[Illustration]
JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS
BY
STEPHEN GWYNN
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1919
[All rights reserved]
PREFACE
In writing this book, I have had access to my late leader's papers for
the period beginning with the war. These were placed at my disposal by
his son, Major William Archer Redmond, D.S.O., M.P. I had also the
consent of Mrs. Redmond to my undertaking the task. But for the book and
for the opinions expressed in it I am solely responsible. No condition
having been imposed upon me, it seemed best, for many reasons, that it
should be written, as it has been written, without consultation.
A writer in whom such a trust has been placed may well be at a loss how
to express his gratitude, but can never convey the measure of his
anxiety. From those who cherish Redmond's memory, and especially from
those who were nearest to him in comradeship and affection, I must only
crave the indulgence which should be accorded to sincere effort.
Differences of interpretation there will be in any review of past
events, and others can claim with justice that on many points they were
better situated for full understanding than was I. Yet for the period
which is specially studied, if there is failure in comprehension it
cannot be excused by lack of opportunity to be thoroughly informed.
To readers at large I would say this--that if any sentence in these
pages be uncandid or ungenerous, it is most unworthy to be found in the
record of such a man.
S.G.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. REDMOND AS CHAIRMAN 23
III. THE HOME RULE BILL OF 1912 62
IV. THE RIVAL VOLUNTEER FORCES 90
V. WAR IN EUROPE 126
VI. THE RAISING OF THE IRISH BRIGADES 152
VII. THE REBELLION AND ITS SEQUEL 218
VIII. THE CONVENTION AND THE END 259
INDEX 343
PORTRAIT OF JOHN REDMOND _Frontispiece_
JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
I
The time has not yet come to write the biography of John Redmond. Not
until the history of the pledge-bound Irish Parliamentary party can be
treated freely, fully and impartially as a chapter closed and ended will
it be possible to record in detail the life of a man who was associated
with it almost from its beginning and who from the opening of this
century guided it with almost growing authority to the statutory
accomplishment of its desperate task; who knew, in it and for it, all
vicissitudes of fortune and who gave to it without stint or reservation
his whole life's energy from earliest manhood to the grave.
But when the war came, unforeseen, shifting all political balances,
transmuting the greatest political issues, especially those of which the
Irish question is a type, it imposed upon men and upon nations, but
above all on the leaders of nations, swift and momentous decisions.
Because that critical hour presented to Redmond's vision a great
opportunity which he must either seize single-handed or let it for ever
pass by; because he rose to the height of the occasion with the courage
which counts upon and commands success; because he sought by his own
motion to swing the whole mass and weight of a nation's feeling into a
new direction--for all these reasons his last years were different in
kind from any that had gone before; and as such they admit of and demand
separate study. Intelligent comprehension of what he aimed at, what he
achieved, and what forces defeated him in these last years of his life
is urgently needed, not for the sake of his memory, but for Ireland's
sake; because until his policy is understood there is little chance that
Irishmen should attain what he aspired to win for Ireland--the strength
and dignity of a free and united nation.
It is of Redmond's policy for Ireland in relation to the war, and to the
events which in Ireland arose out of the war, that this book is mainly
designed to treat. Yet to make that policy intelligible some history is
needed of the startling series of political developments which the war
interrupted but did not terminate--and which, though still recent, are
blurred in public memory by all that has intervened. Further back still,
a brief review of his early career must be given, not only to set the
man's figure in relation to his environment, but to show that this final
phase was in reality no new departure, no break with his past, but a
true though a divergent evolution from all that had gone before.
* * * * *
Ireland, although so small in extent and population, is none the less a
country of many and locally varying racial strains; and John Redmond
sprang from one of the most typical. He was a Wexfordman; that is to
say, he came from the part of Ireland where if you cross the Channel
there is least difference between the land you leave and the land you
sail to; where the sea-divided peoples have been always to some extent
assimilated. Here in the twelfth century the first Norman-Welsh invaders
came across. The leader of their first party, Raymond Le Gros, landed at
a point between Wexford and Waterford; the town of Wexford was his
first capture; and where he began his conquest he settled. From this
stock the Redmond name and line descend.
Thus John Redmond came from an invading strain in which Norman and Celt
were already blended; and he grew up in a country thickly settled with
men whose ancestors came along with his from across the water. Till a
century ago the barony of Forth retained a dialect of its own which was
in effect such English as men spoke before Chaucer began to write; and
even to-day in any Wexford fair or market you will see among the strong,
well-nourished, prosperous farmers many faces and figures which an
artist might easily assimilate to an athletic example of the traditional
John Bull. Redmond himself, hawk-faced and thick-bodied, might have been
taken for no bad reincarnation of Raymond Le Gros. To this extent he was
less of a Celt than many of his countrymen; but he was assuredly none
the less Irish because he was a Wexfordman. The county of his birth was
the county which had made the greatest resistance to English power in
Ireland since Sarsfield and his "Wild Geese" crossed to Flanders. Born
in 1857, he grew up in a country-side full of memories of events then
only some sixty years old; he knew and spoke with many men who had been
out with pike or fowling-piece in 1798. Rebel was to him from boyhood up
a name of honour; and this was not only a phase of boyish enthusiasm. In
his mature manhood, speaking as leader of the Irish party, he told the
House of Commons plainly that in his deliberate judgment Ireland's
situation justified an appeal to arms, and that if rebellion offered a
reasonable prospect of gaining freedom for a united Ireland he would
counsel rebellion on the instant.
But if he was always and admittedly a potential rebel, no man was ever
less a revolutionary. As much a constitutionalist as Hampden or
Washington, he was so by temperament and by inheritance. The tradition
of parliamentary service had been in his family for two generations.
Two years after his birth his great-uncle, John Edward Redmond, from
whom he got his baptismal names, was elected unopposed as Liberal member
for the borough of Wexford, where his statue stands in the market-place,
commemorating good service rendered. Much of the rich flat land which
lies along the railway from Wexford to Rosslare Harbour was reclaimed by
this Redmond's enterprise from tidal slob. On his death in 1872 the seat
passed to his nephew William Archer Redmond, whose two sons were John
and William Redmond, with whom this book deals. Thus the present Major
William Archer Redmond, M.P., represents four continuous generations of
the same family sent to Westminster among the representatives of
Nationalist Ireland.
Not often is a family type so strongly marked as among the men of this
stock. But the portraits show that while the late Major "Willie" Redmond
closely resembled his father, in John Redmond and John Redmond's son
there were reproduced the more dominant and massive features of the
first of the parliamentary line.
To sum up then, John Redmond and his brother came of a long strain of
Catholic gentry who were linked by continuous historic association of
over seven centuries to a certain district in South Leinster, and who
retained leadership among their own people. The tradition of military
service was strong, too, in this family. Their father's cousin, son to
the original John Edward Redmond, was a professional soldier; and their
mother was the daughter of General Hoey. They were brought up in an
old-fashioned country house, Ballytrent, on the Wexford coast, and the
habits of outdoor country life and sport which furnished the chief
pleasure of their lives were formed in boyhood. Their upbringing
differed from that of boys in thousands of similar country houses
throughout Ireland only in one circumstance; they were Catholics, and
even so lately as in their boyhood Catholic land-owners were
comparatively few.
John Redmond was four years older than his younger brother, born in
1861. He got his schooling under the Jesuits at Clongowes in early days,
before the system of Government endowment by examination results had
given incentive to cramming. According to his own account he did little
work and nobody pressed him to exertion. But the Jesuits are skilful
teachers, and they left a mark on his mind. It is scarcely chance that
the two speakers of all I have heard who had the best delivery were
pupils of theirs--Redmond and Sir William Butler. They taught him to
write, they taught him to speak and to declaim, they encouraged his
natural love of literature. His taste was formed in those days and it
was curiously old-fashioned. His diction in a prepared oration might
have come from the days of Grattan: and he maintained the old-fashioned
habit of quotation. No poetry written later than Byron, Moore and
Shelley made much appeal to him, save the Irish political ballads. But
scarcely any English speaker quoted Shakespeare in public so often or so
aptly as this Irishman.
From Clongowes he went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he matriculated
in October 1874 at the age of seventeen. His academic studies seem to
have been half-hearted. At the end of a year his name was taken off the
College books by his father, but was replaced. At the close of his
second year of study, in July 1876, it was removed again and for good.
But apart from what he learnt at school, his real education was an
apprenticeship; he was trained in the House of Commons for the work of
Parliament. He was a boy of fifteen, of an age to be keenly interested,
when the representation of Wexford passed from his great-uncle to his
father. Probably the reason why he was removed from Trinity College was
the desire of Mr. William Redmond to have his son with him in London.
Certainly John Redmond was there during the session of 1876, for on the
introduction of Mr. Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill he recalled a
finely apposite Shakespearean quotation which he had heard Butt use in a
Home Rule debate of that year. In May 1880 his father procured him a
clerkship in the House. The post to which he was assigned was that of
attendant in the Vote Office, so that his days (and a great part of his
nights) were spent in the two little rooms which open off the Members'
Lobby, that buzzing centre of parliamentary gossip, activity and
intrigue. Half a dozen steps only separated him from the door of the
Chamber itself, and that door he was always privileged to pass and
listen to the debates, standing by the entrance outside the magical
strip of matting which indicates the bar of the House. From this point
of vantage he watched the first stages of a Parliament in which Mr,
Gladstone set out with so triumphant a majority--and watched too the
inroads made upon the power and prestige of that majority by the new
parliamentary force which had come into being.
Redmond himself described thus (in a lecture delivered at New York in
1896) the policy which came to be known as "The New Departure":
"Mr. Parnell found that the British Parliament insisted upon
turning a deaf ear to Ireland's claim for justice. He resolved to
adopt the simple yet masterly device of preventing Parliament doing
any work at all until it consented to hear."
In the task of systematic and continuous obstruction Parnell at once
found a ready helper, Mr. Joseph Biggar. But Parnell, Biggar and those
who from 1876 to 1880 acted generally or frequently with them were only
members of the body led by Butt; though they were, indeed, ultimately in
more or less open revolt against Butt's leadership. When Butt died, and
was at least nominally replaced by Mr. Shaw, the growth of Parnell's
ascendancy became more marked. In the general election of 1880 sixty
Home Rulers were returned to Parliament; and at a meeting attended by
over forty, twenty-three declared for Parnell as their leader. A
question almost of ceremonial observance immediately defined the issue.
Liberals were in power, and Government was more friendly to Ireland's
claims than was the Opposition. Mr. Shaw and his adherents were for
marking support of the Government by sitting on the Government side of
the Chamber. Parnell insisted that the Irish party should be independent
of all English attachments and permanently in opposition till Ireland
received its rights. With that view he and his friends took up their
station on the Speaker's left below the gangway, where they held it
continuously for thirty-nine years.
Mr. William Redmond was no supporter of the new policy. As the little
group which Parnell headed grew more and more insistent in their
obstruction, the member for Wexford spoke less and less. His
interventions were rare and dignified. In the debate on the Address in
the new Parliament of 1880 he acted as a lieutenant to Mr. Shaw. Yet he
was on very friendly terms with Parnell--almost a neighbour of his, for
the Parnell property, lying about the Vale of Ovoca, touched the border
of Wexford.
Mr. William Redmond's career in that Parliament was soon ended. In
November 1880 he died, and, normally, his son, whose qualifications and
ambitions were known, would have succeeded him. But collision between
Government and the Parnellite party was already beginning. Mr. T.M.
Healy, then Parnell's secretary, had been arrested for a speech in
denunciation of some eviction proceedings. This was the first arrest of
a prominent man under Mr. Forster's rule as Chief Secretary, and
Parnell, with whom in those days the decision rested, decided that Mr.
Healy should immediately be put forward for the vacant seat. In later
days he was to remind Mr. Healy how he had done this, "rebuking and
restraining the prior right of my friend, Jack Redmond." Redmond had not
long to wait, however. Another vacancy occurred in another Wexford seat,
the ancient borough of New Ross, and he was returned without opposition
at a crucial moment in the parliamentary struggle.
That struggle was not only parliamentary. From the famine year of 1879
onwards a fierce agitation had begun, whose purpose was to secure the
land of Ireland to the people who worked it. Davitt was to the land what
Parnell was to the parliamentary campaign: but it was Parnell's genius
which fused the two movements.
To meet the growing power of the Land League, Mr. Forster demanded a
Coercion Bill, and after long struggles in the Cabinet he prevailed.
Against this Bill it was obvious that all means of parliamentary
resistance would be used to the uttermost.
They were still of a primitive simplicity. In the days before Parnell
the House of Commons had carried on its business under a system of rules
which worked perfectly well because there was a general disposition in
the assembly to get business done. A beginning of the new order was made
when a group of ex-military men attempted to defeat the measure for
abolishing purchase of commissions in the Army by a series of dilatory
motions. This, however, was an isolated occurrence. Any English member
who set himself to thwart the desire of the House for a conclusion by
using means which the general body considered unfair would have been
reduced to quiescence by a demonstration that he was considered a
nuisance. His voice would have been drowned in a buzz of conversation or
by less civil interruptions. This implied, however, a willingness to be
influenced by social considerations, and, more than that, a loyalty to
the traditions and purposes of the House. Parnell felt no such
willingness and acknowledged no such loyalty.
"His object," said Redmond in the address already quoted, "was to injure
it so long as it refused to listen to the just claims of his country."
The House, realizing Parnell's intention, visited upon him and his
associates all the penalties by which it was wont to enforce its wishes:
but the penalties had no sting. All the displays of anger, disapproval,
contempt, all the vocabulary of denunciation in debate and in the Press,
all the studied forms of insult, all the marks of social displeasure,
only served to convince the Irishmen that they were producing their
effect. Still, the House continued to act on the assumption that it
could vindicate its traditions in the old traditional way: it was
determined to change none of the rules which had stood for so many
generations: it would maintain its liberties and put down in its own way
those who had the impertinence to abuse them. The breaking-point came
exactly at the moment when Redmond was elected.
On Monday, Jan. 24th, 1881, Mr. Forster introduced his Coercion Bill. It
was open, of course, to any member to speak once, and once only, on the
main motion. But every member had an indefinite right to move the
adjournment of the debate, and on each such motion every member could
speak again. The debate was carried all through that week. It was
resumed on Monday, 31st. The declaration of Redmond's election was fixed
for Tuesday, February 1st, in New Ross--there being no contest. A
telegram summoned him to come instantly after the declaration to London.
He took the train at noon, travelled to Dublin and crossed the Channel.
At Holyhead about midnight another telegram told him that the debate was
still proceeding. He reached Euston on the Wednesday morning, drove
straight to the House, and there, standing at the bar, saw what he thus
described:
"It was thus, travel-stained and weary, that I first presented
myself as a member of the British Parliament. The House was still
sitting, it had been sitting without a break for over forty hours,
and I shall never forget the appearance the Chamber presented. The
floor was littered with paper. A few dishevelled and weary Irishmen
were on one side of the House, about a hundred infuriated
Englishmen upon the other; some of them still in evening dress, and
wearing what were once white shirts of the night before last. Mr.
Parnell was upon his legs, with pale cheeks and drawn face, his
hands clenched behind his back, facing without flinching a
continuous roar of interruption. It was now about eight o'clock.
Half of Mr. Parnell's followers were out of the Chamber snatching a
few moments' sleep in chairs in the Library or Smoke Room. Those
who remained had each a specified period of time allotted him to
speak, and they were wearily waiting their turn. As they caught
sight of me standing at the bar of the House of Commons there was a
cheer of welcome. I was unable to come to their aid, however, as
under the rules of the House I could not take my seat until the
commencement of a new sitting. My very presence, however, brought,
I think, a sense of encouragement and approaching relief to them;
and I stood there at the bar with my travelling coat still upon me,
gazing alternately with indignation and admiration at the amazing
scene presented to my gaze.
"This, then, was the great Parliament of England! Of intelligent
debate there was none. It was one unbroken scene of turbulence and
disorder. The few Irishmen remained quiet, too much amused,
perhaps, or too much exhausted to retaliate. It was the
English--the members of the first assembly of gentlemen in Europe,
as they love to style it--who howled and roared, and almost foamed
at the mouth with rage at the calm and pale-featured young man who
stood patiently facing them and endeavouring to make himself
heard."
An hour later the closure was applied, for the first time in
Parliament's history. The records of Hansard spoil a story which Redmond
was fond of telling--that he took his oath and his seat, made his maiden
speech and was suspended all in the same evening. In point of fact he
took his seat that Wednesday afternoon, when the House sat for a few
hours only and adjourned again. Next day news came in that Davitt had
been arrested in Ireland. Mr. Dillon, in the process of endeavouring to
extract an explanation from the Government, was named and suspended.
When the Prime Minister after this rose to speak, Mr. Parnell moved:
"That Mr. Gladstone be not heard."
The Speaker, ruling that Mr. Gladstone was in possession of the House,
refused to put the motion. Mr. Parnell, insisting that his motion should
be put, came into collision with the authority of the Chair and was
formally "named." Mr. Gladstone then moved his suspension and a division
was called--whereupon, under the rules which then existed, all members
were bound to leave the Chamber. On this occasion the Irish members
remained seated, as a protest, and after the division the Speaker
solemnly reported this breach of order to the House. For their refusal
to obey the Irish members present were suspended from the service of the
House, and as a body they refused to leave unless removed by physical
force. Accordingly, man by man was ordered to leave and each in turn
rose up with a brief phrase of refusal, after which the Sergeant-at-Arms
with an officer approached and laid a hand on the recusant's shoulder.
Redmond, when his turn came, said:
"As I regard the whole of these proceedings as unmitigated despotism, I
beg respectfully to decline to withdraw."
That was his maiden speech. Having delivered it, "Mr. Redmond," says
Hansard, "was by desire of Mr. Speaker removed by the Sergeant-at-Arms
from the House." It was a strange beginning for one of the greatest
parliamentarians of our epoch--and one of the greatest conservatives.
The whole bent of his mind was towards moderation in all things.
Temperamentally, he hated all forms of extravagant eccentricity; he
loved the old if only because it was old; he had the keenest sense not
only of decorum but of the essential dignity which is the best guardian
of order. Yet here he was committed to a policy which aimed deliberately
at outraging all the established decencies--at disregarding
ostentatiously all the usages by which an assembly of gentlemen had
regulated their proceedings.
What is more, it was an assembly which Redmond found temperamentally
congenial to him--an assembly which, apart from its relation to Ireland,
he thoroughly admired and liked. In 1896, when Irish members were
fiercely in opposition to the Government, he concluded his description
of Parliament with these words:
"In the main, the House of Commons is, I believe, dominated by a
rough-and-ready sense of manliness and fair-play. Of course, I am
not speaking of it as a governing body. In that character it has
been towards Ireland always ignorant and nearly always unfair. I am
treating it simply as an assembly of men, and I say of it, it is a
body where sooner or later every man finds his proper level, where
mediocrity and insincerity will never permanently succeed, and
where ability and honesty of purpose will never permanently fail."
That was no mean tribute, coming from one who held himself aloof from
all the personal advantages belonging to the society whose rules he did
not recognize. The opinion to which the Irish members of Parnell's
following were amenable was not made at Westminster; it did not exist
there--except, and that in its most rigid form, amongst themselves.
It is worth while to recall for English readers--and perhaps not for
them only--what membership of Parnell's party involved. In the first
place, there was a self-denying ordinance by which the man elected to it
bound himself to accept no post of any kind under Government. All the
chances which election to Parliament opens to most men--and especially
to men of the legal profession--were at once set aside. Absolute
discipline and unity of action, except in matters specially left open to
individual judgment, were enforced on all. These were the essentials.
But in the period of acute war between the Irish and all other parties
which was opening when Redmond entered there was a self-imposed rule
that as the English public and English members disapproved and disliked
the Irishmen an answering attitude should be adopted: that even private
hospitality should be avoided and that the belligerents should behave as
if they were quite literally in an enemy's country.
Later, when Mr. Gladstone had adopted the Irish cause and alliance with
the Liberal party had begun, the rigour of this attitude was modified.
Many Irish members joined the Liberal clubs and went freely to houses
where they were sure of sympathy. Yet neither of the Redmonds followed
far in this direction, and the habit of social isolation which they
formed in their early days lasted with them to the end. If John Redmond
ever went to any house in London which was not an Irish home it was by
the rarest exception.
For society, Parnell's party depended on themselves and their countrymen
and sympathizers. But they were in no way to be pitied; they were the
best of company for one another. It was a movement of the young, it had
all the strength and audacity of youth, it was a great adventure. A few
men from an older generation came with them, Mr. Biggar, Justin McCarthy
and others. But their leader, though older than most of his followers,
was a young man by parliamentary standards. In 1880 Parnell was only
thirty-three; and within four years more he was as great a power in the
House as Mr. Gladstone. Some few years back I heard Willie Redmond say
in the Members' smoking-room, "Isn't it strange to think that Parnell
would be sixty now if he had lived. I can't imagine him as an old man."
Yet the accent of maturity was on Parnell's leadership; the men whom he
led were essentially young. In 1881, when Redmond entered Parliament,
Mr. Dillon was thirty, Mr. T.P. O'Connor and Mr. Sexton veterans of
thirty-three, Mr. Healy twenty-six. Mr. William O'Brien (who did not
come in until 1883) was of the same year as Mr. Dillon. Redmond was
younger than any of them, being elected at the age of twenty-four. Yet
nobody then thought it surprising that he should be sent in 1882 to
represent the party on a mission to Australia and the United States at a
most difficult time. The Phoenix Park murders had created widespread
indiscriminating anger against all Irish Nationalists throughout the
Empire, and Redmond found it difficult to secure even a hall to speak
in. For support there was sent to him his brother, then a youth of
twenty-one, and feeling ran so strong against the two that the Prime
Minister of New South Wales (Sir Henry Parkes) proposed their expulsion
from the colony. Nevertheless, Redmond made good. "The Irish working-men
stood by me," he said, "and in fact saved the situation." Fifteen
thousand pounds were collected before they left the island continent.
It indicates well the changed conditions to remember that when in 1906
Mr. Hazleton and the late T.M. Kettle were selected to go on a far less
arduous and difficult mission to America, there was much talk about the
astonishing youth of our representatives. Yet both were then older than
John Redmond was in 1882--to say nothing of his brother, who must have
been the most exuberantly youthful spokesman that a serious cause ever
found.
The Redmonds' stay in Australia, which lasted over a year, determined
one important matter for both young men; they found their wives in the
colony whose Prime Minister proposed to expel them. John Redmond married
Miss Joanna Dalton and his brother her near kinswoman, Miss Eleanor
Dalton. Willie Redmond was elected to Parliament in his absence for his
father's old seat--Mr. Healy having vacated Wexford to fight and win a
sensational election in county Monaghan.
This early visit to the great transmarine dominions, and the ties which
he formed there, left a marked impression on John Redmond's mind, which
was reinforced by other visits in later years, and by all the growing
associations that linked him to life and politics in the dominions.
Redmond knew vastly more, and in truth cared vastly more, about the
British Empire than most Imperialists. His affection was not based on
any inherited prejudice, nor inspired by a mere geographical idea. He
was attracted to that which he had seen and handled, in whose making he
had watched so many of his fellow-countrymen fruitfully and honourably
busy. He felt acutely that the Empire belonged to Irish Nationalists at
least as much as to English Tories. America also was familiar to him,
and he had every cause to be grateful to the United States; but his
interest in the dominions was of a different kind. He felt himself a
partner in their glories, and by this feeling he was linked in sympathy
to a great many elements in British life that were otherwise uncongenial
to him--and was, on the other hand, divided in sympathy from some who in
Irish politics were his staunch supporters. He could never understand
the psychology of the Little Englander. "If I were an Englishman," he
once said to me, "I should be the greatest Imperialist living." From
first to last his attitude was that which is indicated by a passage of
his speech on Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill:
"As a Nationalist, I may say I do not regard as entirely palatable
the idea that for ever and a day Ireland's voice should be excluded
from the councils of an Empire which the genius and valour of her
sons have done so much to build up and of which she is to remain a
part."[1]
II
To follow in detail Redmond's career under Parnell's leadership would be
beyond the scope of this book. Less conspicuous in Parliament than such
lieutenants of "the Chief" as Mr. Sexton, Mr. Dillon and Mr. Healy, John
Redmond acted as one of the party whips and was in much demand outside
Parliament as a platform speaker. In August 1886 he was once more sent
overseas to attend the Convention of the Irish Race at Chicago. He had
to tell his hearers of victory and of repulse.
"When you last assembled in Convention, two years ago, the Irish
party in Parliament did not number more than forty; to-day we hold
five-sixths of the Irish seats, and speak in the name of
five-sixths of the Irish people in Ireland. Two years ago we had
arrayed against us all English political parties and every English
statesman; to-day we have on our side one of the great English
political parties, which, though its past traditions in Ireland
have been evil, still represents the party of progress in England,
and the greatest statesman of the day, who has staked his all upon
winning for Ireland her national rights. Two years ago England had
in truth, in Mitchel's phrase, the ear of the world. To-day, at
last, that ear, so long poisoned with calumnies of our people, is
now open to the voice of Ireland. Two years ago the public opinion
of the world--aye, and even of this free land of America--was
doubtful as to the justice of our movement; to-day the opinion of
the civilized world, and of America in particular, is clearly and
distinctly on our side."
On the other hand, in England the forces of reaction had succeeded. The
Home Rule Bill had been defeated and the Liberal party broken up. A
Government was in power whose programme was one of coercion. But
Ireland, Redmond said, was ready for the fight and confident that with
the weapons at command the enemy could be defeated.
Who were the enemy, and what the weapon? His speech made this plain.
"Once more Irish landlords have behaved themselves with
unaccountable folly and stupidity. They have once more stood
between Ireland and her freedom, and have refused even an
extravagant price for the land because the offer was coupled with
the concession of an Irish Parliament. So be it. I believe the last
offer has been made to Irish landlordism. The ultimate settlement
of this question must now be reserved for the Parliament of
Ireland, and meantime the people must take care to protect
themselves and their children. In many parts of Ireland, I assert,
rent is to-day an impossibility, and in every part of Ireland the
rents demanded are exorbitant, and will not, and cannot, be paid."
He was wrong. The settlement of this vast question was to be
accomplished through the Imperial Parliament, not the Irish. Yet it was
accomplished in essence by an agreement between Irishmen for which
Redmond himself was largely responsible.
That settlement, however, merely ratified in 1903 the final stage in the
conversion of both countries to Parnell's policy of State-aided land
purchase. Tentative beginnings were made with it under the Government
which was in power from 1886 to 1892; but the main characteristic of
this period was a fierce revival of the land war. It was virulent in
Wexford, and in 1888 Redmond shared the experience which few Irish
members escaped or desired to escape; he was sentenced to imprisonment
on a charge of intimidation for a speech condemning some evictions. He
and his brother met in Wexford jail, and both used to describe with glee
their mutual salutation: "Good heavens, what a ruffian you look!"
Cropped hair and convict clothes were part of Mr. Balfour's resolute
government.
Yet in those days Ireland was winning, and winning fast. Mr. Gladstone's
personal ascendancy, never stronger than in the wonderful effort of his
old age, asserted itself more and more. Public sympathy in Great Britain
was turning against the wholesale evictions, the knocking down of
peasants' houses by police and military with battering-rams. The Tory
party sought for a new political weapon, and one day _The Times_ came
out with the facsimile of what purported to be a letter in Parnell's
hand. This document implied at least condonation of the Phoenix Park
murders.
Other letters equally incriminating were published. Parnell denied the
authorship, his denial was not accepted; fierce controversy ended in the
establishment of one of the strangest Commissions of Enquiry ever set
up--a semi-judicial tribunal of judges. Its proceedings created the
acutest public interest, drawn out over long months, up to the day when
Sir Charles Russell had before him in the witness-box the original
vendor of the letters--one Pigott. Pigott's collapse, confession of
forgery, flight and suicide, followed with appalling swiftness: and the
result was to generate through England a very strong sympathy for the
man against whom, and against whose followers, such desperate calumnies
had been uttered and exploited. Parnell's prestige was no longer
confined to his own countrymen: and the sense of all Home Rulers was
that they fought a winning battle, under two allied leaders of
extraordinary personal gifts.
Then, as soon as it was clear that the attack of the Pigott letters had
recoiled on those who launched it, came the indication of a fresh
menace. Proceedings for divorce were taken with Parnell as the
co-respondent: the case was undefended. Mr. Gladstone and probably most
Englishmen expected that Parnell would retire, at all events
temporarily, from public life, as, in Lord Morley's words, "any English
politician of his rank" would have been obliged to do. Parnell refused
to retire; and Gladstone made it publicly known that if Parnell
continued to lead the Irish party, his own leadership of the Liberal
party, "based, as it had been, mainly on the prosecution of the Irish
cause," would be rendered "almost a nullity." The choice--for it was a
choice--was left to the Irish. To retain Parnell as leader in
Gladstone's judgment made Gladstone's task impossible, and therefore
indicated Gladstone's withdrawal from public life. To part with Parnell
meant parting with the ablest leader that Nationalist Ireland had ever
found.
A more heartrending alternative has never been imposed on any body of
politicians, and John Redmond, unlike his younger brother, was not of
those to whom decision came by an instinctive act of allegiance. His
nature forced him to see both sides, but when he decided it was with his
whole nature. The issue was debated by the Irish party in Committee Room
15 of the House of Commons, with the Press in attendance. In this
encounter Redmond for the first time stepped to the front. He had
hitherto been outside the first flight of Irish parliamentarians. Now,
he was the first to state the case for maintaining Parnell's leadership,
and throughout the discussions he led on that side. When Parnell's death
came a few months after the "split" declared itself, there was no
hesitation as to which of the Parnellites should assume the leadership
of their party. Redmond resigned his seat in North Wexford and contested
Cork city, where Parnell had long been member. He was badly beaten, and
for some three months the new leader of the Parnellites was without a
seat in the House--though not during a session. Another death made a new
opening, and in December 1891 his fight at Waterford against no less a
man than Michael Davitt turned for a moment the electoral tide which was
setting heavily against the smaller group. It was a notable win, and the
hero of that triumph retained his hold on the loyalty of those with whom
he won it when the rest of Ireland had turned away from him. The tie
lasted to his death--and after it, for Waterford then chose as its
representative the dead leader's son, and renewed that choice in the
general election of 1918, when other allegiances to the old party were
like leaves on the wind.
Other ties were formed in these years, which lasted through Redmond's
life. I have deliberately abstained from entering into either the merits
or the details of the "split." But certain of its aspects must be
recognized. In the division into Parnellites and Anti-Parnellites,
Parnellites were a small but fierce minority. It needed resolution for a
man to be a Parnellite, all the more because the whole force of the
Catholic Church was thrown against them, and in some instances
disgraceful methods were used. One of Redmond's best friends was the
owner of a local newspaper; it was declared to be a mortal sin to buy,
sell, or read his journal. The business was reduced to the verge of ruin
but the man went on, till a new bishop came and gradually things mended.
He, like Redmond, was a staunch practising Catholic, and later on was
the friend and trusted associate of many priests; but he stood for an
element in Ireland which refused to allow the least usurpation by
ecclesiastical authority in the sphere of citizenship.
Willie Redmond won East Clare, as his brother won Waterford city, after
a turbulent election with the priests against him. He gave in that
contest, as always, at least as good as he got; but his collision with
individuals never affected his devotion or his brother's to their
Church.
But in social life the estrangements of these days were far-reaching,
and, at least negatively, so far as Redmond was concerned, they were
lasting. His existence had been saddened and altered shortly before the
break up by the death of his first wife, which left him a young widower
with three children. After the "split" the whole circle of friends among
whom he had lived in Dublin and in London was shattered and divided; and
in later life none, I think, of those broken intimacies was renewed.
In Redmond's nature there was a total lack of rancour. Clear-sighted as
he was, he realized how desperately difficult a choice was imposed on
Nationalists by Parnell's situation, and he knew how honestly men had
differed. He could command completely his intellectual judgment of their
action, and there were many whom in later stages of the movement he
trusted none the less for their divergence from him at this crisis. But
he was more than commonly a creature of instinct; and the associations
of his intimate life were all decided in these years. His affection was
given to those who were comrades in this pass of danger. The only two
exceptions to be made are, first and chiefly, Mr. Devlin, who was too
young to be actively concerned with politics at the time of Parnell's
overthrow; and, to speak truth, it is not possible to be so closely
associated as Redmond was with this lieutenant of his, or to be so long
and loyally served by him, and not to undergo his personal attraction.
The other exception is Mr. J.J. Mooney, who entered Parliament and
politics later than the "split," but whose personal allegiance to Mr.
Redmond was always declared. He acted for long as Redmond's secretary
and always as his counsellor--for in all the detail of parliamentary
business, especially on the side of private bill legislation, the House
had few more capable members. He was perhaps more completely than Mr.
Devlin one of the little group of intimates with whom Redmond loved to
surround himself in the country. All the rest were old champions of the
fight over Parnell's body; but by far the closest friend of all was his
brother Willie. Their marriages to kinswomen had redoubled the tie of
blood.
It should be noted here that Redmond married for the second time in
1899, after ten years of widowerhood. His wife was, by his wish and her
own, never at all in the public eye. All that should be said here is
that his friends found friendship with him easier and not more difficult
than before this marriage, and were grateful for the devoted care which
was bestowed upon their leader. She accompanied him on all his political
journeyings, whatever their duration, and gave him in the fullest
measure the companionship which he desired.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: This speech is included in "Home Rule: Speeches of John
Redmond, M.P.," a volume edited in 1910 by Mr. Barry O'Brien. It
contains also the American addresses quoted in this chapter, and a
speech to the Dublin Convention in 1907, quoted in the next.]