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THE LIFE OF PARNELL.*

[CONCLUDING NOTICE.]

IT does not fall within the purpose of Mr. O'Brien to give a detailed account of the utter anarchy and oppression that prevailed over a great part of Ireland during the ascendency of the Land League, but he has given some statistics showing the dark train of crime which, in the words of Gladstone, "with painful and fatal precision" dogged its steps. Murders, it is true, though very frequent, were less frequent than in some earlier periods of Irish agrarian history, but intimida- tion, resting upon outrages and threats of outrage, and in- tended to break contracts, to prevent evictions, and to establish a law different from, and opposed to, the law of the land, was carried to a point which has probably never been paralleled in modern times in any civilised country. Parnell gave the key-note of the movement when he exhorted the people to "keep a firm grip upon their holdings," to refuse to pay what they considered unjust rents, to resist all attempts to enlarge and consolidate holdings, and to treat as a moral leper, "in the shop, in the market place, and even in the place of worship," every man who broke the unwritten code. "What," he asked in one of his speeches, "are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from which his neighbour has been evicted ? " His audience spon- taneously shouted, "Shoot them ! Kill them!" But he proceeded to say that the better and more charitable course was such boycotting as he described. Forster, however, truly said that he never uttered a word really reprobating or tending to prevent the many murders and the count- less acts of minor outrage that were going on, and which were the direct and obvious consequence of his policy. By a skilful organisation spread over nearly the whole island, by constant speeches exciting the people almost to madness, by an intimidation of juries and witnesses which effectually paralysed the ordinary law, by acts of violence swiftly following every breach of the Land League code, this ascen- dency was maintained, while the large sums received from America were employed in defending every one who was accused of an agrarian crime, and the Parliamentary power of the Irish contingent was steadily exerted in systematically obstructing the exceptional legislation against crime which had become absolutely essential.

The details of this tyranny, which forms one of the darkest pages in Irish history, have been related by many writers; they were brought out into the clearest light by the evidence before the Special Commission, and no one has expressed more emphatically than Gladstone the profound immorality of the Land League policy and the terrible weight of

• The Life of Charles Stelcarl Parnell. By B. Barry O'Brien. 2 vole. London : smith, Elder, and Co. l21e

responsibility that rests upon its chief. To him, however, this responsibility was a matter of complete indifference, except as far as these outrages tended to further or impede his political ends. In the words of Mr. O'Brien, "he was not alarmed' because English public opinion was shocked.'" He had no faith in the fine moral sense of the English. "'Much the English care,' he had said, 'for the shooting of a few landlords in Ireland.' He looked upon the English as a nation of hypocrites. 'They murder and plunder,' he would say, all over the world, and then they howl when somebody is killed because the killing is of no use to them.' An outburst of lawlessness in Ireland was regarded by Parnell simply with a view to its effect on the national movement." There was a time when he thought that from this point of view it had become excessive. But even then, when he was asked to move a resolution condemning outrages, he positively refused, declaring that he was "not going to act as police for the English Government."

Mr. O'Brien has thrown much interesting light on the relations of Parnell with the Clan-na-gael Society in America. "The Clan-na-gael," as Mr. O'Brien observes with a gentle euphemism, "was probably not an immaculate organisation." In other words, as has been shown by overwhelming evidence, it was a murder society which, among other things, openly advocated by its organs in the Press dynamite explosions in England as the beat means of carrying on the campaign. It was proved before the Special Commission that an immense portion of the funds for the agitation in Ireland, and for the payment of its representatives in Parliament, came from this source, and, as Mr. O'Brien observes, although it is not true that the National League of America was nothing more nor less than a Clan-na-gael Association, although there were hundreds of members of the League who did not belong to the Clan, it was perfectly true that "the Clan, without absorbing, controlled the League." The members of this Society always looked with great suspicion on Parliamentary action, even of the school of Biggar and Parnell, and there was much distrust on both sides. Parnell's part in dealing with them was a very difficult one. On the one hand, he desired to main- tain intact, cordial, and unclouded his alliance with this body, but he was no less determined not to be dominated by it, and he appears to have regarded the dynamite policy as folly. "Mr. Parnell," Gladstone said in one of his speeches, "has said America is the only friend of Ireland, but in all his references to America he has never found time to utter one word of disapproval about what is known as the assassination literature of that country." His attitude towards the dyna- mite policy is stated by Mr. O'Brien with a frankness that leaves nothing to be desired. "What did Parnell think of the morality of dynamite ? He did not think about it at all, He regarded the moral sermons preached by English statesmen and publicists as the merest cant Morality was the last thing the English thought of in their dealings with Ireland. Morality was the last thing he thought of in his dealings with them He was content to call the dynamitards fools, and to laugh at the moral pretences of the House of Commons."

This complete moral callousness was well shown on the occasion of the terrible indictment which Forster brought against him in 1883. Supporting himself by overwhelming evidence, Forster showed the direct responsibility af Parnell for an amount of crime that should have excluded him from the society of honourable men. He did not accuse him of having himself planned or perpetrated murder and outrages, but he did accuse him of having connived at them, of having said and done things that he knew must lead to them, of having systematically abstained from condemning them. At first Parnell wished to make no reply whatever. When at last his own followers obliged him to rise, he merely vouch- safed a few scornful words abusing Forster and telling the House that he cared only for Irish opinion. Mr. O'Brien, indeed, considers that the attack was not displeasing to him; as it would increase his authority with the extremists in America. When at a later period the Special Commission found him guilty of speeches and actions which led to crime and outrage, and of persisting in them with knowledge of their effect, his comment was, "Well, really, between ourselves,, I think it is just about what I should have said myself."

The denunciations of Forster were followed by some very

characteristic incidents in Ireland. Chiefly, it appears, at the suggestion of a Catholic Archbishop, it was determined to reply to the attack of the British Minister by an Irish testi- monial; but the Pope, to his great credit, was scandalised by the spectacle of the Catholic clergy engaged in honouring such a man, and he ordered a letter to be sent to the Irish Bishops condemning the "tribute." Such was the moral condition of Ireland that, in spite of this condemnation, a BUM of no less than £37,000 was raised. Part of it came from America, but the greater part was subscribed in Ireland. It was agreed that it should be presented by the Lord Mayor of Dublin and some other leading Nationalists. "At the appointed hour," writes Mr. O'Brien, "the deputation arrived and were ushered into a private room where stood the Chief. The Lord Mayor having been announced, bowed and began : Mr. Parnell—' 'I believe,' said Parnell, you have got a cheque for me.' The Lord Mayor, somewhat surprised at this interruption, said 'Yes,' and was about to re-commence his speech, when Parnell broke in—' Is it made payable to order and crossed P ' The Lord Mayor again answered in the affirmative and was resuming the thread of his discourse, when Parnell took the cheque, folded it neatly and put it in his waistcoat pocket. This ended the interview." A great banquet followed. "Parnell made a speech upon the general situation, but said nothing about the cheque." He did not so much as thank his followers for what they had done.

Few men have gone through greater vicissitudes than Parnell during the last years of his life. There was his imprisonment when the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended in 1881, which was met by the manifesto ordering all tenants throughout Ireland to abstain from the payment of agrarian rent, and was speedily followed by an appalling increase of crime. Parnell at last grew seriously alarmed. As Mr. O'Brien says: "Lawlessness and anarchy which served only to embarrass the British Minister mattered little to him. Lawlessness and anarchy which served only to embarrass himself mattered a great deal." He saw that the country was drifting out of his hands. He had always regarded the Land question mainly as an instrument for breaking English government in Ireland, and he now perceived that it was taking forms that threatened to disorganise the National movement. The very discreditable Kilmainham Treaty, which led to his release and to the resignation of Forster, made him once more a free man, placed him in a kind of semi-alliance with the Liberal party, and gave him good hope that all exceptional legislation against Irish crime would be discontinued. But the Phoenix Park murders, and the great explosion of English feeling that followed, completely deranged his policy. For once in his life he was unnerved; he even thought for a moment of retiring from public life, and be signed a memorial con- demning the crime. His health was at this time much broken, and there were grave dissensions among his followers, which, however, he always succeeded in repressing. He kept up closely, and even ostentatiously, his connection with the American revolutionists when the dynamite outrages were at their height, but he did not really approve of them, and in the House of Commons he usually assumed a moderate attitude, and skilfully availed himself of every opportunity of obtaining Tory assistance against the Government. As Mr. Chamberlain said, it was one of his great talents that he could always "divest himself of every subject except that which was practical at the moment." He could take the tone either of perfect moderation or of extreme violence, and be always did so, not through any overpowering emotion, but by a sagacious calculation of the effect of either mood. After a long struggle a new Crimes Act was carried, and during Lord Spencer's administration Parnell and his party were in furious opposition. The reduction of the franchise in 1884 enor- monaly increased his power, but though it bad been carried by the Liberals, the whole Irish vote in the Election of 1885 was thrown against them; not a single Irish supporter of Gladstone was returned, and although the Liberals out- numbered the Conservatives. the party of Parnell was, for the first time, sufficiently strong to turn the balance.

Then came the strange transformation scene when Glad- stone declared his conversion to Home-rule ; when he entered into close and avowed alliance with Parnell ; when the Liberal party was shattered by the great secession; and when a new

Election placed the Unionists in power with an overwhelming majority. Another fierce outburst of agrarian crime followed, but this time it found many sympathisers or apologists in England. Parnell himself withdrew largely from active agitation, leaving the Home-rule movement chiefly in the hands of Gladstone. He was often absent from the House of Commons ; he disapproved of, and even openly condemned, "the Plan of Campaign," while Gladstone, without, indeed, justifying it, spoke of it in a strain of palliation which in practical politics amounted to little less. At this time, says Mr. O'Brien, "a close alliance was formed between Irish

Nationalists and English Liberals Irish members who twelve months before had been regarded as pariahs, were now welcomed on Liberal platforms and feted in Liberal drawing-rooms." Great London ladies vied with each other in trying to attract Parnell, and on the rare occasions on which he could be induced to appear at English meetings, he was welcomed with cheers almost as enthusiastic as those which had once greeted Gladstone when he rose in the Guild- hall to announce the imprisonment of the Irish leader, whom he described as the man "beyond all others prominent in the attempt to destroy the authority of the law," and to substitute for it an "anarchical oppression."

A weaker man would have lost his head under such circum- stances, but Parnell remained unchanged. He was still the same silent, solitary, self-contained, mysterious figure; he might at this time have been frequently seen at the tables of Liberal statesmen. They found him perfectly courteous, but laconic, indifferent, and somewhat dull, and he met English adulation and applause with a freezing and unresponsive dignity. "Outwardly," said an acute English Liberal to Mr. O'Brien, "Parnell is much changed, but I suspect in his heart he hates us as much as ever." At the time when the Irish enthusiasm for Gladstone was at its height, a friend asked what he now thought of that statesman. "I think," he answered frigidly, "of Mr. Gladstone and the English people what I have always thought of them. They will do what we can make them do." As Mr. O'Brien himself says : Extreme or moderate, Parnell held his ground because the Irish at home and abroad were convinced—and he took good care never, under any circumstances, to weaken the con- viction—that he was ever the unchanging enemy of England."

The Pigott forgeries greatly helped him. It is true that these letters formed only a single item of the charges against Parnell, and that the verdict of the Special Commission on other points amounted to a crushing condemnation of his whole career. It suited, however, the purpose of many English politicians to treat the forged letter as if it were the sole question at issue and Parnell as if he were an immaculate martyr. Mr. O'Brien has described the memorable scene at the Eighty Club, when Lord Spencer, who knew as well as any man what things had been done in Ireland during the last years, and who had himself been the foremost in urging the Irish loyalists to commit themselves beyond all possibility of retreat, in opposition to the men under whose rule be now wished to place them, came forward to express effusively his admiration for the Irish leader. It was, as Lord Rosebery said, "an historic hand-shake," and it will not be forgotten in history.

Only a few months passed, and the whole scene was changed. A divorce case growing out of an illicit connection which had long been notorious, and had four years before been publicly denounced at a Galway election, altered the whole aspect of Irish politics. The Irish Members at once rallied round their chief, and declared their unalterable resolution to stand by him ; but "the Nonconformist Con- science," which had received with the most placid indifference all the revelations of the Special Commission, was suddenly stirred into a paroxysm of somewhat hysterical virtue, and it compelled Gladstone to write his famous letter. Then at last the Catholic Church in Ireland turned against Parnell, draw- ing the majority of the Irish Members in its train. Our space will not allow us to follow the last phases of this strange and most dramatic story. Never indeed was the commanding power, the inflexible tenacity, the indomitable courage of the Irish leader more conspicuously shown than in that fierce struggle against overwhelming odds which was prematurely terminated by his early death. Mr. O'Brien relates a caustic commentary of an old Fenian leader on the whole transaction, and with it we may fitly conclude :— "Of course the divorce business was horrible, but was it worse than all that had been going on for the past ten years,—outrages, murders, boycotting, the Plan of Campaign, New Tipperary, and everything that was criminal and idiotic ? And yet these Liberals surrendered to this kind of thing, practically condoned the whole business, and were coming in shoals to Ireland, encouraging every madcap in the country in every immoral and insane plan he could think of ; and then suddenly t hey get a fit of virtue over this divorce affair. These English are the most extraordinary people in the world!"