It is hardly possible to conceive a less important question
than that on which, nominally, the Anti-Parnellite party appears to have split itself in two. It is nominally the choice of an Anti-Parnellite candidate for South Kerry. Really, however, it is the question whether Mr. Healy shall be the Anti-Parnellite leader, or whether that office shall remain in commission in the hands of Mr. Justin McCarthy's most powerful advisers, principally Mr. Dillon and Mr. T. P. O'Connor. Mr. Farrell was unanimously chosen by the Con- vention summoned to select the candidate, but according to the Healyites, the Convention was not properly summoned, and its proceedings were not of a kind to secure to the party a free discussion. Mr. Justin McCarthy has signed a docu- ment which, according to his opponents, was not written by him, denouncing the Healyite candidate, Mr. Murphy, as a conspirator against the unity of the party and the Nationalist cause ; and the Freeman's Journal has written vehement diatribes against him as a traitor to the party. On the other hand, Mr. Healy's organ, the Irish Catholic, writes of "the abominable attempt which is being made to trample on the rights of the people of Kerry," and of Mr. Farrell (the McCarthyite candidate) as " the unknown incapable and useless nonentity from London whom it is sought to throw on this (South Kerry) constituency," and of Mr. Dillon as "a solemn political incapable." So far as we can see, the people of South Kerry itself rather enjoy the faction-fight, and cheer each faction in turn. We doubt if they care any more which of them shall be the winner than they cared what the issue of the struggle between Lord Rosebery and Lord Salisbury was to be. The spectacle of the struggle is to them an end in itself. And of course they enjoy a fight in which they play a principal part, more than a fight at a distance of which they hear only the faintest echoes. Whether Mr. Healy wins or loses his game, he will never succeed to Mr. Parnell's influence. He does not stand above the Irish party as Mr. Parnell did.
Previous page
