(1846-1891)
Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish politician, was born at Avondale, in
County Wicklow, June 28, 1846. His father belonged to an old Cheshire
family, which purchased an estate in Ireland under Charles II., and from
which had sprung Thomas Parnell, the poet, and Sir Henry Brooke Parnell,
created Baron Congleton in 1841. His great-grandfather was that Sir John
Parnell who was long Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, and an active
supporter of Grattan in his struggle against the Union; his grandfather,
William Parnell, sat for County Wicklow, and published in 1819 a foolish
political novel, anything but Irish in sentiment; his mother, Delia
Tudor Stewart, was daughter of Admiral Charles Stewart, of the United
States Navy. He was educated at Yeovil and elsewhere in England under
private masters, and was for some time a member of Magdalene College,
Cambridge, but took no degree. In 1874 he became High Sheriff of County
Wicklow; next year he contested County Dublin without success, but in
April, 1875, was returned as an avowed Home Ruler for County Meath.
He attached himself to Joseph Biggar, the member for Cavan, who was the
first to discover the value of deliberate obstruction in parliamentary
tactics, and during 1877 and 1878 he gained great popularity in Ireland
by his audacity in the use of the new engine. There were many scenes of
violence and excitement, and the new horror of all-night sittings became
familiar to the House of Commons. Throughout the struggle Parnell showed
equal audacity and coolness, and acquired a masterly knowledge of
parliamentary forms. Mr. Butt, the Irish leader, disapproved of this
development of the _active_ or obstructive policy, but his influence
quickly gave way before Parnell's, and in May, 1879, he died. The year
before, Parnell had been elected president of the English Home Rule
Association. He now threw himself with energy into agrarian agitation,
gave it its watchword: "Keep a firm grip of your homesteads," at
Westport in June, and in October was elected president of the Irish
National Land League, which had been founded by Michael Davitt.
Mr. Parnell next visited the United States to raise funds for the cause,
was allowed, like Lafayette and Kossuth, to address Congress itself, and
carried home L70,000. At the general election of 1880 he was returned
for the counties of Meath and Mayo and for the city of Cork, and chose
to sit for the last. He was now formally elected chairman of the Irish
parliamentary party by twenty-three votes over eighteen for Mr. Shaw.
Meantime the agrarian agitation grew, and in a speech at Ennis,
September 19, 1880, he formulated the method of boycotting as an engine
for punishing an unpopular individual. Mr. Gladstone's government now
came to the conclusion that the objects of the Land League were contrary
to the law, and in December put Parnell and several other members of the
executive on trial, but the jury finally failed to agree. Next session
the government brought in a Coercion Bill, which Mr. Parnell opposed
vigorously. In the course of the struggle he was ejected from the House,
after a stormy scene, together with thirty-four of his followers,
February 3, 1881. Mr. Gladstone next carried his famous Land Bill, but
this Parnell refused to accept as a final settlement until the result of
certain test cases before the new Land Court was seen. On October 13th,
Mr. Gladstone sent him to Kilmainham Jail, and there he lay till
released on May 2, 1882, after some private negotiations with the
government conducted through the medium of Captain O'Shea. Mr. Forster
resigned the Irish secretaryship in consequence of the release, and next
followed the terrible tragedy of Phoenix Park, of which Parnell, in his
place in the House of Commons, expressed his detestation.
[Illustration: Parnell testifying against the "Times."]
The Crimes Act was now hurried through Parliament in spite of the
strenuous opposition of the Irish party. Already the Land League had
been proclaimed as an illegal association after the issue of the "No
Rent" manifesto, but early in 1884 the Nationalists succeeded in
reviving it under the name of the National League, and Mr. Parnell was
elected its president. The year before the sum of L35,000, mostly raised
in America, had been presented to him by his admirers. After an
unsuccessful attempt to make terms with the Conservatives, in the course
of which he had a famous interview with Lord Carnarvon, the viceroy,
Parnell flung his vote--now eighty-six strong since the lowering of the
franchise--into the Liberal scale and so brought about the fall of the
short-lived first Salisbury government. Mr. Parnell nominated the
greater number of Nationalist candidates for the Irish constituencies,
and the firm hand with which he controlled his party was seen in the
promptitude with which he crushed a revolt of Healy and Biggar against
his nomination of Captain O'Shea for Galway.
Mr. Gladstone's views on the question of Home Rule had by this time
undergone a complete change, and accordingly he introduced a Home Rule
Bill which was defeated owing to the defection of a large number of
Liberal members headed by Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain. The
consequent appeal to the country (July, 1886) gave Lord Salisbury a
Unionist majority of over a hundred votes, and threw Parnell into a
close alliance with Mr. Gladstone and the portion of the Liberal party
that adhered to him. It was at this period that the _Times_ newspaper
published its series of articles entitled "Parnellism and Crime"--a
tremendous indictment against the chief Nationalist leaders, the most
startling point in which was a series of letters published in
fac-simile, one, signed by Parnell, expressing approval of Mr. Burke's
murder. After an elaborate trial (extending to one hundred and
twenty-eight days), the most sensational event in which was the
breakdown under cross-examination, and the flight and suicide at Madrid,
of Pigott, the wretched Irishman who had imposed upon the _Times_ with
forgeries, Mr. Parnell was formally cleared of the charge of having been
personally guilty of organizing outrages, but his party were declared to
have been guilty of incitements to intimidation, out of which had grown
crimes which they had failed to denounce. Parnell now began an action
against the _Times_, which was quickly compromised by a payment of
L5,000.
The "uncrowned king" of Ireland had now reached the summit of his
power--the height of the wave was marked by the presentation of the
freedom of Edinburgh, July 30, 1889, and the banquet given him on his
forty-fourth birthday. But his fall in public esteem was quickly to
follow. A few months later his frequent mysterious absences from his
parliamentary duties were explained by his appearance, or rather his
non-appearance, as co-respondent in a divorce case brought by Captain
O'Shea against his wife. After formal evidence was given by the
petitioner, the usual decree was granted with costs against Parnell
(November 17, 1890).
The Gladstonian party in England now demanded his retirement from the
leadership of the cause, and Mr. Gladstone informed the Irish members
that they must make their choice between Parnell and himself. They met
and reappointed him their chairman, expecting, as the majority explained
later, that after this recognition of his past services he would
voluntarily retire, at least for a time. But they had not calculated
upon the characteristic obstinacy of his nature, and quickly found that
their leader had no mind to efface himself. After some days of
profitless and heated wrangling, the majority ended the discussion by
leaving the room and electing Justin McCarthy as their chairman.
Parnell, with the shattered remnants of his party, now carried the
warfare into Ireland, where his condemnation by the Irish bishops and
the emphatic defeat of his nominees for North Kilkenny and North Sligo
showed that a large number of his fellow-countrymen shared the judgment
of his conduct pronounced by Mr. Gladstone and the party in England. The
career of the man who had forced the issue of Irish Home Rule upon the
English people, and made it the great question of the day, was drawing
rapidly to its close. He died October 6, 1891.