have been detected if he had chosen to play his double part until his
death.

After Beach's evidence was given the solicitor and manager of the Times
were examined, and it turned out that they had purchased the alleged
Parnell letters from Mr. Edward Caulfield Houston, secretary of the Irish
Loyal and Patriotic Uniun, a Unionist association of that day. Mr. Houston
had not revealed to the Times conductors from whom the letters had been
purchased by him until long after their publication. He told them he was
obliged not to divulge the name. Mr. Houston, who was the next witness,
stated that he had purchased the letters from Richard Pigott.* As soon as

* The money was supplied by some extreme Unionists, one of whom, Dr. Maguire,
of Trinity College, Dublin, died in London on the day Pigott failed to appear. Pigott
told Mr. Houston a story, arid told it agaiu in court, as to how he had obtained the
letters. He said two men named Murphy and Brown had given them to him in
Paris, after several mysterious interviews. They had lain there a loug time in a black
b>)X left behind by Frank Byrne. On the strength of such lies Pigott had long
been in receipt of a guinea a day and travelling expenses from some Unionist
sympathizers with the I. L. P. U., commissioned to discover and supply documents com-
promising Parnell and his party. He actually visited Paris, Lausanne and other places,
when he was thus almost incredibly engaged in deceiving his employers and the Times!

904 FROM TH$ DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

matters had reached this point most Nationalists began to see how the
case really stood. Pigolt's name has been mentioned already. He was?
a native of Ratoath, Co. Meath, and, like his father, he had originally
occupied minor positions in newspaper offices. In 1858 Denis Holland
transferred his revolutionary Nationalist paper, the Ulsterman, from Belfasfc-
( where Mr., afterwards Sir Charles, Russell was one of its contributors)
to Dublin, where he re-named it the Irishman. Pigott was employed
in the office in both cities. It was soon purchased by Patrick James-
Smyth, the Young Ireland orator, who hud helped his leaders to escape from
Australia. Smyth appointed Pigott editor, and, after a few years of owner-
ship, made him a present of the paper. This was in 1865 and Pigott
soon established another paper, the Flag of Ireland, and a mRgazine, the
Shamrock. The Irishman had all along advocated Fenian views, and, on the
suppression of the official organ of Fenianism, the Irish People, in 1865,
it suddenly became prominent. Its conductor, Pigott, was, however, a man
of much inferior calibre, mental and moral, to the able and honest men who
conducted the Irish People. He was a bitter opponent of the Nation and its
high-minded and honourable editor, A. M. Sullivan. As long as the Fenian
movement was the chief one in Ireland Pigott's Irishman prospered, but as
soon as Butt's and Parnell's movements became important, the paper declined.
He was glad to sell his newspapers in 1881 to Parnell, who then established
United Ireland. Pigott had now no means of livelihood, and complete
destitution threatened him and his family. He began to write anonymous
libels on Nationalist leaders, such as Parnellism Unmasked, and lived to some
extent by blackmailing Irish public men.

Pigott was the next witness after Mr. Houston. On Thursday and
Friday, the 21st and 22nd of February, he was subject, d to a most rigorous
and searching cross-examination by Sir Charles Russell as to the letters.
He was confronted with certain letters he had written to the Most Rev.
Dr. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, one of them dated the 4th of March,
three days before the publication of the first article on Parnellism and Crime.
He was trying apparently to induce the Archbishop to prevent the publication
of the letters he had sold. When questioned as to his correspondence
with the Archbishop, he prevaricated grossly and even denied his own
handwriting. His evidence left a general impression, at the close of the
day's cross-examination, on Friday evening, the 22nd, that he was himself
the writer of the facsimile letter and the others.*

His cross-examination was to have been resumed on Tuesday morning, the
26th, but when that day came he could not be found, and had evidently fled.
Parnell denied on oath the authenticity of the letters and a c-nfession
was read which Pigott had made on Saturday, the 23rd, to Mr. Labouchere

* When asked by Sir Charles Russell to write the words henlaafy and likelihood
he misspelled them hesitancy and likelehood. They were so misspelled in the letters.
This ominous coincidence was discovered by Mr. Patrick Egan.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 905"

in presence of George Augustus Sala, the well-known writer. He confessed
that the facsimile letter justifying the Phoenix Park murders, and all the
alleged Parnell letters, and others attributed to Messrs. Davitt, O'Kelly
and Egan, were forgeries of which he was the author. Sir Richard Webster
and the Times apologized to Parnell. The police traced Pigutt to the
Hotel los Embajadores, Madrid, where, on the 1st of March, as he was on the
point of being arrested, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the-
head. The wretched man could not face the disgrace of being brought back
and punished. Many will think, with Mr. Labouchere, that Pigott was less
to blame than those who purchased and used his forgeries.

Parnell's vindication was complete. In Ireland Nationalists had never
believed that he wrote the letters. But in England many persons believed it.
They now hastened to show their repentance for this opinion. When
he entered the House of Commons, after the flight and confession of Pigott,
he received an ovation. Punch, in its leading cartoon, depicted the Times
doing penance with white sheet and candle. On the 8th of March Parnell
and his former opponent, Earl Spencer, were entertained as joint guests at the
Eighty Club. On the 13th he addressed a great meeting in London along
with Mr. Morley. On the 20th of July he was presented by the Town
Council of Edinburgh with the freedom of the City.

The Commission had been appointed on account of the forged letters.
But as it included other matters in its scope it continued to hold its sittings
for some months. ParnelPs examination as first witness for the defence
began on the 30th of April. He showed considerable dexterity in replying
to the questions of Sir Richard Webster, who cross-examined him on
the 1st and 2nd of May. He was succeeded in the witness-box on the
8th of May by the Most Rev. Dr. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, who
showed that agrarian crime in Ireland was really more the outcome of
distress than of agitation. Some other Irish ecclesiastics were examined and
their evidence supported Dr. Walsh's view. He recommended arbitration as
a remedy for the Land difficulty in Ireland, and showed practically in
the following year how it might usefully be applied, by settling a strike
on the Great Southern Railway which had been referred to him.

On the 15th of July Parnell and the other Nationalists with their
counsel, withdrew from the case, because the Court, three days earlier,
had refused the application of Sir Charles Russell, that the books of the
Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, which had subsidised Pigott, should
be produced. On the 22nd of November the Commission closed its sittings.
The last days had been occupied by speeches from Mr. Davitt and Joseph
Gillis Biggar in their own defence, and Sir Henry James's reply for the
Times. On the 3rd of February, 1890, the Times paid Parnell £5,000
in settlement of an action he had taken against it. On the 13th the Report
of the Commission was laid on the table of the House of Commons. Although
the Special Commission held that some of the defendants had palliated

906 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

or failed to condemn agrarian outrages, the Report was, on the whole,
such a triumph for Parnell and his Party, whom it exonerated from the
gravest charges, which were contained in the forged letters, that Gladstone,
on the 3rd of March, proposed that the House of Commons should express
its reprobation of the false charges made against Parnell. The motion
was defeated by 339 to 268, the Liberal Party voting with the Irish. Not
even the evidence of the spy Beach, the only strong portion of the Times
case, could weigh against such tremendous facts as the confession, flight and
suicide of Pigott.

It may be mentioned here that Joseph Gillis Biggar, the oldest and
most strenuous fighter of Parnell's colleagues, died on the 19th of February.
He had become a Catholic in 1877. His death was universally regretted by
Irish Nationalists.

Returning from the close of the Special Commission to earlier events
it may be noted here that on the 25th of July, 1889, Parnell and the Irish
Party voted, with Gladstone and against the Radicals, for the increase
of the grant to the family of the Prince of Wales, now King Edward VII.,
on the occasion of the marriage of his eldest daughter. Gladstone had
> assured Parnell: — "The Prince of Wales is no enemy of Ireland; he is no
enemy to any Irish policy which has the sanction of the masses of the
Irish people."* On the 28th of October Mr. William O'Brien established,
at Thurles, a Tenants' Defence League, with Parnell's authorization. On
the 18th of December Parnell visited Gladstone at the latter's residence,
Hawarden, in Wales, and they had an important discussion on the details
of the next Home Rule Bill. The particulars of this discussion were
the subject of much controversy a year later, when Parnell, under the
pressure of unfortunate events, gave his version of it to the world. On the
19th of December Parnell accepted at Liverpool, from admirers, a sum
of £3,000, subscribed to defray his heavy expenses in connection with the
Special Commission.

On the 28th of June, 1890, Pamell was entertained at dinner by seventy
of his Parliamentaiy colleagues on the occasion of his forty-fourlh birthday.
He anticipated a speedy settlement of the Home Rule question at the hands
of Gladstone.

On the 15th and 17th of November a divorce petition, of which notice
had been given on the 28th of December, 1889, was heard in London.
It was biought by Captain O'Shea, and Parnell was co-respondent. The
verdict was unfavourable to him. He offered no defence and was not
represented by counsel. At first it seemed as if this would not affect
his political position. On the 20th of November a great meeting was
held ia the Leinster Hall, Dublin, at which a very large number of the
Irish Party were present, including some of its most prominent members.
At this meeting it was declared that the recent case should make no change
* R. Barry O'Brien's Life oj ParntlL Vol. II., p. 363.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 907

in Parnell's position. A cablegram was read, signed by five of the six
Irish members then on a mission in America,* which also supported Parnell's
leadership. On the 25th of November Parliament met for a winter session
and Parnell was unanimously re-elected Chairman of the Irish Party,
a very large number taking part in the election. It was afterwards explained
by those who had ceased to follow him, that this was done under the
impression that he would have retired from public life. But he does
not seem to have contemplated such a step, since he issued on Saturday, the
15th of November, the day of the opening of the trial which he must have
known would be unfavourable to him, a summons to his Parliamentary col-
leagues for the session. The Leinster Hall meeting and his re-election would,
in any case, have tended rather to dissuade him from retiring had he so intended.
The Party had scarcely re-elected him Chairman when a letter was
shown to them and published in the newspapers ; it was an open letter
from Gladstone to Mr. Morley which the latter was to show to Mr. Justin
M'Carthy. It declared that, in Gladstone's opinion, Parnell's retention
of the leadership would be fatal to the Home Rule cause, as it would
alienate the Nonconformist section of the Liberal Party, who had already
begun to show disapproval of Parnell.j To this Parnell replied by a
manifesto, dated 29 Nov., in which he said that he and Gladstone had failed
to come to an agreement on certain points in the Home Rule scheme
discussed by them at Hawarden a year previously. Parnell said that
Gladstone's scheme included the following items : Ouly thirty-two Irish
members were to sit at "Westminster ; the Land question was to be settled by
the British Parliament; the Irish police were to remain indefinitely under
Imperial control, and the appointment of judges and magistrates for a
certain number of years. Gladstone's recollection on these points differed
from Parnell's. But by this time a majority of the Irish Party had decided
to refuse to follow Parnell. It was, perhaps, to have been expected that
this should have happened, for his attendance in Parliament had not
been regular for some time, and the bonds of his authority had been loosened,
since he had lately exercised it at rare intervals. His health had not
been good for some years, and the other members of the Party had done
almost all the political work in Ireland in that time. Many of the majority
believed, too, that the cause of Home Rule was bound up with the Liberal
alliance, and that- to loosen that alliance would be to ruin the cause. From
that time for the next nine years, the Nationalist Party was divided into
two sections, Parnellites and Anti-Parnellites, which were for the first few
years bitterly hostile to each other.

*The exception was Mr. T. D. Sullivan, who had already, in 1886, publicly
protested against O'Shea's candidature for Gahvaj'.

t This was shown at a political conference of Nonconformists, attended by Sir
William Hareourt, which happened to be held very shortly after the end of the trial.
Immediately after that event the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, a leading Nonconformist,
declared in the Methodist Times against the continuance of ParneH's leadership.

908 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

On the 1st of December a meeting of the Irish Party began in Committee
Koom 15 of the House of Commons, at which the leadership question
was discussed. Parnell presided. As he refused to put the question
of his deposition, forty-five members left the room on the 6th of December,
and, forming a separate party, elected Mr. Justin McCarthy their chairman.
He retained this position until 1896 when he was succeeded by Mr. John
Dillon. It was now evident that of the 85 Nationalists, former followers
of Parnell, 53 were against his leadership and 32 for it. The latter could
not, even under the circumstances, forget his past services. Some of them
belonged to the extreme section of Nationalists, or Fenians, who were
still with Parnell. But it was soon to be proved that the majority of
the Irish people was no longer with him. While the meeting in Committee
Koom 15 was still proceeding the Bishops of Ireland held a meeting on the
3rd of December, at which they passed a resolution declaring that his
leadership should continue no longer, basing their opinion on moral grounds.
The majority of the priests in Ireland supported the same view. They could
hardly have avoided doing so considering the nature of the issue, and
it must not be forgotten that in morality Ireland stands first among the
nations of the earth. The secession of the clergy had probably more to
do with the secession of the Irish people than any other cause.

When the division in the Party occurred an election was pending
in North Kilkenny owing to the death of the late member. Sir John
Pope Hennessy, an able Irishman, who had been a Catholic Conservative
member for King's County in the Parliament of 1859-65, and had afterwards
filled with great distinction the position of governor of several British
colonies, was already a candidate under Parnell's auspices, but, when
the division occurred, he sided with the majority. Parnell secured a candidate
in Mr. Vincent Scully, but, after a contest of great bitterness, Sir John Pope
Hennessy was returned. In the following year there were contests in
North Sligo and in Carlow, but in both cases ParnelFs nominees were
defeated. In January and February, 1891, Mr. John Dillon and Mr.
William O'Brien, who had returned from America, met Parnell at Boulogne
and carried on negotiations with him as to his conditional retirement, which
had no successful issue. Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien had been sentenced
in their absence, on the 19th of November, under the Coercion Act. Reaching
Folkestone on the 13th of February, they were arrested, and when they
left Gal way Gaol, on the 31st of July, they declared definitely against
Parnell's leadership. Parnell, speaking at Newcastle on the 18th of
July, said the only Liberal leader he would trust on the Home Rule question
was Mr. John Morley.*

* Mr. Morley in his Life, of Gladstone. (Vol. III., p. 459) says that Parnell in his speech
stated that there was only one Liberal leader whom he would trust, but modestly sup-
presses the name of the only Liberal. Mr. Morley shows a just appreciation of Parnell's
extraordinary career and treats him with the utmost consideration in the last sad
episode of his life.

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 909

After the failure of the Boulogne negotiations Parnell held a series of
.Sunday meetings of his supporters in Ireland, journeying to and from
England every week. The strain of this affected his health, which had
been bad for years. On Sunday, the 27th of September, he addressed
;a meeting at Creggs, Co. Galway, and was exposed to the rain for some
hours. This brought on an attack of rheumatic fever, and he died of
inflammation of the lungs at 9 Walsingham Terrace, Brighton, on Tuesday,
the 6th of October, 1891. His funeral, which took place at Dublin on the
following Sunday, the llth, was a great demonstration of grief, and was
attended by two hundred thousand persons. He was buried in Glasnevin,
•but no monument as yet marks the spot. It is intended, however, to erect
-one soon in Dublin.

The loss of Parnell to the Irish cause was no doubt inevitable. It
was nevertheless irreparable. By his iron tenacity of will he succeeded
,in raising the question of Home Rule from an annual academic discussion
in Parliament to the position of the greatest public question of the day.
He caused Ireland to be feared and respected by the two British parties.
He made and unmade ministries. Most of his early political life con-
sisted of desperate uphill fighting, practically by himself alone against
.the House of Common?, against both English parties combined. His obstruc-
tion policy first made him popular in Ireland, and his genuine hatred of
British domination in Ireland brought to his side a section of Irish Nationalists
.hitherto hostile to all open or Parliamentary agitation. It is his greatest praise
-that he combined all Irish Nationalists in an effort for independence. He threw
.himself into the fight for the tenant farmers of Ireland, and his efforts were
•crowned with the greatest success. Much of that revolution which has taken
place in the condition of the Irish tenant is due to his advocacy. He taught
the English people that the will of the majority of the Irish people is a
force which must be respected. The Irish in America and the British
•colonies, and many who had no hereditary claim on Ireland, sympathized
.heartily with his agitation and showed it substantially. In Ireland he
was really the uncrowned King, as he was called. The clergy of the Catholic
Church, many Irish Protestants, above all the Irish democracy, the artisans
;and labourers, whose claims he always upheld, were his supporters. Having
become the leader of a Catholic people he supported the educational claims
of their Church. His interest in harbours, quarries, railways and generally
in the industrial development of Ireland was a strong personal note in
his character, as his advocacy of protection for Irish industries from British
competition shows. Living at a later epoch than O'Connell, his task was
moie difficult. He had to deal with the Irish revolutionist, who hardly
existed in O'Connell's day. With the healing influence of time there
is a general disposition amongst all Lishmen to forget the events of the
last sad year of his life, and to remember only his splendid services to
In land.

910 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

Although the division in the Nationalist Party had been caused by the
dispute as to Parnell's leadership, it continued for some years after his
death. Mr. J. E. Redmond was elected chairman of the Parnellite Party.
He resigned his seat for North Wexford, as the majority of his constituents
there were not in harmony with his views. Although he was not successful
in the election for Cork, occasioned by the death of Parnell, he was elected
in Waterford a few weeks later and has represented it ever since. The
vacancy was occasioned by the death of Richard Power, a most trusted
member of the Irish Party, of long standing, who had also sided with
Parnell.

The General Election of 1892, caused by the dissolution of Parliament
by Lord Salisbury, owing to a vote of want of confidence in an un-
friendly House of Commons, was fought with great bitterness in Ireland
between the two parties of Nationalists. One unfoitunate result of the
division was that the total of Nationalists returned was reduced from
86 to 81, consisting of 72 Anti-Parnellites and 9 Parnellites. The five
seats gained by the Unionists were West Belfast, Derry City, North
Fermanagh, Stephen's Green Division of the City of Dublin, and Souih
County Dublin, where the Hon. Horace Plunkett was returned, a Unionist
who has done much to benefit Ireland practically. He became so obnoxious
ultimately to the extreme members of his own party that, when he had been
eight years member for the seat, they actually proposed a second Unionist
candidate. The division of the Unionist vote secured the return of a
Nationalist, which was not so unacceptable to the extreme Unionists as
Sir Horace Plunkett's success would have been. Some of the Parnellite
Party, in the General Election of 1892, unlike their late leader, showed
a spirit of extreme hostility to the clergy, as the latter supported the majority
of the Iiish Party. This was notably the case in the County of Meath. In
both divisions of that county Anti-Parnellites were returned by small
majorities. The Parnellites petitioned successfully against their return
on the ground of undue clerical influence, yet, in the new elections which
followed the petitions, Anti-Parnellites were returned once more in both
North and South Meath.

The membeis of each party returned generally in 1892 were 27-1
Liberals and 51 Nationalists, against 269 Conservatives and 46 Liberal
Unionists, so that Liberals and Nationalists combined were in a majority
of 40. Lord Salisbury and his Government resigned and the Libeial-
were once more in office, with Gladstone as Prime Minister for the fourth
time. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was Loid Hou-hton, now Furl
of Crcue, ami Mr. John Morley was again Chief Secretary. On the 13th
of September the peipetual Coercion Act of 1887 was suspended, and
tional League once more declared legal.

On the 13th of February, 1893, Gladstone introduced his second Home
Rule Bill. It resembled the first, but there were some differences. The

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 911

most important was that eighty Irish members were to sit at AVestminster.
The Irish Parliament was to consist of two chambers, the Legislative Council
to consist of forty-eight members to be elected by twenty-pound voters,
and the Legislative Assembly to consist of one hundred and three members.
The Bill was discussed very fully in the House of Commons where it
passed its third reading by a majority of 34 on the 1st of September.
It was rejected by the House of Lords on the 8th of September by 419
votes to 41. It is said that Gladstone was in favour of dissolving Parliament
on the question, but was overruled by his colleagues in the Cabinet.
In March of the following year he resigned his position as Premier, being
succeeded by the Earl of Eosebery, and retired from public life. He survived
until the 19th of May, 1898, when he died in the 89th year of his age.
From the time when he first adopted the cause of Home Rule, in the
end of 1885, he never wavered in the earnestness with which he advocated
it. If he was not successful it was not for lack of energetic effort. His
great age was one reason why he failed. Had he been younger his persistent
energy would perhaps have been successful in carrying it as he had carried
so many other measures remedial to Ireland. Of all British ministers
of the nineteenth century he will be remembered in Ireland as the best.
Fox, the great Whig minister, and Canning, the great Tory, of the early
part of the nineteenth century, were both disposed to treat the Irish people
well, but neither lived to execute his intentions. Lord Melbourne was the
only other Premier of the century who can be regarded as conspicuously
friendly to Ireland, and he did not do for her one tenth part of what
Gladstone did. His treatment of Ireland recognized the rights of the Irish
people, although their representatives were but a small minority of the British
Parliament. He disestablished the Church of the minority, effected the most
sweeping improvements in the condition of Irish tenants, introduced the
ballot and extended the franchise. These measures have effected a revolution
in the condition of the Irish people.

In 1893 the Gaelic League, for the preservation and restoration of
the Irish Language, was founded, under the presidency of Dr. Douglas Hyde.
In the course of a few years it had attained a phenomenal success. The
study of the language and literature of Ireland was taken up with the
greatest enthusiasm even in some quarters where the utmost indifference to it
had previously been shown. The League was more powerful in the cities of
Dublin, Belfast and Cork, than even in the counties of Gal way, Mayo, Donegal,
Cork, Kerry and Clare, where the language had never died out. Besides
the revival of the language the admirable motto of the League, Sinn Fein,
Ourselves Alone, comprised many other excellent objects. In a self-reliant
Ireland it followed, amongst other things, that emigration should be dis-
couraged, temperance promoted, and a check imposed on the spread of many
pernicious publications, books and periodicals, which were imported from
England.

The resignation of Lord Rosebery's Government was occasioned by

10

912 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE

its defeat on the question of the supply of cordite and small-arms ammunition
and the next General Election occurred in July, 1895. 82 Nationalists were
returned, consisting of 71 Anti-Parnellites and 11 Parnellites. The increase
of one in the Nationalist total was due to the recapture of Derry City by
Mr. Edmond Francis Vesey Knox. When he resigned in 1898 it was
held for the Nationalists, after a close contest, by the late Count Moore.
The numbers of all parties returned at this General Election were Conserva-
tives, 339; Liberal Unionists, 72; Liberals, 177; and Nationalists, 82.

The Conservatives resumed office with Lord Salisbury as Premier for the
third time. He held office until 1902. He was succeeded by Mr. Balfour
and died in 1903. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was Earl Cadogan, whose
term of office covered the unprecedentedly long period, in these days, of seven
yeais. To find a Viceroyalty a very little longer it is necessary to go back
more than one hundred and sixty years. The Chief Secretary was Mr. Gerald
Balfour, who was succeeded after the next General Election by Mr. George
Wyndham. The Liberal Unionists had gradually and naturally assumed the
position of members of the Conservative Party. In the Salisbury Cabinet
of 1886-92 there was only one Liberal Unionist, Mr. Goschen, but in that of
1895 there were, in addition to him, Mr. Chamberlain, the Duke of Devon-
shire and Sir Henry, now Lord, James.

Mr. Gerald Balfour introduced still another Land Act, which was passed
in the early part of 1896. But the great feature of Irish politics in this year
was the agitation, which, unfortunately, was not kept up and effected nothing,
against the financial relations of Great Britain and Ireland.

The "Financial Relations Commission" was appointed in 1894, under the
presidency of Hugh Childers, and, after his death, of the O'Conor Don. Its
object was to determine what the fiscal contribution of Ireland to the
Imperial Eevenue ought to be assessed at under Home Rule. The long-
standing injustice of those relations was fully discussed in 1896-7-8.

After some meetings in the end of 1696 the Irish Financial Reform
League was formed in Dublin, on the 22nd of April, 1897, to agitate against
the unjust overtaxation of Ireland, which then amounted annually to
£2,500,000, according to the report of the Financial Relations Commission,
in the autumn of 1896. On the 5th of July, 1898, a resolution declaring that
Ireland was unfairly treated in her financial relations with Great Britain,
was rejected in the House of Commons by 286 votes to 144. The agitation
was gradually dropped, which was more to be regretted as it had been
carried on by representatives of the whole population of Ireland, Catholic
and Protestanr, Nationalist and Unionist, landlord and tenant.

The need for such an agitation is as urgent as ever, when we consider the
history of the financial relations of Great Britain and Ireland at and since the
period of the Union. The Irish Public Debt, which was to remain a separate
charge on the revenues of Ireland, was £4,000,000 in 1797. In 1800 it had
been increased to nearly £27,000,000. Ii eland had been made to pay for the
provoking and crushing of the Rebellion of 1798, for the heavy Secret Service

TO THE END OF THE CENTURY. 913

expenditure on spies and informers, and for the outrageous bribery which
carried the Union and destroyed her national independence. It was decreed
by the Union that the debts of Ireland and England should remain separate
until the Irish debt was two-fifteenths of the British. Then they were
to be consolidated. The British Chancellor of the Exchequer managed the
finance after the Union, naturally in the interests of his own country. The
curious arithmetical result was that the debt of Ireland increased more
than twice as fast as that of England, although the latter was then increasing
abnormally owing to the desperate struggle with Napoleon. In sixteen years
the Irish Debt was quadrupled, while the British was not quite doubled.
In 1801 the Irish Debt had been to the British as one to sixteen and a half.
In 1817 it bore the ratio of one to seven and a half, the proportion required
by the Union, and the two Exchequers were "consolidated/' which meant
that Ireland, having been loaded with debt by unfair means, was in the
future taxed as highly as Great Britain, and thus made liable for the enormous
National Debt of that country which Ireland had had no share or advantage
in incurring.

In 1898 the United Irish League was founded in Mayo by Mr. William
O'Brien and soon attained a very large membership. Its object was to
effect a more equitable distribution of land, especially in the West, where
much of it was still in large grass farms.

On the 12th of August, 1898, the Local Government Act was passed by
the Conservative Government. It is a remarkable Act and has effected
quite a revolution in Ireland. The fiscal jurisdiction of the Grand Juries was
abolished. The power formerly in the hands of those bodies has been
placed in the hands of the people, who have used it very well, notwithstand-
ing the fact that the Government which gave them Local Government
has denied them University Education. If the latter were once granted
the Conservatives would have nothing left to grant but Home Eule.
The first elections took place under the new Act in April, 1899, and were as
overwhelmingly a Nationalist triumph as the Parliamentary elections.
The County Councils have taken over the fiscal and administrative duties of
the Grand Juries. The Conservative Party seems for the last few years, as
this Act shows, to be unconsciously approaching Home Rule, which the new
Sovereign, too, is supposed to favour, just as the last Sovereign was known
to discountenance it. He has already shown a greater interest in Ireland
than his predecessor.

In 1899 a Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction was
founded, under the direction of the Hon. Horace Plunkett. The Irish
fisheries were also under its control, and it was to foster these resources
of Ireland by every means in its power. It received a grant of £41,850 from
the Surplus of the Irish Church Fund.

The South African War was begun in October, 1899, and was still
raging a year later when the General Election occurred. As a majority
of the British people appeared to think that aggression and annexation

914 FROM THE DISRUPTION OF THE TENANT LEAGUE.

were the highest kind of patriotism, the Government which destroyed
by arms the independence of the two Dutch Republics secured a majority
once more at the polls. The number of members of each party returned
were: — Conservatives, 334; Liberal Unionists, G8; Liberals, 186; and National-
ists, 82.

In Ireland the division in the Nationalist Party which beg;in in the
end of 1890 was fortunately brought to a close in 1899. On the 23rd
of November in that year there was a conference with the object of restoring
unity. On the 10th of February, 1900, a manifesto appeared from
Mr. J. E. Redmond, formerly the Parnellite leader, now Chairman of
the reunited Party. In the united action of that Party and its assiduous
attendance in Parliament, lies the hope of gaining from Great Britain
any redress for Ireland's wrongs.

As the Party was re-united at this time it was in a position to offer
energetic opposition to the Government's South African policy. In this and
many other instances the Irish Party has been more effective than the
official or Liberal opposition. The General Election of October, 1900, was
fought by a united Nationalist Party. Although Derry was lost by a
few votes there were some gains for Home Rule. At the General Election
a Catholic Unionist, who was locally very popular, was returned for Galway
City, but on his succession to the peerage in the following year, the
seat was recaptured by the Nationalists. South County Dublin elected
a Nationalist once more after eight years, but this, as has been mentioned,
was due to the fact that there were two Unionist candidates. Stephen's
Green Division, however, did the same where there was but one. And
it was held by the Home Rulers a few years later on the bye-election
occasioned by the death of its member. The recapture of this seat was one
of the first and best results of the reunion of the Irish Party.

Emigration and overtaxation have been the chief evils of Ireland
in the nineteenth century. The hope of redressing these evils seems as
remote as that of obtaining a settlement of the Irish University Question
from the British Parliament. Although in the nineteenth century such
great measures of redress have been obtained from that Parliament a*
Catholic Emancipation, Disestablishment, Municipal Reform, National
Education, Laud Reform, extension of the Franchise, Local Government
and some others, the greatest of all is yet to come. After the close of the
first century of the Union the great majority of the Irish people desires
nothing more ardently than its abolition. That is the strongest con-
demnation of a measure stained at its birth by bloodshed and shameful
corruption And Parnell seems to have discovered the most efficacious
means of effecting the abolition of the Union — that, namely, of making
Ireland's difficulty the difficulty of the British Parliament.

INDEX.

Abercom, James, first Duke of, 832, 850.
Aberdeen, George, fourth Earl of, 805, 809,

811.

Aberdeen. John, seventh Earl of, 898.
Addington, Henry, Viscount Sidmouth, 767.
Agrarian crime, 874, 875, 879, 8SU, 883, 902,

905, 906.

Agriculture. Department of, 913.
Alexander. John. 810.
Allen, William Philip, 839. 840.
American Civil War, 795, 824, 825, 828, 829,

832, 833, 903.
Amnesty movement, 831, 834, 835, 837, 841,

849, 851, 855, 861, 866.
Anglesea, Marquess of. 776, 778.
Anti-Parnellites, 907, 908. 910, 912.
Anti-Union Association, 780.
Antrim, 802, 849, 859, 894, 898.
Arbitration, 905.
Argyll, Duke of, 878.
Arklow, 896.
Armagh, 894.

Armagh County, 775, 800, 801, 894.
Armagh, Archbishop of, 807.
Arms, 822.
Arms Act, 876.

Armstrong, John Warneford. 823.
Army, 784, 785, 818. 827, 858, 862, 865, 873,

899.

Army and Navy Mutiny Bills. 862.
Arm}' Discipline Bill, 8t>5.
Arrears Act, 873. 876. 880, 883.
Ascendency Party, 784. 786, 791. 844, 848.
Asquith, Mr. Herbert Henry. 903.
Ashbourne, Lord (Edward Gibson), 876, 895.
Athlone, 806, 807, 808, 809, 810. 854, 893,

894.

Athy, 787.

Aughrim, Battle of, 799.
Australia, 795, 801, 811, 827, 857, 871, 893,

896.
Avondale, 858, 859.

Bale, John, 842.

Balfour, Mr. Arthur James, 900, 912.

Balfour, Mr. Gerald, 912.

Ballinasloe, 867.

Ballingarry, 798.

Ballot Act, 810, 847, 853, 854, 855, 858, 861,

911.

Ballycohey, 849.
Ballyknockane, 834.
Bandon, 894.

Banim, John, 778, 802, 826, 827.
Bantry, 818.

Barrett, Michael, 837.

Barrett, Richard, 787.

Barrington, Sir Jonah, 858.

Barry, Lord Justice, 874.

Barry, Air. John, 828.

Beach, Thomas Miller, 823, 903, 906.

Bedell, Dr. William. 843.

Bedford, Duke of. 770.

Beecher. Henry Ward, 869.

Beers, William, 800.

Belfast, 777. 786, 799, 801, 802, 803, 815,
816, 861, 864, 894, 897, 9<iO, 910, 911.

Bellingham, John, 771.

Bentinck, Lord George, 793.

Beresford, Lord George, 775, 779.

Berkeley, Dr. George, 843.

Bermuda, 797.

Bessborough, Earl of, 793.

Biggar. Joseph Gillis, 855, 856, 861, 862, 86*,
874, 875, h78, 899, 903, 905, 906.

Bilton Hotel Meeting, 851.

Birch, James. 793, 824.

Bishops. Irish Catholic, 771. 790, 805, 810,
811, 816, 822. 823, 844, 845, 852, 853, 854,
864, 872, 908.

Bishopscourt, 777.

Blake. John Aloysius, 871.

Blenneihassett, Mr. Rowland Ponsonby,

853, 859.

| Bolivar, Simon, 780, 791.
! Boston. 827, 828.
| Bottle Riot. 774, 801.
! Boulogne, 768, 908.

Boycott, Captain Charles C., 874.

Boycotting, 873, 874. 001.
I Boyne, Battle of the, 799, 847.

Brady, Joseph, 887. 888, 889. 890.

Brand (Speaker), Henry W. B. (Viscount
Hampden). 876.

Brass Band. 80 :, 815.

Brennan. Mr. Thomas. 828, 867, 874, 87S.

Brett, Charles, 838, 839.

Brewster, Abraham. 813.

Brian Boroimhe. 787. 788.

Bright. John, 845, 84(5, 874, 875, 875, 899,

900.

! Brighton, 909.
j Bristol, Earl of (Bishop of Derry), 842.

Brodrick. Hon. W. St. J. F , 893.

Brophy, Hugh, 830.

Browne, George, 842.

Browne, Most Rev. George Joseph, Bishop
of Elphin, 810.

Browne, Robert Clayton, 813.

Bryan, John P., 865.

916

INDEX.

Buckley. Daniel, 83C.

Buller, Gen. Sir Redvers, 883.

Burgh, Hussey, 844.

Burke, Richard, 837.

Burke, Thoir.as Francis, 835.

Burke, Thomas Henry, 881, 882, 887, 888,
889, 890, 902.

Butt, Isaac, 790. 808, 817, 831, 841, 844,
849, 851, 852, 853, 855, 856, 857, 859, 860,
861, 862, 863, 864. 867, 870, 893, 904.

Byrne, Edward, 770, 774.

Byrne, Frank, 903 n.

Byron, 773.

Cadogan, Earl, 912.

Caftrey, Thomas. 887, 890.

Cahirciveen, 832.

Cairns, Earl, 848.

Campbell, Thomas, 776.

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 895, 900.

Canada, 795, 801, 822, 869, 896.

Canning, George, 771, 775, 911.

Cantwell, Most Rev. John, Bishop of Meath,

810.

Cape Town, 891.
Carew, James Laurence, 901 7t.
Carey, James, 886, 887, 888, 889, 890, 891,

892.

Carey, Peter, 890.
Carleton, Hunh, Viscount, 769.
Carleton, William, 827.
Carlisle, Earl of, 784, 817, 822, 845.
Carlow, 806, 810, 813, 894.
Carlow County, 872, 894, 908.
Carnarvon. Earl of, 895, 898.
Caroline, Queen, 773.
Carraroe, Connemara, 868.
Carrickfergus, 894.
Carrickshock, 782, 783, 784.
Casey, Theobald, 837.
Cashel, 798, 810.
Castlebar, 800. 808.
Castlemartyr, 834.
Castlereagh, Viscount, 767, 773, 774.
Cathedrals, 845.
Catholic Association, 774, 775, 776, 777, 778,

780.

Catholic Church in Ireland, 820, 841-9.
Catholic Committee, 770.
Catholic Emancipation, 778, 779, 848, 850,

858, 872, 914.
Catholic Rent, 774.

Catholic Truth Society of Ireland, 843 n.
Catholic University, 816, 864.
Cato Street Conspiracy, 799.
Cavan, 776, 825, 855, 861, 874, 893, 894, 897.
Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 881, 882, 888,

889, 902.
Chamberlain, Mr. Joseph, 865, 870, 874, 875,

880, 896, 899, 900, 912.
Chambers, Thomas, 865.
Chapelizod, 881.

Charlemont. James Caulfield, Earl of, 844.
Chester Castle, 832, 865.
Childers, Hugh Culling Eardley, 896, 900,

912.

Cholera, 782.

Church. Established Protestant, 782, 783,

805, 841-9.

Church Temporalities Act, 782, 783.
Churchill. Lord Randolph, 856, 900.
Citizenship, American, 836.
City Hall, Dublin, 785.
Clan-na-Gael, 857, 866. 868, 903.
Clare, 778, 779, 798, 819, 872, 879, 880, 884,

894, 898, 911.
Clare, Earl of, 767, 768.
Clare Election, 776, 777, 778, 855, 872.
Clarendon. Earl of, 793, 800.
Cleburne, Patrick. 825.
Clergy, Irish Catholic, 771, 778, 798, 805,

807, 810, 811, 816, 818, 823, 850, 852, 853,

854, 858, 868, 870, 872, 9i)8, 909, 910.
Clerkenwell Explosion, 837. 841, 847.
Clonmel, 798, 829, 849, 894.
Clonskeagh, 863.
Clontarf, 787.

Cluseret. Gustave Paul, 829.
Cobbett. William, 776.
Cockayne. John, 823.
Coercion Acts, 782, 793, 797, 80 ^ 861, 875,

876, 877, 878, 879, 880. 882, 883, 892, 895,

898, 901, 902, 908, 910.
Coleraine, 894.
Collings, Mr. Jesse, 898.
Compensation for Disturbance Bill, 873,

877.

Conciliation Hall, 787, 780.
Condon, Edward, 839, 840.
Condon, Patrick, 833.
Condon, Mr. Thomas J., 901 n.
Confederate States, 825.
Counaught, 816, 830. 869. 897, 913.
Conservatives, 792, 807, 809, 811, 812, 831,

846. 847, 848, 850. 851, 852, 855, 856, 859,

860, 861, 862, 872 w., 873. 875, 877. 880,

893. 895. 896. 897, 898, 899, 900, 908, 910,

912. 913, 914.
Constabulary, Royal Irish. 776. 783, 784,

798, 833, 834, 835, 868, 873, 874, 899, 907.
Cooper, Samuel, 784.
Corbet, William Joseph, 872 n.
Corcoran, Michael. 8'J9.
Cork City, 786, 808, 815, 820, 826, 834, 840,

860, 861. 864, 870, 894, 896, 898, 910, 911.
Cork County, 779, 807, 809, 818, 834, 845,

870,894, 811.
Cork Examiner, 808.
Corn Laws, 792, 858.
Cornwallis, Marquess; 767, 808.
Corporations, Irish, 786, 857.
Corry, Isaac, 858.
Corydon, John Joseph, 823, 832, 833, 835,

836, 866.

Costello, Capt. Augustine, 836.
Cowper, Earl, 870, 871.
Cox, Mr. Joseph R., 901 n.
Cranbrook, Viscount, 839.
Croke, Most Rev. Thomas Wm., Archbishop

of Cashel. 872 n., 873.
Cromwell, Oliver, 842, 843.
Cubitt, Robert, 891.

INDEX.

917

Cullen, His Eminence Cardinal, Archbishop
of Dublin, 807, 811, 816, 825, 843. 844.

Cumberland, Ernest, Duke of (King of
Hanover), 800, 801.

Curley, Daniel, 888, SS9, 890, 891.

Curragh, The, 800.

Curran, Henry Grattan, 781.

Curran, John Philpot, 769, 773.

Curran, Sarah, 769.

Curtis, Most Rev. Patrick, Archbishop of
Armagh, 778.

Daly, Timothy, 834.

Dartmoor Prison, 866.

Daunt, VV. J. O'Neill. 845.

Davis, Thomas, 789, 790, 794, 796, 798, 823,

828, 845, 868.
Davitt, Mr. Michael, 828, 865, 866, 867, 868,

876, 877. 881. 882, 903, 905.
Dawson, Mr. Charles, 875, 884.
Day, Sir John Charles (Judge), 902.
Dease, James Arthur, 853.
Deasy, Timothy, 837, 838, 839, 840.
Debt, Imprisonment for, 856.

De Grey, Thomas Philip. Earl. 786.
Delany, Patrick, 884, 885, 887, 890, 903.
Denman. Thomas. Lord, 789.
Derby. Earl of, 781. 807. 809, 811, 822, 831.
Derry City, 786, 803, 849, 861, 862, 894, 897,

900, 910, 912, 914.

Derry County, 779, 796, 801, 894, 897, 900.
Deserted Village, 861.
D'Esterre, Captain J. X., 777.
Devlin, Anne, 769.
Devoy, Mr. John, 805, 806.
Diamond, Battle of the, 800.
Dickens, Charles. 794, 807 n., 821.
Dickson, Dr. William. 843.
Dilke, Sir Charles, 870, 875, 893, 900.
Dillon, John Blake, 789, 795, 796, 798, 823,

828. 845, 808.
Dillon, Mr. John, 795. 808, 871, 874. 876.

877, 878, 879, 880, 882, 901 n., 908.
Dillwyn, Lewis Llewellyn, 846.
Disendowment, 845.
Disestablishment of the Protestant Church,

841-9, 911, 914.
Disraeli, Benjamin (Earl of Beaconsfield),

793, 805, 831, 84G, 847, 848, 856, 859, 863,

868. 869. 87i», 877. 894.
Doheny, Michael, 795, 796, 798.
Dolly's Brae, 799, 800.
Donegal, 851, 894, 911.
Donnelly, Most Rev. Nicholas, Bishop of

Canea, 843 n.
Doran, Patrick, 835.
Dowling. Edward, 813.
Down, 776, 796, 799, 801, 802, 847, 860, 894.
Downing, Ellen,796.
Downing, M'Carthy, 808.
Downpatrick, 894.
Dowse, Richard (Baron), 868.
Doyle, Dr. Bishop of Kildare, 775, 776, 781.
Drogheda, 833, 894.
Drummond, Thomas, 783, 784, 785, 801, 817,

842.

Dublin, 767, 768, 769, 770, 772, 773, 774, 776,
779, 780, 784, 785, 786, 787, 790, 795, 801,
803, 807, 809, 810, 816, 823, 829, 830, 832,
833, 834, 836, 838, 840, 843, 859,862,871,
875, 876, 878, 881, 882, 884, 885, 887, 888,
889, 894, 896, 897, 898, 901, 909, 910, 911,
912, 914.

Dublin Castle, 768, 829, 881, 889.

Dublin County, 788, 859, 860, 894, 897, 910,
914.

Dublin, Corporation of, 777, 780, 786, 845,
851, 879, 887.

Dublin, Lord Mayors of. 781, 851, 869.

Dublin Metropolitan Police, 784, 899.

Dublin Mountains, 833, 834.

Dublin University Magazine, 851.

Duff. Sir James, 800.

Dufferin, Marquess of, 844.

Duffy, Edward, 830.

Duffy, James, 794.

Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan, 783, 787, 789, 794,
795, 796, 797, 799, 801, 802, 805,807, 808,
810,811,813,815, 817.827.

Duigenan, Dr. Patrick, 768.

Dundalk. 876. 894.

Dungannon, 894.

Dungarvan, 808, 836, 894.

Dyke, Sir William Hart. 895, 898.

Dynamite, 875, 884.

Ecclesiastical Titles Act, 805, 806, 807, 809,

810, 811, 821, 846.
Edensor, 882. .
Edinburgh, 905.

Education, Catholic, 855, 872, 909.
Edward VII , 785, 906. 913.
Egan, Mr. Patrick, 828, 868, 874, 878, 904 «.,

905.

Eglinton, Earl of, 812, 822.
Eighty Club, 901, 905.
Ellenborough, Earl of, 821.
Eliot, Lord, 786.
Elliott, William, 770.
Emergencymen, 874.
Emigration, 793, 799, 815, 817, 822, 823, 911,

914.

Emmet, Robert, 768, 769. 796, 797, 826.
Emmet, Thomas Addis, 768.
Encumbered Estates Act, 799.
England, 786, 792, 801, 803, 837-41, 843,

844, 845, 847, 850, 854, 850, 857, 858. 859,

870, 874, 879, 881, 896, 897, 905, 912.
England, Church of, 844.
England, John, Archbishop of Charleston,

869.

Ennis, 777, 865, 872, 873, 894.
Ennis, Nicholas, 861 n.
Enniskillen, 894.
Enniscorthy, 870.
Erin's Hope, 836.
Erne, Earl of, 874.
Keening Mail, 811, 828 n., 851.
Evictions, 799, 810, 815, 822, 849, 850, 855,

861, 865, 866, 868, 873, 876, 879, 880.
Exchequer, Irish, 858, 913.
Exhibition in Dublin, Irish, 884.

918

INDEX.

F's, The Three, 805. 849.

Fagan. Michael, S90.

Famine, 7*7, 7*9, 792, 793, 794, 796, 798,

799, 803. 813, 822, 861, 866, 867, 860, 869,

873, 894.

Fariola, Ottavio. 829.
Farnham, Lord, 77t>.
Farranrory, 798.

Farrell, Robert. 885. 886, 888, 889.
Felon's Track, 798.
Fenians, 795, 790, 790, 811, 815, 817, 818,

822, 823, 824, 825, 826, 827, 828, 829, 830,

832, 833, 834. 835, 836, 837. 838, 839, 840.

841, 851, 852, 855, 857, 859, 865, 866, 871,

885, 886, 888, 890, 903, 904, 908.
Ferguson, Sir Samuel, 79G, 802.
Fermanagh, 801, 894, 910.
Ffrench, Charles, Lord, 786.
Field, Denis Joseph. 885, 886, 887, 888, 889,

891.

Finance, Irish, 813, 864, 899, 912, 913, 914.
Finegan, James Ljsaght, 828, 865.
Fingall, Earl of, 770, 771, 772, 774.
Finglas, 857.
Fionn, 822.

Fitzgerald, John David, Lord. 874.
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 772, 815.
Fitzgerald, Patrick N., 890.
Fitzgerald, Vesey, 777.
Fitzpatrick, Dr. William John, 791, 823.
Flanagan, Rev. John, 802, 847.
Flogging in the Armj', Abolition of, 858,

865.

Flood, Henry, 844.
Flood, John. 832.
Flynn, Mr. James C., 901 n.
Fontenoy, 847.
Forster. William Edward, 870, 873, 874, 785,

876, 878. 879. 880. 881, 883, 884, 885, 888,

889, 891, 892, 893, 901.
Fortescue, Chichester (Lord Carlingford),

846, 84s, 855.

Fortescue, Hugh, Lord, 7><>.
Foster, Johu (Speaker), 844.
Fota, 834.

Fox, Charles James, 770, 911.
France, 768, 772, 797, 811, 819, 820, 829,

830, 847.

Fredericksburgh, 825.
Free Traders. 792, 793, 835.
Freedom of Cities, 857.
Freeman's Journal, 787, 808, 845 846, 866,

869, 871, 878, 884, 889 n.
Freemen of Dublin, 7>"
Friends of Ireland, 7*0.
Furlong, Thomas, 776.

Gaelic League, 911.

Galbraith, Joseph Allen. 851.

Galway City, 798, S15. 864, 871, 874. 894,

898, 899, 90771., 908, 914.
Galway County, 795, 853, 854, 85.-,. xiT, 88?,

-'.14,909,911.
Galway County Election and IVtition. >.":'.

89 1. '
Gaakin, James J., 817 n.

Gathorne- Hardy, Gathorne. 839.

General Elections, 799. 803. 805, 806. 80s,

841, 847, 855, 856. 859, 869. 870, 896, 897,

898, 899, 900, 910. 912, 914.
George III.. 767, 770, 771. 773.
George IV.. 771, 773, 779, 799.
Gibbet Rath, 800.
Gilhooly. Mr. James. 901 ».
Gill. H. J., 871, 892.
Gladstone, Mrs., 882.
Gladstone. W. K., 784. 785. 794, 805, 809.

810, 813, 821, 841, 846. 847, 848, ,s49, 852,

855, 8HO, 869, 870, *71, 872, 873, 875.876,

877. 879, 880, 881, 882, 883, 889, 8'.);;, 8!>4,

895, 896, 897, 898, 899, 900, 906, 907, 910,

911.

Glasnevin Cemetery, 774, 794, 825, 882, 909,
Glencullen, 833.

Glengall, Richard Butler, Earl of, 784.
Goderich, Vicount, 776.
Godkin, James, 803.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 861.
Gordon, Gen. Charles George, 895.
Goschen, George Joachim, Lord, 912.
Graham, Sir James, 805, 809, 821.
Grand Canal. 834.
Grand Juries. 864, 913.
Grant, Gen. Ulysses, President U.S.A., 861 n.
Granville, Earl, 848, 900.
Grattan, Henry, 770 771, 773, 817, 844. S5S,

896.
Gray, Edmund Dwyer, 845, 862, 869, 871,

872 »., 884.
Gray, Sam, 784.
Gray. Sir John, 787, 803, 808, 845, 846, 84<>,

856.

Great Southern Railway, 833, 834, in«5.
Greer, Samuel M 'Curdy, 803.
Grenville, Lord. 770.
Greville, Lord, 850.
Greville-Nugent, Hon. Reginald, 850.
Grey, Charles, Earl, 770. 780. 782, 805.
Griffin, Gerald, 780, 802, 827.

Habeas Corpus Act suspended, 797.

Halpin, William, 836.

Halpine. Charles Graham, 828 n.

Haltigan, John. 83] .

Hamilton. Sir Robert, 883.

Hanlon, Joseph. 890.

Hannen, Lord, 902.

Harcourt, Sir William, 883, 900, 907 11.

Hardwicke. Earl of, 767.

Harold's Cross, 769, 861 7J,

Harrington, Edward, 901 n.

Harrington, Rev. Dr., 772.

Harrington, Mr. Timothy C., 892, 901 n.

Harris, Matthew, 828, 8G7.

Hartington, Marquess of (Duke of Devon-
shire), 848, 865, 875, 881, 899, 900, 912.

Harwich. 808.

Hayes, Rev. Richard, 771.

Healy Mr. T. M.. 842. 857 «.. S68, 869. 874.
875. 876. 878, 892. 893. 8!>7. s'.m.

Ik- 1 mossy. Sir John Pope, 908.

Henry II., 842.

INDEX.

Henry VIII., 842.

Henry, Mr. Mitchell, 853.

Herbert of Lea, Sidney Lord, 805, 830.

Heytesbury, Wm a Court, Lord. 786.

Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael (Lord St. Aldwyn)

856, 861, 900.

High Treason, 798, 835, 836, 899.
Hogan, John, 785.
Holland, Denis, 904.
Holmes, Robert, 797.
Holyhead, 832.

Home Government Association, S52, 859, 860.
Home Rule, 780, 852.
Home Rule Bill, First, 899.
Home Rnle Bill. Second, 906, 910, 911.
Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain,

S63.
Home Rule Question, 850, 851, 852, 853, 854,

855, 856, 857, 859, 860, 861, 863, 864, 8G5,

867, 869, 870, 871, 872, 883, 895, 896, 897.

898, 899, 900, 901, 905, 906, 907, 90s, 909,

910,911, 912, 913, 914.
Hooper, John, 901 n.
Houghton, Lord (Earl of Crewe), 910.
House of Representatives, 869.
Household suffrage, 8G9, 893.
Houston, Mr. Edward Caulfield, 903, 904.
Hughes, Rev. Hugh Price, 907 n.
Humbert, General J. J. A., 808.
Hyde, Dr. Douglas, 911.
Hynes, Francis, 884.

Imperial affairs, 852, 899.

Inchicore, 889.

Income Tax, 813.

Independent Opposition, 803, 805, 809.

Ingram, John Kells, 796.

Insolvent voters, 813.

Intermediate Education Act, 863.

Invincibles, 879, 882. 888, 889, 891, 902, 903.

Irish Brigade, 18th Century, s06, 819, 847.

Irish Brigade, Cleburne's, 825.

Irish Brigade, Meagher's, 795, 825.

Irish Cabinet, 852.

Irish College, Rome, 807.

Irish Confederation, 791, 796, 797, 817.

Irish Felon, 797, 798.

Irish in England, 803. 832, 837-41, 857, 863.

865, 870, 882, 896, 897, 89s.
Irish Language. 911.

Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, 903, 905.
Irish Members in Westminster, Retention

of, 899, 901, 907, 911.
Irish Party, 871, 872, 873, 875, 876, 879, 883,

892, 895, 896, 898, 899, 9dO, 901, 902, 903,

905, 906, 907, 908, 910, 912, 914.
Irish Party of 1852, 804, 811, 815, 845.
Irish Peerage, 842, 899.
Iri*h People, 826, 829, 830, 831, 904.
Irish Times, 851.
Irish Tribune, 797.
Irish Vote in Great Britain, 870, 876, 896,

897. 89s.

Iri finnan, 841. 866. 877. 903.
Irishtown, Mayo, 867.
Italy, 819, 820, 821.

Jacknett, 836.

Jackson, Gen. Andrew, 772.

Jackson, William Lawies (Lord Allerton),

900.

Jail Journal, 797.
James I.. 803.
James II.. 773, 800, 848.
James, Sir Henry (Lord), 903, 905, 912.
Jeffreys, Francis, Lord, 776.
Jesuits, 864.
Johnston, William, 847.
Joyce, Myles, 895.
Jury-packing, 788, 797, 883.

Kavanagh, Michael, 886, 887, 888, 889, 890.

Keating, Geoffrey, 822.

Kelly, Eva Mary, 796.

Kelly, Col. Thomas. 837, 838, 839, 840.
I Kelly, Timothy, 887, 888, 889, 890.

Kenmare, 818.
' Kenmare, Earl of, 853.
: Keogh, John, 770, 777.
i Keogh, Mr. Justice William, 806, 807, 808,
809. 810, 811, 812, 813, 815, 817, 818, 831,
853, 854.

i Keogh, Patrick, 823. 835.
i Kerry, 779, 818, 828, 832, 853, 855, 894, 897,

911.
! Kerry Election, 853, 859.

Kettle, Mr. A. J., 868, 870.

Kickham, Charles J., 826, 830, 831.

Kilbride, Mr. Denis, 901 n.

Kildare, 800.

Kildare, County, 787, 834, 878, 894.

Kildare, Earl of. 880.

Kilkennv City, 779. 798, 845, 894.

Kilkenny County, 798, 849, 894, 897, 908.

Killala, Bishop of, Most Rev. Thoma*

Feeney, 810.
! Killarney, 818, 832.
! Killeen, Lord, 774, 779.

Kilmainham Gaol, 769, 832, 836, 878, 880,
883, 885, 886, 887, 891.

Kilmainham Treaty, 880, 898.

Kilmallock, 834. 835. 876.
! Kihvarden, Arthur Wolfe, Viscount, 769.

Kimberley, John Wodehouse, Earl of, 822,
900.

Kinahan, Edward Hudson. 851.
1 King's County, 808, 894, 908.

King-Harman, Col. Edward Robert, 85 lr
859, 871.

Kinsale, 894.

Kirk, George Harley, 862.

Knocktopher, 782.

Know- Nothings, 828.
i Knox, Mr. Kdmond F. V., 912.

Knox, Major Laurence Edward, 851.

Kossuth, Louis, 869.

Labouchere, Henry (Lord Taunton), 793.
Labouchere, Mr. Henry Dupre, 875, 896 n.f

904, 905.

Labourers' Act, 892.
Ladies' Land League, 879.
Lalor, James Fintan, 797, 871.

020

INDEX.

Lalor, Peter, 871.

Lalor, Richard, 871.

Lamartine, Alphonse de, 797.

Lamoriciere, Gen. Christophe Louis Le"on
de, 810.

Lancashire, 832, 897.

Land Acts, 849, 857, 866, 867, 873, 876,
!-77, 878, 880, 892, 895, 901, 912, 914.

Land Courts, 873, 876, 877.

Land League, 828. 851, 866, 867, 868, 873,
874, 875, 876, 877, 878, 879, 880, 893.

Land Question, 784, 792, 793, 799, *02, 803,
805, 808, 809, 810, 811, 815, 817, 822, 849,
850, 852, 855, 857, 861, 864, 865, 866, 867,
868, 869, 871, 872, 873, 874, 875, 876, 877, \
878, 879, 880, 900, 905, 906, 907, 909, 911,
912, 913, 914.

Larkin, Michael, 839, 840.

Last Conquettt of Ireland, 797.

Lausanne, 903 n.

Law, Hugh (Lord Chancellor), 876.

Lawless, John, 777.

Lawson, Mr. Justice, 884.

League of North and South, 802, 804.

" Le Caron, Major," 823, 903.

Leeds Mercury, 898.

Leinster, 897.

Leitrim, 894.

Leitrim, Earl of, 866.

Lennon, Patrick, 833.

Leo XIIL, 901.

Lever, Charles, 773, 807 M., 871.

Levinge, Sir Richard, 808.

Lewis, Sir Charles E., 862.

Leyue, Maurice R., 798.

Liberals, 780, 803, 805. 822, S44. 845, 846,
847, 848, 850, 851, 855, 856, 858, *65, 869,
870, 871, 875, 876, 880, 881, 883, s95, 896,
897, 898, 899, 900, 901, 902, 906, 907, 908, ;
910, 912, 914.

Liberal Unionists, 899, 910, 912, 914.

Liberationists, 844, 846.

Liberator, 780, 791.

Liberator Order, 780.

Library of Ireland, 794.

Lichfield House Compact, 784. 785.

Limerick City, 786, 798, 819, 836, 840, S53,
880, 894.

Limerick County, 798. 834, 876, 894.

Limerick Junction, 833.

Lisburn, 894.

Lismore, Viscount, 7*4.

Liverpool. 798. 832, 896, 897, S9K, 906.

Liverpool, Earl of. 771, 775.

Lloyd, Clifford, 876.

Local Government Act, 864, 913, 914.

Lomasney, Wm.. 834.

London, 804. 814, 827, 838, 840, 875, 878,
*91, 895, 896, !>0.-,.

London University, 894.

Londonderry, Charles Stewart, sixth Mar-
quess of, 900.

Londonderry, Robert Stewart, second Mar-
quess of, 774.

Long, Charles (Chief Secretary), 770.

Longford, s50, *59 n.. sr,7, *94"

Lord Chancellor of Ireland, 779, 791, 84s.
Lords, House of, 784, 786, 789, 811, 812,

848, 873, 877, 883, 893, 911.
Louis Philippe, 797.
Louis Napoleon, 797.
Louth, 775, 855, 894.
Lowther, James, 856, 867, 868.
Luby, Thomas Clarke, 826, 830, 831, 844.
Lucas, Charles, 844.
Lucas, Frederick, 803, 805, 807, 808, 810,

811, 813, 815.
Lysaght, Edward, 767.

Macaulay, Lord, 771, 788, 841, 883.

MacCabe, Wm. Bernard, 807.

MacMahon, Marshal, 819.

M'Cabe, Rev. Patrick, 827.

M'Cafferty, John, 832, 836.

M'Carthy, Charles. 865, 866.

M'Carthy, Denis Florence, 796.

M'Carthy, Mr. Justin, 821, 867, 875, 897,

900, 907, 908.

M'Carthy, Mr. Justin Huntley, 893.
M'Clure, John, 836.
M'Coan, J. C., 871.
M'Cracken, Henry Joy, 802.
M'Donnell, Sir Anthony, 801.
M'Gee, Thomas D'Arcy, 795, 796, 827, 828.
M'Gough, James, 823, 835.
M'Guckin, James, 823.
M'Hale, Most Rev. John, Archbishop of

Tuam, 807, 810.
Mackay, Captain, 834.
M'Kenna, Sir J. N., 871.
M'Knight, Dr. James, 803.
McManus, T. B., 787, 799. 825.
M'Nally, Leonard, 769 n.. 823.
N'Namara, Major Wm. Nugent, 777.
M'Nevin, Thomas, 796.
Madden, Dr. Richard R,, 823.
Madrid, 905.
Magan, Francis, 823.
Magan, Capt. Wm. Henry, 808.
Magenta, si 9.
Magistrates, 784, 786, 800, 885, 886, >>7,

907.

Maguire, Dr. Thomas, 903 n.
Maguire, Father Tom, 776, 777.
Maguire, John Francis, 808, 847.
Maguire, Thomas, 839.
Mahon, The O'Gorman, 777, 779, 845, s72,

880.

Mallow, 84"), 892, 894.
Maltby, Dr. Edward, 803.
Manchester, 853, 89d.
Manchester Rescue, 837-41, 847, 859, 861.
Mangan, James Clarence, 789, 796.
Marines, Royal, 839, 878.
Marlay, Dr., 843.
Marltx>rough, Duchess of, 869.
Marlborough, Duke of, 856.
Marshalsea, Dublin, 813, 856.
Martin, John, 795, 797, 798, 823. 828, 840,

844, 850, 852, 856, 860.
Maryborough, >">7.
Masaey, Gen., s33.

INDEX.

921

Mathew, Rev. Theobald, 786, 787.
Maunsell, Dr. James Poole, 851.
Maynooth College, 771, 790, 848.
Mayo, 808, 845, 865, 867, 870, 874, 894, 897,

911, 913.

Mazzini, Giuseppe, 811, 821.
Meagher, Thomas Francis, 795, 796, 797, 798,

799, 825.
Meath, 779, 808, 827, 828, 852, 860, 861, 870,

894, 897, 910.

Meehan, Rev. Chas. Patrick, 796.
Melbourne, Wm. Lamb, Viscount, 782, 783,

784, 786, 817, 911.
Miall, Edward, 846.
Midleton, 834.
Midleton, Viscount, 893.
Milieu, Gen. Thomas F., 829.
Milner, Rev. Dr. John. 771.
Mitchel, John, 788, 792, 795, 796, 797, 798,

799, 802, 817, 825, 844, 860.
Mitchelstown, 901.
Moate, 808, 809. 811.
Molyneux, William 844.
Monaghau, 775, 784, 800, 801, 808, 812, 893,

*94, 897.

Monroe, Henry, 802.
Monroe, John (Judge), 892.
Montgomery, James, 781 n.
Moore. Arthur, Count, 849, 912.
Moore, Charles, 849.
Moore, George Henry, 805, 808, 810, 811,

815, 828.

Moore, Michael, 831.
Moore, Stephen, 860.
Moore, Thomas, 768, 773, 776, 780, 788, 802,

815, 854.
Moran, His Eminence Cardinal, Archbishop

of Sydney, 843.
Moriarty, Most Rev. David, Bishop of Kerry,

853.
Morley, Mr. John, 881 n. 889, 896, 898, 901,

905. 907, 908, 910.
Mor|>eth, Lord, 784, 785, 817.
Morrisson's Hotel, 865, 878.
Motherwell, \A iiliam, 801.
Mount Jerome Cemetery, 785.
Mulgrave, Earl of, 784.
Mullaghmast, 787,
Mullany, Patrick, 837.
Municipal Privileges Act, 857 M.
Municipal Reform Act, 7*6, 914.
Minister, 816, 826, 833, 897.
Murphy, Nicholas Daniel, 870.
Murray, Most Rev. Daniel, Archbishop of

Dublin, 771. 781, 807.
Murray, Rev. Dr. Patrick, 800.
Mutiny Bills, 862.

Naas. 878.

Naas, Lord (Earl of Mayo),Richard Southwell

Bourke, 812, 813.
Nagle, 836.

Nagle, Pierce, 823, 829, 830, 831, 8.32, 885.
Naish, John (Lord Chancellor), 892.
Naper, James Lenox, 831.
Napier, Gen. Sir Charles James, 799.

Napoleon I.. 768, 773, 913.

Napoleon III., 797, 819, 820. 821.

Natal, 891.

Nation, 787, 789, 794, 795, 796, 799, 807, 808,

811, 817, 818, 823, 828, 904.
National League, 884. 901, 910.
National League of Great Britain, 896.
National Schools, 781, 914.
Nelson, Horatio, Lord, 768.
Newcastle, 908.
Newcastle, Duke of, 812.
New Departure, 866, 868, 870.
Newman. Cardinal, 816.
New Orleans. 772.
Newport, s96.
' ' New Reformation," 776.
New Ross. 808, 894.
Newry, 894.

Newtownbarry, 782, 783.
New York, 825, 828, 829, 836, 861 n.
Nolan. Colonel John Philip, 853, 854, 856,

861 n., 862.
Nolan, John. 841.
Nolan, Mr. Joseph, 828.
Nominal Home Rulers, 871, 875.
Nonconformists, 907.
No Popery cry, 803, 804, 806, 810, 821.
No Rent Manifesto, 879.
Normans, 842.

Normanby, Marquess of. 784, 78(5.
Northumberland, Duke of, 778.

O'Brien, James Francis Xavier. 828, 834, 835,

O'Brien, Jemmy, 823, 824.

O'Brien, Michael, 839, 840.

O'Brien, Mr. Justice (William), 865.

O'Brien, Mr. Patrick, 901 it.

O'Brien, Mr. William, 877, *84, 892, 897,

901 n., 906, 908, 913.
O'Brien, Richard Barry, 7s 1, 780. SOI, 872 n.,

906 n.
O'Brien, William Smith, 787, 790, 795, 796,

797, 798, 823, 826, 828. 844.
Obstruction, Parliamentary, 861, 802, 863,

864, 865. 867, 875, 876, 883.
O'Clery, The (Chevalier) Keyes, 828.
O'Connell. Daniel, 771, 772, 773, 774. 775,

776, 777, 778, 779, 780. 781, 782, 783, 784,

785. 786. 787, 788, 789, 790, 791, 792, 793,

794, 798, 800, 807, 810, 816, 821, 827, 828,

830, 832, 845, 848, 850, 851, 852, 854, 857,

872, 879, 884, 909.
O'Connell, Daniel, jun , 772.
O'Connell, John, 772, 787, 791. 794.
O'Connell, Maurice, 772.
O'Connell, Morgan, 772, 780.
O'Connor, Mr. James, 828, 830, 831. 852.
O'Connor, Mr. Arthur, 871, 878.
O'Connor, Mr. John, 901 n.
O'Connor, Mr. T. P., 870 »., 871, 896, 897, 898.
O'Conor Don, The, 871, 893, 912.
O'Doherty, Kevin Izod, 795, 796, 797, 799,

897.

O'Doherty, Mrs., 795, 796.
O'Donnell, Mr. F. H., 862, 902.
O'Donnell, Patrick, 891.

922

O'Donoghue, Patrick, 70S.

-O'Donoghue, The, 828.

O'Donovan Rossa, Jeremiah, 818, 830, 831,

841.

O' Flaherty, Edmund, 812, 813, 815.
O'Gorman, Major Purcell, 862.
O'Gorman, Richard, sen., 795.
O'Gorman. Richard, jun., 795, 7?6, 798.
O'Hagan, Lord. 848.
O'Hagan, Mr. Justice (John), 79s.
O'Kelly, Edward, 866.
O'Kelly. Mr. James, 82*, *52, S71, 875, 878,

880, 901 n., 1<05.

O'Leary, Mr. John, 826. 830, 831.
O'Mahony, John, 798, 818, *22, 82,1, s31,

832.

Orange. Prince of, 800, 843.
Orangeism in the Army, 7*4, 801.
Orangemen. 774, 776, 784, 786, 799, 800, 801,

802. 844, 847, 850, 900.
Ordnance Survey, 783.
O'Reilly, John Boyle, 7? 5, *27. 828, 835.
O'Shea, Captain W. H., 871, 880, 883, 898,

899, 906, 9t>7 ».
O'Sullivan, Daniel, 818.
O'Sullivan, Wm. Henry, 834, *68.

Palles, Lord Chief Baron. 862.

Palmer, Mrs., 769.

Palmerston, Henry John Temple, Viscount,
807, 809, 812. 815. 817, 821, *22, 846.

Papa I Legate, 807, 811.

Papal States, 819, 820, 821.

"Papist rats" incident. 872 n.

Paris, 797, 79S, 818, 879. 880, 903.

Parliament, Ir.sh. 844, S52, So*, s64. 899. 911.

Parnell, Charles Stewart, 841, 844. 855, 857,
858, 859. 860, 861, 862, 863, 864, 865, 866,
8ti7, 868, 869, 870, 871, 872, S73, 874, 875,
876, 877, 878, 879, 880, 881, 882, 883, 884,
890, 891, 892, 893, 895, 896, 897, 898, 899,

900, 901, 902, 903, 904, 905, 906, 907, 908,
909,910. 914.

Parnell, John. 857.

Parnell, John Henry, *5*.

Parnell, Miss Fanny, s63.

Parnell, Mr. John Howard, 859.

Parnell, Mrs. Delia, *5*.

Parnell, Sir Henry (Lord Congleton), 858.

Parnell, Sir John, first baronet, s.~>7.

Parnell, Sir John, Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, S57, S5s.

Parnell, Thomas, 857.

Parnell, Thomas, the poet. -r,:.

Parnell, William Hayes, 85S.

Pariiellixm and Crime, 901. 902, 903, 904.

Parnellites, 907, 90S. 910, 912, 914.

Peel, Sir Robert, 771, 777. 778, 782, 783,
786, 790, 7!)'_>, 793, 805, 815, 827.

Peel, Sir Robert, jun.. *_'•_>. s4ti.

Peelites, 805. sou, son, sii'. sl3, ,s]5.

Peerage of Ireland, 842, 899.

Penal Laws. 843, 858.

Perceval, Sprnccr, 77n. 771.

Persico, Cardinal, yul.

Phoenix Park. 7*5. 7-»!». 881.

Phoenix Park Murders, 881, 882, 883, *s4r

885, 886, 887, 888, 889, 890, 891, 895, 90^

905.

Ph«nix Society, 818, 819.
Phillips, Wendell, 869.
Pigott, Richard, Ml, *6G, *77, 892, 903, 904,

905, 906.

Pitt, William, 767, 770, 852.
Pius VII., 771.

Pius IX., 803. 807, 811, 816, 820, 821.
Plan of Campaign, 900. 9U1.
Plantation of Ulster, 803.
Plunket. Win. Couyugham, first Lord, 77<>,

773.

Plunkett, Hon. George, 852.
Plunkett, Hon. Sir Horace, 910, 913.
Poe, Edgar, 815.
Poor Law, 785.
Pope, Canon, 776.
Portadown, 802.
Portarlington, 894.
Port Elizabeth, 891.
Portland, Duke of, 770.
Portland Prison, 876, 881.
Post Office Espionage, 793, 821.
Power, Dr. Maurice, 807.
Power, Mr. John O'Connor, 828, 861 n., 862,
Power, Patrick. 831.
Power, Richard, 856, 862. 871, 910.
Poynter, Dr. William. Vicar Apostolic, 771.
Presbyterians, 772, 801, 802, 803, 816, Ml,

848, 866.

Princess Royal, 906.
Pringle, Mr. Henry, 892.
Prisons Bill, Sfi>.
Propaganda, College of the, 811.
Proselytism, 776. 843, *45.
Protection of Irish Industries, 895, 896, 899,

909.

Protectionists, 792, 793, 805, *56.
Protestants. 780. 781, 790, 801, 816, *41-!»,

850, 859, 909, 912.
Protestant Bishops, M'2. M3.
Protestant Clergy, 7*1. 841-9.
Protestant Home Rulers, 844, 853, 855, 859,

909.

Punch, 810, 905.
Purdon, Edward, 851.
Puritans, 842.
Pyne, Jasper Douglas, 901 n.

Quarantotti, Mousignore. 771.

Queen's Colleges, 790, 815-16. 827, 863. 8(54.

Queen's County, 777, 85s, 871, 894.

Queenstown, 798.

Queen's University, 816. 863, 864.

Radicals, 865. 87". S75. '.Mi.

Rathcormack. 783, 784.

Rathkeeran. 783.

Rathmines, 833.

Ratoath, 904.

Ray, Thomas Matthew, 787.

K.-d List. .k5s.

Redington, Sir Thomas, 80-'.

Redistribution, 846, 869, 893, 894, 89C, 897.

INDEX.

923

Redmond, Mr. ,T. E., 875. 88'), 883. 910. 914.
Redmond, Mr. W. H. K., 875, 893, 901 n.
Redmond, William Archer. 875.
Keform Acts, 780. 799. 832, 846, 855, 859,

869,893.896,897, 911, 914.
Regency, 852.
Regivm Donu/n. 848.

Reid. Robert Threshie (Lord Loreburn), 903.
Reilly, Thomas Devin, 798.
Relief of Distress Bill, 868. 869.
Repeal of the Union, 780, 782, 783, 786. 787,

789, 790, 794, 795, 798, 850, 851, 852.
Reynolds. Thomas, 823.
Rhodes, CecilJohn, 901.
Ribbonmen, 784, 808, 809, 831.
Richmond, Duke of, 770.
Richmond Bridewell, 789, 830.
Ridgeway, Sir West, 883.
Ringsend, 887.
Ripon, Marquess of, 900, 901.
Roche, Edmund Burke (Lord Fermoy), 801).
Roden, Robert, second Earl of, 800.
Roden, Robert, third Earl of, 776, 800.
Roebuck, 863.
Rome. 811. 820, 842, 843.
Ronayne, Joseph Philip, 856, 861.
Roscommon, 871, 894.
Rosebery, Earl of, 911.
Rossmore, Lord, 801.
Rotunda, Dublin, 860, 893.
Rowan, Archibald Hamilton, 830.
Royal Engineers, 783.

Royal University, 816, 863, 874, 878 n.. 894.
Kural Population, England and Ireland, 874.
Russell of Killowen, Charles, Lord, 876, 903,

904, 905.
Russell, Lord John, afterwards Earl, 788,

793, 799, 803, 804, 805, 806, 807, 808, 809,

810, 8^1, 822, 831, 846.
Russell, Thomas, 769.
Rutland, Duke of, 789.

Sadleir, James, 806, 808, 814, 815, 818, 828.
Sadleir, John, 806, 807, 808; 809, 810, 813,

814, 815, 817, 818, 849, 855.
St. Germans, Earl of, 786, 812.
St. Lucia, 807.
«Sala, George Augustus, 905.
Salisbury, Marquess cf, 877, 893, 895, 896,

898, 900, 910, 912.
.Sandymount, 83D.
San Francisco, 825.
Saturday Review. 850.
tSaunderson, Col. Edward James, 855.
Scholarships. 864.
Scotland, 795, 801, 827, 870, 878.
•Scully, Mr. Vincent. 908.
.Scully, William, 849, 850.
•Sexton, Mr. Thomas, 799, 859 n., 871, 874,

878, 879, 893, 897, 900.
Shaftesbury, Earl of, 804.
Shamrock, 904.
•Shannon, 769.

Shaw, William. 863, 870, 871, 875.
•Sheehy, Mr. David, 901 n.
fcheehy, Rev. Eugene, 876, 877.

Sheil, Edward, 856, 86 >.

Sheil, Richard Lalor, 772,776, 777, 781, 782.

Sheridan, Gen. Philip Henry, 825.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 773.

Sheriffs, City, 786, 857.

Sheriff, County, 859.

Sigerson. Dr. George, 819.

Sirr, Major Henry Charles, 769.

Skerries, 830.

Skibbereen, 818.

Slavery, Negro, 782, 825, 867.

Sligo, 810, 813.

Sli<(o Bay, 836.

Sligo, County, 85971., 871, 894, 908.

Smith, Joseph, 888, 889. 890.

Smith, Sir Archibald Levin (Judge), 902.

Smith, Sydney, 776.

Smith, William Henry, 898, 901.

Smyth, Patrick James, 798. 853, 904.

Somerville, Sir William. 793.

South Africa, 797. 862, 901, 913, 914.

South America, 780.

South County Dublin, 897, 910, 914.

Special Commission, Times, 890, 902, 903,

904, 905, 906.

Special Commissions, 793, 831.
Spencer, Earl, 848. 881, 883, 885, 895, 900,

905.

Spies, 823, 824, 826, 829, 830, 832, 903, 913.
Standard, 898.

Stanhope, Philip Henry, Earl, 846, 847.
Stausfeld, James, 821.
Staples. Edward, 842.
Steele, Thomas, 777, 787.
Stepaside, 833.
Stephens, James, 798, 818, 819, 822, 825,

826, 828, 829, 830, 831, 832, 837.
Stephen's Green Division, Dublin City, 897,

910, 914.

Stewart, Admiral Charles, 858.
Sfcrathnairn, Hugh Rose, Lord, 834, 835.
Strongbow, 842.
Stuart de Decies, Henry Villiers Stuart,

Lord, 775.
Sullivan, A. M., 817, 819 n., 840, 850, 855,

856, 8tO, 862, 867, 870 n., 904.
Sullivan, Mr. T. D., 813 n., 817, 819. 840,

871, 874, 888 »., 901 n., 907 n.
Supplemental Charter, 816.
Surplus Fund, 848, 863, 913.
Suspension of Evictions Bill, 873.
Swift, Jouathan, 843, 844.
Synod, Protestant Church, 849, 859.

Tablet, 807, 808.

Talbot, Earl, 771.

Talbot, Thomas, 823, 824.

Tallaght, 833, 834, 836.

Tanner. Dr. Charles K. D., 901 n.

Tara, 787.

Tarpey, Hugh, 871.

Tasmania, 799, 853, 860.

Taylor, Colonel Thomas Edward, 859, 8 .0.

Technical Instruction, 913.

Tcltgraph, Weekly, 807, 810.

Temperance, 785, 78«, 787, 911.

924

INDEX.

Templeogue, «:»!.

Tenant League, 802, 803, 805, 807, 808, 809.

811, 835,906.

Test and Corporation Acts, 776.
Thorn's Directory, 855 n., 810n.
Thurles, 783, 798, 906.
Tierney, Rev. Thomas, 787.
Times, 823, 890, 901, 902, 903, 905, 906.
Tipperary, 784, 797, 798, 808, 814, 826, 828,

829, 833, 835, 839, 841, 849, 860, 871, 894.
Tipperary Bank, 806, 813, 814.
Tithe Commutation Act, 785.
Tithe War, 781, 783, 784, 785, 842.
Tolerance, 844, 858, 865, 868.
Tone, Theobald Wolfe, 818, 826.
Tories, 786, 801, 805, 812, 822, 869, 878,

911.

Tralee, 894.
Transvaal, 862, 914.
Trant, Captain John, 798.
Treason Felony, 797, 831, 835, 836, 866.
Trench, Major, 853, 854.
Trevelyan, Sir George Otto, 883, 895, 900.
Trials, 769, 782, 788, 789. 797, 798, 813. 818,

824, 827, 831, 835, 836, 837, 839, 840, 874,

875, 883, 890, 891, 902.
Trinity College, Dublin, 781, 789, 796, 816,

851, 863, 864, 892, 894, 897. 903 n.
Troy, Archbishop, 771.

Tudors, The, 842, 843.
Turner, Samuel, 823.
Tynan, Patrick Joseph, 889.
Tyrone, 801, 894, 897, 900.
Tyrrell, Rev. Peter, 787, 788.

Ulster, 799, 801, 802, 803, 804, 841, 848, 849,

855, 858, 892, 893, 897, 900.
Ulxterman, 904.

Under Secretary, 783, 802, 881, 882, 883, 888.
Undertakers, 802.
Union, The, 767, 769, 770, 772, 773, 780,

784, 844, 846, 848, 850, 851, 852, 858, 894,

912, 913, 914.

Unionists, 897, 899. 900, 903, 910, 912, 914.
United Ireland, 877, 892, 90<>, J)04.
United Irish League. 913.
United Irishman, 7W.
United Irishmen. 796, 797. 802, 803, 823.
United States, 772, 773, 776, 795, 799, 811,

815, 818. 822, 823. 824, 825, 827, 828, 829,

857, 858, 859, S<>0, 861 n., 866. 868, 869,

875, 888, 903, 907, 9o<).
University College, Dublin, 8G4.
University Question, Catholic. 790, 815, 816,

852, 855, 8(53. 864, 872 n.. 913, 914.
Urban Population, English and Irish, 874.

Verner. Colonel William, 786.

Veto, The, 771.

Victor Emmanuel II.. 819, 820.

Victoria, Queen, 785, 799, 800, 801, 811,

824, 847, 872, 901.
Volunteers, Irish, 844, 884.

Walker, George, 779.

Wallstown, 783.

Walsh, Most Rev. William J., Archbishop of

Dublin, 816 n., 864. 904, 905, 906.
Warren, Col. John, 836.
Waterford City, 786, 795, 894, 910.
Waterford County, 775, 779, 894.
Webster, Sir Richard (Lord Alverstone),

902, 903, 905.
Weekly Mews, 408.

Wellesley, Richard, Marquess, 770, 771, 774.
Wellesley-Pole, William, 770
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 770,

775, 776, 778, 84i.
West Indies, 867.

Westmeath, 808, 831, 853, 871, 892, 894.
Westmeath, Marquess of, 811, 812.
Westport. 867.
Wexford, 875, 878, 893, 894.
Wexford County, 798, 894. 910.
Whately, Dr. Richard, 781, 842.
Whelan, Patrick. 795.
Whigs, 780, 783, 784, 785, 786, 788, 791, 793,

794, 799, 805, 807, 809, 812, 815, 817, 822,
824, 831, 852, 853, 855, 802, 865, 869, 870,
871, 892, 893, 911.

Whitworth, Charles, Earl, 771.

Wicklow, 769, 830, 841, 845, 858, 859, 894.

Wicklow Mountains, 833.

Wilde, Lady, 796.

Wilde, Sir William, 796.

William III., 773, 801.

William IV., 775, 779, 785, 799, 800, 801.

Williams, Richard D'Alton, 795, 796, 797,

799.

Wilson, John, 866.

Wiseman, Nicholas, Cardinal, 803, 882.
Wodehouse, John, Lord, 822, 829.
Wolseley, Garnet, Viscount, 844.
World, 793.
Wyndham, Mr. George, 912.

York, Frederick, Duke of, 775.

Youghal, 808, 852, 894.

Young Ireland, 789, 790, 791, 792, 7P3, 794,

795, 796, 797, 798, 799, 800, 802, 811, 827,
828, 841, 850, 853, 862, 897.

Zetland, Marquess of, 900.

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