A STRANGE STORY. T HE sensation of the week has been
the strange story• from Ireland which has filled the newspapers with allegations that the Gladstonians have been hiring Irish seats from the Nationalists at £200 a year. This charge has, however, been denied by the English Home-rule Press. They assert with the utmost vehemence that the only foundation for the charge is a perfectly legitimate arrangement made between the Gladstonians and the Anti- Parnellites, under which £200 a year per seat was to be paid towards the expenses in four constituencies in the North of Ireland, provided that the candidates chosen for • those seats were not Nationalists, but ordinary stonian Home-rulers. That is, the Anti-Parnellites, finding that the burden of fighting and of holding these constituencies, if won, was beyond their means, were willing to hand them over to the Gladstonians. Whether this explanation or that of the Times—i.e., that of hiring seats pure and simple—is the true one, or whether, again, the bargain was really £800 a year to the Nationalist funds in exchange for the Nationalist influence and recommendation in four Ulster County Divisions, we have no means of knowing. We have only heard as yet one side of the case, and cannot express our opinion definitely until we have the whole evidence before us ; and this we shall not have till Mr. McCarthy has made his promised statement, and Mr. Healy has made his comments thereon. All we propose to do is to give the substance of this strange story as it was given by the Irish Times, reserving our final opinion until we are better advised. The report from the Irish, Times is, at any rate, a very racy, and, we suspect, not a very exaggerated, picture of an Irish County Convention. On Monday a convention was held at Omagh, in Tyrone, for the purpose of choosing candidates for two of the county divisions. Mr. Dillon oame to the meeting as the emissary of the Parliamentary Committee; Mr. Healy also appeared on the scene with the object of opposing his colleague. The meeting was crowded by supporters of both sides, including a large number of priests, who seem for the most part to have favoured Mr. Healy. After a great deal of noise and tumult, Mr. Healy turned to Mr. Dillon, who was sitting behind him, and warned him that he would rue the day he ever acted as he had acted that day. Mr. Dillon, shouting above the din, replied, " I won't take any notice of a foul, calumnious charge." Mr. Healy retorted, "You have sold the Tyrones to the Liberals." It soon appeared what was the meaning of this accusation. After a good deal more confusion, and the pitiful declaration from Mr. John Dillon, " that if their proceedings should go before the public, their chances of success in Tyrone would be ruined," Mr. Healy jumped up on the platform, and, brandishing a letter at Mr. Dillon, said, "This man [referring to Mr. Dillon] comes here as an Irish Nationalist. I will tell you, men of Tyrone, what he is in a moment. I accuse him and his followers of having sold O'Neill's county to an English party. Listen, men of Tyrone. Here is a letter from Mr. Blake, the ex-Canadian statesman, to Mr. Thomas Dickson, one of her Majesty's Privy Councillors." Mr. Healy then read the letter, which, the Irish Times tells us, began by stating that he (Mr. Blake) was in- structed to state that the Executive (meaning the Feder- ation) could not in future subsidise North Tyrone, South Tyrone, North Derry, and South Derry, and that they must in future be considered Liberal Home-rule seats. In view of this fact, he (Mr. Blake) was instructed by the Irish party to consult Mr. Ellis, the chief Liberal Whip, with the object of ascertaining whether the Liberals would be willing to give £200 per annum for each of the seats. Mr. Ellis consented to this only on the understanding that the seats should be considered Liberal and not Home-rule. The letter concluded :—" The Irish party have accordingly agreed to this understanding." As may be surmised, these revelations threw the meeting into a perfect frenzy of excitement. Mr. Healy, however, did his best to "rub in" the letter. He is described as shouting above the din, " That, Catholics and priests of Tyrone, is the compact. The Nationalists of North Tyrone have been sold for a miserable £200. Are you going to stand this ? If you are Catholics and Irishmen, why not interfere ? Ask the priests of Tyrone for God's sake," for the sake of Ireland,' to step in and prevent their people being sold to a lot of Englishmen." Mr. Dillon tried in vain to stem the torrent. He declared at first that Mr. Healy's statement was an infamous and calumnious lie. His next remark was, however, entirely confirmatory of the letter. "You have read a letter," he went on, " which any man pretending to be a patriot would not have read. It was a private letter, and was read at a meeting of the Committee of the Federation at which you and Mr. T. D. Sullivan were present." Then followed the following spirited dialogue :—Mr. Healy : " I deny that, Sir. It was not until a couple of months after it was written that I heard about it."—Mr. Dillon : " It was the act of a traitor to read it publicly."—Mr. Healy : " I will not stand by and see Ireland sold."—Mr. Dillon: "There is no fear of that."—Mr. Healy : " I will go to my own constituents and repeat what I have said about you to-day."—Mr. Dillon : "You dare not."
Such is the story told by the Irish Times, and, to a, certain extent, confirmed by a subsequent statement made by Mr. Healy. Mr. Healy denies the accuracy of the very dramatic pieces of dialogue quotsd above, but stands firm as regards the authenticity of the letter. Though, as we have said, we cannot yet attempt to pass judgment on the matter, we may safely make one or two conditional remarks on the subject. If the inference drawn from the report of the Irish Times by the Times and Pall Mall and St. James's Gazette, and other Unionist newspapers is correct, it is not too much to say that we must go back to the worst days of the rotten boroughs to find a parallel for the transaction. According to the worst view of the business the Nationalist influence was bought as George III. used to buy the patron's influence in some little Cornish town, and so secure the return of one of the King's friends. If, on the other hand, the explanation of the Westminster Gazette is the accurate one, then the Liberal Whip was merely making an arrangement under which the Glad- stonians were to fight certain seats previously fought by the Nationalists—an arrangement in no way corrupt or illegal. There is, besides, the third explanation, though it is one which, till there is more evidence, can only rank with the others as unproven. It is that the Gladstonians wanted to find an excuse for subsidising the Auti-Parnellites to the tune of £800 a year, and found it in an arrange- ment that two seats in Tyrone and two seats in Derry should be contested by Gladstonians. Nominally, the £200 a year per seat was to go towards Election expenses,—really it was to find its way into the common fund of the Irish party. As we have said before, we cannot as yet profess to decide which of these views is the true one. At the same time, it is difficult to forbear the feeling that the transaction was in some way or other of the kind which politicians like to keep secret, and like to keep secret because they are ashamed of them. In plain words, the incident has an unpleasant look. As Lord Rosebery, in his Life of Pitt, says of Lord Shelburne, the need of so much explanation is, to say the least, unfortunate.
Perhaps, however, the most important and significant thing about the whole incident is the light it throws upon the desperate character of the quarrel between Mr. Healy and Mr. Dillon. If Mr. Healy is prepared to use such weapons as those he used at Omagh, what is likely to be the end of the Anti-Parnellite party ? How is it to escape the fate of the Kilkenny cats ? After this it must be war to the knife between Mr. Healy and Mr. Dillon and their followers. But a triangular war waged without remorse between three Irish parties is not likely to prove very attractive to the English voter. When he is asked to hand over Ireland to a National Parliament he will, like the practical man he is, translate this ab- straction by a concrete image, and reply, " You mean hand over the Government of Ireland to Mr. Redmond, Mr. Healy, and Mr. Dillon ? But this is like handing over the management of a hotel to a free-fight in the bar. There may be a good deal in what you say about the wrongs of Ireland, but that, at any rate, does not strike me as a very businesslike arrange- ment." Depend upon it, the English and Scotch voters will be very greatly influenced by the knowledge that the Nationalist party now consists of three factions who hate each other worse than they hate the Saxon. It should be the aim of all Unionists during the Election to make it clear to the voters that when people talk of Ireland the y do not mean a homogeneous and united country speaking with one voice and moved by a single aspiration. Ireland is not that, but a caldron in which are bubbling and seething not only Parnellites, Healyites, Dillonites, and McCarthyites, but Orangemen and Ulster Liberals. It is difficult enough to keep the mixture from bubbling over when it is under the control of England. What hope is there if that control is withdrawn and the caldron is left to itself ?
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