AN APPRECIATION OF PARNELL
With the death of Parnell a cloud of despair seemed to settle upon the
land. Chaos had come again; indeed, it had come before, ever since the
war of faction was set on foot and men devoted themselves to the
satisfaction of savage passions rather than constructive endeavour for
national ideals. We could have no greater tribute to Parnell's power
than this--that when he disappeared the Party he had created was rent
into at least three warring sections, intent for the most part on
their own miserable rivalries, wasting their energies on small
intrigues and wretched personalities and by their futilities bringing
shame and disaster upon the Irish Cause. There followed what Mr
William O'Brien describes in his _Evening Memories_ as "eight
years of unredeemed blackness and horror, upon which no Irishman of
any of the three contending factions can look back without shame and
few English Liberals without remorse."
And thus Ireland parted with "the greatest of her Captains" and reaped
a full crop of failures as her reward. Too late there were flashing
testimonials to his greatness. Too late it became a commonplace
observation in Ireland, when the impotence of the sordid sections was
apparent: "How different it would all be if Parnell were alive." Too
late did we have tributes to Parnell's capacity from friend and foe
which magnified his gifts of leadership beyond reach of the envious.
Even the man who was more than any other responsible for his fall said
of Parnell (Mr Barry O'Brien's _Life of Parnell_):
"Parnell was the most remarkable man I ever met. I do not say the
ablest man; I say the most remarkable and the most interesting. He was
an intellectual phenomenon. He was unlike anyone I had ever met. He
did things and said things unlike other men. His ascendancy over his
Party was extraordinary. There has never been anything like it in my
experience in the House of Commons. He succeeded in surrounding
himself with very clever men, with men exactly suited for his purpose.
They have changed since--I don't know why. Everything seems to have
changed. But in his time he had a most efficient party, an
extraordinary party. I do not say extraordinary as an opposition but
extraordinary as a Government. The absolute obedience, the strict
discipline, the military discipline in which he held them was unlike
anything I have ever seen. They were always there, they were always
ready, they were always united, they never shirked the combat and
Parnell was supreme all the time."
"Parnell was supreme all the time." This is the complete answer to
those--and some of them are alive still--who said in the days of "the
Split" that it was his Party which made him and not he who made the
Party. In this connection I might quote also the following brief
extract from a letter written by Mr William O'Brien to Archbishop
Croke during the Boulogne negotiations:
"We have a dozen excellent front bench men in our Party but there is
no other Parnell. They all mean well but it is not the same thing. The
stuff talked of Parnell's being a sham leader, sucking the brains of
his chief men, is the most pitiful rubbish."
Time proved, only too tragically, the correctness of Mr O'Brien's
judgment. When the guiding and governing hand of Parnell was withdrawn
the Party went to pieces. In the words of Gladstone: "they had changed
since then"--and I may add that at no subsequent period did they gain
the same cohesion, purpose or power as a Party.
It may be well when dealing with Parnell's position in Irish history
to quote the considered opinion of an independent writer of neutral
nationality. M. Paul Dubois, a well-known French author, in his
masterly work, _Contemporary Ireland_, thus gives his estimate of
Parnell:
"Parnell shares with O'Connell the glory of being the greatest of
Irish leaders. Like O'Connell he was a landlord and his family
traditions were those of an aristocrat. Like him, too, he was
overbearing, even despotic in temperament. But in all else Parnell was
the very opposite of the 'Liberator.' The Protestant leader of a
Catholic people, he won popularity in Ireland without being at all
times either understood or personally liked. In outward appearance he
had nothing of the Irishman, nothing of the Celt about him. He was
cold, distant and unexpansive in manner and had more followers than
friends. His speech was not that of a great orator. Yet he was
singularly powerful and penetrating, with here and there brilliant
flashes that showed profound wisdom. A man of few words, of strength
rather than breadth of mind--his political ideals were often uncertain
and confused--he was better fitted to be a combatant than a
constructive politician. Beyond all else he was a Parliamentary
fighter of extraordinary ability, perfectly self-controlled, cold and
bitter, powerful at hitting back. It was precisely these English
qualities that enabled him to attain such remarkable success in his
struggle with the English. Pride was perhaps a stronger motive with
him than patriotism or faith."
We have here the opinions of those who knew Parnell in Parliament--the
one as his opponent, the other as, perhaps, his most intimate
friend--and of an independent outsider who had no part or lot in Irish
controversies. It may be perhaps not amiss if I conclude this
appreciation of Parnell with the views of an Irishman of the latest
school of Irish thought. Mr R. Mitchell Henry, in his work, _The
Evolution of Sinn Fein_, writes:
"The pathetic and humiliating performance (of the Butt 'Home Rulers')
was ended by the appearance of Charles Stewart Parnell, who infused
into the forms of Parliamentary action the sacred fury of battle. He
determined that Ireland, refused the right of managing her own
destinies, should at least hamper the English in the government of
their own house; he struck at the dignity of Parliament and wounded
the susceptibilities of Englishmen by his assault upon the institution
of which they are most justly proud. His policy of Parliamentary
obstruction went hand in hand with an advanced land agitation at home.
The remnant of the Fenian Party rallied to his cause and suspended for
the time, in his interests and in furtherance of his policy, their
revolutionary activities. For Parnell appealed to them by his honest
declaration of his intentions; he made it plain both to Ireland and to
the Irish in America that his policy was no mere attempt at a
readjustment of details in Anglo-Irish relations but the first step on
the road to national independence. He was strong enough both to
announce his ultimate intentions and to define with precision the
limit which must be placed upon the immediate measures to be taken....
He is remembered, not as the leader who helped to force a Liberal
Government to produce two Home Rule Bills but as the leader who said
'No man can set bounds to the march of a nation....' To him the
British Empire was an abstraction in which Ireland had no spiritual
concern; it formed part of the order of the material world in which
Ireland found a place; it had, like the climatic conditions of Europe,
or the Gulf Stream, a real and preponderating influence on the
destinies of Ireland. But the Irish claim was, to him, the claim of a
nation to its inherent rights, not the claim of a portion of an empire
to its share in the benefits which the Constitution of that empire
bestowed upon its more favoured parts."
Judged by the most varied standards and opinions the greatness of
Parnell as the leader of a nation is universally conceded. The
question may be asked: But what did Parnell actually accomplish to
entitle him to this distinction? I will attempt briefly to summarise
his achievements. He found a nation of serfs, and if he did not
actually make a nation of freemen of them he set them on the high road
to freedom, he gave them a measure of their power when united and
disciplined, and he taught them how to resist and combat the
arrogance, the greed and the inbred cruelty of landlordism. He struck
at England through its most vulnerable point--through its Irish
garrison, with its cohorts of unscrupulous mercenaries and hangers-on.
He struck at it in the very citadel of its own vaunted liberties--in
the Parliament whose prestige was its proudest possession and which he
made it his aim to shatter, to ridicule and to destroy. He converted
an Irish Party of complaisant time-servers, Whigs and office-seekers
into a Party of irreproachable incorruptibility, unbreakable unity,
iron discipline and a magnificently disinterested patriotism. He
formulated the demand for Irish nationhood with clearness and
precision. He knew how to bargain with the wiliest and subtlest
statesman of his age, and great and powerful as Gladstone was he met
in Parnell a man equally conscious of his own strength and equally
tenacious of his principles. In fact, on every encounter the ultimate
advantage rested with Parnell. He won on the Land Question, he won on
the labourer's demands, he won on the Home Rule issue and he showed
what a potent weapon the balance of power could be in the hands of a
capable and determined Irish leader.
Not alone did he create an impregnable Irish Party; he established a
united Irish race throughout the world. His sway was acknowledged with
the same implicit confidence among the exiled Irish in America and
Australia as it was by the home-folk in Ireland. He was the great
cementing influence of an Irish solidarity such as was never before
attempted or realised. He did a great deal to arrest the outflow of
the nation's best blood by emigration, and, if he had no strong or
striking policy on matters educational and industrial, he gave manhood
to the people, he developed character in them, he gave them security
in their lands and homes, and, if the unhappy cataclysm of his later
days had not be-fallen, he would unquestionably have given them a
measure of self-government from which they could march onward to the
fullest emancipation that the status of nationhood demands.
There was never stagnation, nor stupidity, nor blundering in the
handling of Irish affairs whilst his hand was on the helm. It was only
later that the creeping paralysis of inefficiency and incompetence
exhibited itself and that a people deprived of his genius for
direction and control sank into unimagined depths of apathy,
indifference and gloom.
He thwarted and defeated what appeared to be the settled policy of
England--namely, to palter and toy with Irish problems, to postpone
their settlement, to engage in savage repressions and ruthless
oppressions until, the race being decimated by emigration or, what
remained, being destroyed in their ancient faiths by a ruthless method
of Anglicisation, the Irish Question would settle itself by a process
of gradual attenuation unto final disappearance.
It was Parnell who practically put an end to evictions in
Ireland--those "sentences of death" under which, from 1849 to 1882,
there were no less than 363,000 peasant families turned out of their
homes and driven out of their country. It was his policy which
invested the tenants with solid legal rights and gave them
unquestioned guarantees against landlord lawlessness. He and his
lieutenants had their bouts with Dublin Castle, and they proved what a
very vulnerable institution it was when courageously assailed.
Taken all in all, he brought a new life into Ireland. He left it for
ever under manifold obligations to him, and whilst grass grows and
water runs and the Celtic race endures, Ireland will revere the name
of Parnell and rank him amongst the noblest of her leaders.