MR. PARNELL AND THE IRISH PARTY
"_I loved those hapless ones--the Irish Poor--
All my life long.
Little did I for them in outward deed,
And yet be unto them of praise the meed
For the stiff fight I urged 'gainst lust and greed:
I learnt it there._"
--SIR WILLIAM BUTLER.
"The introduction of the Arms Bill has interfered with Mr. Parnell's
further stay in France, and it is probable he will be in his place in
the House of Commons by the time this is printed."
This paragraph appeared in the Nation early in 1880. On the 8th
March of that year, the Disraeli Parliament dissolved, and on the
29th April Mr. Gladstone formed his Ministry.
In the Disraeli Parliament Mr. Parnell was the actual, though Mr.
Shaw had been the nominal, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party
since the death of Mr. Isaac Butt in 1879. Shaw continued the Butt
tradition of moderation and conciliation which had made the Irish
Party an unconsidered fraction in British politics. Parnell
represented the new attitude of uncompromising hostility to all
British parties and of unceasing opposition to all their measures
until the grievances of Ireland were redressed. He carried the
majority of his Party with him, and in Ireland he was already the
people's hero.
Born in June, 1846, Parnell was still a young man. {51} He came of a
fine race; he was a member of the same family as the famous poet,
Thomas Parnell, as Lord Congleton, Radical reformer and statesman,
and, above all, Sir John Parnell, who sat and worked with Grattan in
Ireland's Great Parliament and shared with him the bitter fight
against the Union. On his mother's side he was the grandson of the
famous Commodore Charles Stewart, of the American Navy, whose bravery
and success in the War of Independence are well known. It was
natural that a man of such ancestry should become a champion of the
rights of his native land.
Yet though in 1879 he was the virtual chief of the Irish Party, eight
years before he was an Irish country gentleman, living quietly on his
estates at Avondale in County Wicklow.
It is a mistake to say that his mother "planted his hatred of England
in him," as she so seldom saw him as a boy. He was sent to school in
England at six years old, and he used to tell me how his father--who
died when he (Charles S. Parnell) was twelve years old--would send
for him to come to Ireland to see him. His mother, Mrs. Delia
Parnell, lived chiefly in America, going over to Avondale that her
children might be born in Ireland, and returning as soon as possible
to America. After her husband's death she only visited the place
occasionally, and altogether saw very little of her son Charles. He
often told me how well he remembered being sent for in his father's
last illness to go to him at Dublin, and the last journey with his
dying father back to Avondale. His father had made him his heir and
a ward of Court.
In reality Parnell's hatred of England arose when he began to study
the records of England's misgovernment {52} in Ireland, and of the
barbarities that were inflicted upon her peasantry in the name of
England's authority.
For years before he left the seclusion of Avondale this hatred had
been growing. He followed the Fenian movement with the liveliest
interest, and he often accompanied his sister Fanny when she took her
verses to the offices of the _Irish World_. The sufferings of the
Fenian prisoners, so courageously borne, stirred his blood and
awakened his imagination. It can be imagined with what inward anger
the young man heard of the detective raid on his mother's house in
Temple Street, Dublin--when they found and impounded the sword he was
privileged to wear as an officer of the Wicklow Militia.
But it was the Manchester affair of 1867 and the execution of Allen,
Larkin and O'Brien which crystallized his hatred of England. From
that moment he was only biding his time. Yet he was slow to move,
and loath to speak his mind, and, until he went to America in 1871,
he was better known for his cricketing and his autumn shooting than
for his politics. When he returned to Avondale with his brother John
in 1872 the Ballot Act had just been passed, and it was the
consciousness of the possibilities of the secret vote as a weapon
against England that finally persuaded him to be a politician.
But, though he joined the newly formed Home Rule League, it was not
until 1874 that he stood for Parliament in Dublin County. He came
out at the bottom of the poll. The election cost him £2,000; the
£300 which he had received from the Home Rule League he handed back
to them. In April, 1875, he stood for Meath and was placed at the
top of the poll.
When he entered Parliament the Irish Party, as I have said, was of
little account. The case for Ireland was {53} argued by Isaac Butt
with fine reasonableness and forensic skill, but it produced
absolutely no effect. The English parties smiled and patted the
Irish indulgently on the head. In Ireland all the more resolute and
enthusiastic spirits had an utter contempt for their Parliamentary
representatives; from the machine nothing was to be hoped. It was
the mission of Parnell to change all that, to unite all the warring
elements of the Nationalist movements into one force to be hurled
against England.
But still he waited and watched--learning the rules of the House,
studying the strength and weaknesses of the machine he was to use and
to attack. He found it more instructive to watch Biggar than Butt,
for Biggar was employing those methods of obstruction which Parnell
afterwards used with such perfect skill. From June, 1876, he took a
hand in affairs. Side by side with Biggar, he began his relentless
obstruction of Parliamentary business until the demands of Ireland
should be considered. Already in 1877 he was fighting Butt for the
direction of the Irish Party. On September 1st of that year Parnell
became President of the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain in
place of Butt, and the victory was really won. Thenceforward Parnell
was the true leader of the Irish movement inside Parliament and out
of it. He attracted the support of Fenians by his uncompromising
tactics and his fearless utterances, and when the New Departure was
proclaimed by Michael Davitt (just out of prison) and John Devoy, and
the Land League was formed in 1879, Parnell was elected president.
The objects of the League were "best to be attained by defending
those who may be threatened with eviction for refusing to pay unjust
rents; and by obtaining such reforms in the laws relating to land as
will enable every {54} tenant to become the owner of his holding by
paying a fair rent for a limited number of years." The League was
meant by its founders, Davitt and Devoy, to work for the abolition of
landlordism in Ireland, which, in turn, should pave the way for
separation. Though Parnell was himself working for Home Rule, the
League became a tremendous driving power behind his constitutional
demands. For some months Disraeli's Government did nothing, while
the agitation spread like wildfire. Then in November three of the
leaders were arrested, on December 5th a fourth--and in a few days
released! Ireland laughed, and the League grew. On December 21st
Parnell and Dillon sailed for New York to appeal for funds to save
the tenant farmers and to tighten the bond between the new movement
and the revolutionary societies of America. His triumphal progress
through the States and Canada, his reception by the Governors of
States, members of Congress, judges and other representative men, and
finally his appearance before Congress to develop his views on the
Irish situation, are well known. It was on this journey--at
Toronto--that he was first hailed as the "Uncrowned King."
The unexpected news of the dissolution summoned him home. In going
out Disraeli tried to make Home Rule the issue of the election, but
Lord Hartington--who was then leading the Liberal Party--and Mr.
Gladstone refused to take up the challenge. All the English parties
were united in hostility to Home Rule.
But the violent manifesto of Disraeli threw the Irish voting strength
in England into the Liberal scale. The Liberals swept the country.
Curiously enough, even in Ireland the issue of the election was not
Home Rule. There it was the land, and {55} nothing but the land.
For the harvest of 1879 had been the worst since the great famine;
evictions were in full swing, and the Land League had begun its work.
The demand was for a measure securing the "three F's": Fixity of
tenure, fair rents determined by a legal tribunal, and free sale of
the tenant's interest. But in many constituencies the demand was for
the extinction of landlordism.
Parnell carried the election on his back. He was fighting not only
the Liberals and the Tories, but the moderate Home Rule followers of
Mr. Shaw. His energy seemed inexhaustible; from one end of Ireland
to the other he organized the campaign, and addressed meetings. The
result was a triumph for his policy and for the Land League. Of the
61 Home Rulers elected, 39 were Parnellites.
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