The Phoenix Park Murder (1882)

Chapter XII

The Phoenix Park Murders (1882)

On Saturday, 6th May, 1882, the incoming Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish, arrived in Dublin. That evening as he and the Under-Secretary, T. H. Burke, were walking through the Phoenix Park to their Lodges they were stabbed to death.

The tidings so impressed everybody that it was a common saying that no one forgot where he stood when he heard the news. That morning Parnell and Dillon had gone to Portland Prison to welcome Davitt to liberty. The trio travelled back together to London, and not until Sunday were they aware of the assassinations.

John Barry and I lodged together, and we read of them in a Sunday paper. Leaving breakfast untasted, we hurried to Biggar’s rooms in Ladbroke Grove Road. Joe was at Mass and we awaited his return. Then we went with him to Arthur O’Connor’s. At the suggestion of O’Connor all four of us hastened to Westminster Palace Hotel, where Davitt was staying. We found him there with Parnell and Dillon, in despair. Davitt was sketching out a manifesto condemning the crime, and in silence we waited until it was revised by Parnell. The Chief’s corrections took shape merely in striking out purple patches. Without training, Parnell had a severe and just literary taste. I remarked to Dillon on the instinct this showed, and he agreed.

After the document was signed Barry persuaded Davitt to come to our lodgings lest reprisals might be attempted. The Londoners, however, with their solid good sense and traditional instinct, remained calm. Nowhere did any disturbance occur, except in Cornwall, where slight disorder took place at Camborne. Yet Camborne in 1885 sent to Parliament Conybeare, who was arrested and imprisoned in 1888 for the Irish Cause in Co. Donegal.

Davitt heard for the first time at our lodgings of the purchase of Richard Pigott’s newspapers - the Irishman and the Flag of Ireland by the Land League. He showed great displeasure at this, as, like every honest man, he hated Pigott.

Mrs. A. M. Sullivan had given me a top-coat for Davitt, which he wore the year before in Dublin, and it held in the lining, sewn as a keepsake, a lock of woman’s hair. The strain of the Park murders was so great that when I handed it to him he threw aside the coil.

Next morning, accustomed to early hours in prison, he was out by 6 a.m. to buy newspapers to read the details of the tragedy. He told us when he returned that under the railway arch at Notting Hill Gate he was hailed by a costermonger with, “Hallo, old pal with the one duke! How are you?” (“duke” is prison slang for arm.) A “lag” who had spent years in penal servitude had recognized a fellow-convict.

On Monday (8th May, 1882) we went to the House of Commons and put Davitt “under the clock.” The House was full. Members all wore black, and many had crape round their bats. Gladstone moved the adjournment till Thursday at 9 p.m. to enable them to attend the funeral of Lord Frederick Cavendish in Derbyshire. Parnell rose to express his sorrow, and something like a groan arose from a small section, but the vast body of the House angrily suppressed it and listened to him with respect. The sunlight suddenly shot in and made the scene less sad.

Scarcely a quarter of an hour was occupied by the sitting. At the suggestion of A. M. Sullivan, we went to his residence in Clapham for consultation. As we walked to Victoria Station, a solitary yell greeted us; but beyond that no hostile manifestation occurred.

Parnell, Biggar, Dillon, Davitt, Barry, O’Kelly and I conferred at Sullivan’s. We knew that a Coercion Bill would be proposed when the Commons resumed on Thursday, and that in the temper provoked by the murders it would pass easily.

Special trains ran for Lord Frederick’s funeral, which brought members of both Houses to the grave and back on the Thursday. Under such conditions mourners returning to Westminster could scarcely constitute a dispassionate assembly.

Yet Parnell was amazed at the rigour of the Bill unfolded by Sir William Harcourt, Home Secretary. It abolished trial by jury and substituted three judges to try prisoners. It enabled venues to be changed from Ireland to England, established secret inquisitions, and proposed many other severities.

Baron FitzGerald, the chief ornament of the Irish Bench, resigned in protest. Harcourt then inserted alternative clauses creating “special juries,” and giving the Crown the right to demand changes of venue. Baron FitzGerald, however, refused to withdraw his resignation. He had been the finest lawyer at the Irish Bar before being made judge, although for 10 years after his “call” he never got a brief.

No gleam of good sense penetrated the Cabinet, wrathful at the murders. This spirit impliedly freed Parnell from his obligations under the Kilmainham Treaty. Yet his sense of political honour restrained him from accepting that view. Influenced by F. D. Gray, the Freeman owner, he complained of the vehemence of my attack on the Bill on its first reading.

Tricks of Police Agents in reference to the crime are disclosed in a letter to my brother:

London,

12th May, 1882.

“I am astonished at your writing that you received a telegram from me about the Park Murders. I sent you no telegram, and am afraid the police have attempted some dodge - as if we could have had anything to do with the awful business. Have you preserved the telegram? Do you remember where it was addressed from? I cannot imagine who here could have your new Cork address.

This murder has ruined us practically as politicians, and I have, like many others, been thinking of giving up Parliament. However, we will struggle on a while longer, I suppose.”

Naturally the Tories took advantage of the embarrassment of the Government. On 15th May, 1882, searching questions were put, insisting on farther information as to the “Kilmainham Treaty.” The Tories were determined to get to the bottom of the secret of Parnell’s release. Dislike of the transaction had grown, too, amongst ourselves, as details trickled out piecemeal.

In a debate on the matter Parnell purported to read a letter of his from Kilmainham dated 28th April, 1882 - two days after the debate on Redmond’s Bill - which O’Shea had submitted to the Government. Near by sat Forster, the dismissed Chief Secretary, his furrowed brow and gleaming eyes portending trouble. As Parnell ended Forster, towering to his feet, shrieked, “That’s not the letter! “Hansard omits this, but records a challenge to O’Shea to “read the whole letter,” which Forster then handed him.

The House of Commons has known many dramatic moments, but in my 38 years there I never felt such emotion as at that interruption. Parnell paled. Gladstone’s face mantled with pious resignation. Chamberlain sat erect like a soldier who knew that the password had not been rightly rendered and that the guardroom yawned for a culprit.

Parnell stammered that it was possible a paragraph had been omitted. He was sorry if the copy supplied him by O’Shea was inaccurate, and so forth. Then Forster uprose like a minister of doom and, with a powerful gesture, announced that he would hand O’Shea the true version to read to the House, because a vital passage had been omitted. That omission was all important. It contained an undertaking by Parnell, if his terms were granted, that he and his Party would “co-operate cordially for the future with the Liberal Party in forwarding Liberal principles.”

No word-painting can bring to life the sensations of that hour. We felt that the Chief had lowered the flag, and had tried to deceive alike his countrymen and the British. His attempt to suppress what Gladstone styled the “hors d’ceuvre” filled us with disgust.

That day the Arrears Bill was introduced, and O’Shea after midnight thrust himself again on the House. Rising from the Liberal front bench below the gangway, he sought to give his account of the Treaty - a pitiful performance. I sat beside Parnell, who muttered to me as he began, “This d--- fellow will make a mess of it as usual!”

That such a man should have been chosen as intermediary with the Cabinet by Parnell can only be explained on the hypothesis that his employment veneered or facilitated the dishonour of his wife.

The House did not rise until 2 a.m. that night, and I walked with Parnell as far as Charing Cross. He spoke of resigning, but I knew this to be a “feeler.” Said he, “Perhaps the younger men would prefer someone else? ” and asked would Sir Charles Gavan Duffy be acceptable. I replied that the Party would not choose Duffy, who had no seat in the House. “Well,” he clanked, “if the young men won’t have him there is nothing, I suppose, but for me to remain.”

He was then on his way, late as it was, to the Covent Garden Hotel to explain himself to an American correspondent named Balch. So we parted.

In after years he used jestingly to say, when discussing the possibility of his successor, “I wonder what damn fellow will come along next!”

The opening lines of the letter publicly read that day seemed designed to saddle O’Shea with knowledge of Parnell’s position in his household, for it began, “I am sorry that you had left Albert Mansions before I reached London from Elham.” As a document likely to become public, it fixed O’Shea with connivance. Besides, it was hardly the way in which the lately-paroled prisoner would begin the letter. The 28th April was a Friday, and the letter would not be delivered in London before Saturday. Parnell was set finally free the next Tuesday, and it seems unlikely that a crisis involving the Lord-Lieutenant (Cowper), who was in Dublin, and the Chief Secretary as to his release could burst out on the Monday without warning, amongst the staid and punctilious statesmen of Victorian days.

To me, therefore, it was plain that the so-called Kilmainham Treaty was arranged during Parnell’s visit to Mrs. O’Shea at her Eltham residence. Hence his objection to the “damn clause” in my brother’s draft Land Bill, as he hoped the Cabinet would be able to accept all that he proposed and so justify to the world his release.

I did not ask Parnell whether it was he or O’Shea who mutilated the letter which formed the corner-stone of the Treaty. Both hoped it would pass muster, and believed Forster had kept no copy. It was a “gamble” in which each would blame the other if it failed.

Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, of whom Parnell spoke to me, was the Australian ex-Minister who had played a large part in the 1848 movement, and had founded the Dublin Nation. Henniker Heaton, M.P., used to tell stories of his adroitness. One was that Duffy at an election in Australia was told by his committee that an important supporter had turned against him. Sir Charles in dismay asked the reason. “It’s because,” they said, “he has not been made a magistrate.” “But he is a publican, and how can a publican be made a magistrate? It’s against the law.” “That’s it,” was the answer; “but he expected you to manage it.” “Oh, that would need statute,” the candidate protested, “and no such Act could pass the Legislature.” “Ah, well,” they sighed, “logic and legislature don’t count in an election. Your supporters want favours.” “I see,” Sir Charles replied. “I shall give thought to the business.”

That morning he had received forms from his Department which required to be signed in the presence of a magistrate, so straightway Duffy went with them to the owner of the public-house. He was received icily, for the voter blurted out,” I’m agin you, Sir Charles.” “That doesn’t matter,” he answered in a voice of velvet. “I called on you only in your magisterial capacity to witness my signature.” “But I’m not a magistrate,” said the astonished publican. “Dear me,” moaned Duffy, “has that been neglected? We are often badly served by our staffs. Good day, sir.” Heaton said this master-stroke won over the publican and decided the campaign, for Duffy was triumphantly re-elected.

On the second reading debate on the Crimes Bill (1st July, 1882) 16 Irish members, including myself, were “suspended.” The Chairman, Sir Lyon Playfair, at 9 a.m., after an all-night sitting, “named” us, though many, like Parnell, were in their beds, and I was at breakfast in the House.

By a worse blunder Playfair voted in the division to support his ruling! This was a painful incident, and on the 3rd July Sir Drummond Wolff produced a letter from him confessing, “I have not the least recollection of having voted, though I see my name marked in the Division Lists.” Playfair was a kindly man, and the subsequent debate against him was not encouraged by us. Knowing that the strain of being up all night is too much for any Chairman, and that unfairness could not generally be alleged against him, most Irishmen abstained from criticism. For this Playfair thanked me on the day his “impeachment” was attempted.

A mistake nearly as singular was made by ex-Chief Secretary Forster on the morning of our suspension. That statesman had sat up till daybreak to enjoy the pleasure of voting against Ireland, and imposing on her a Coercion Bill worse than his own. When driven from office he took occasion whenever possible to gird at his late colleagues in the Cabinet. After the division to suspend us, Forster felt the heaviness of “the morning after the night before.” Anyhow, he strode from the “Aye “lobby and, instead of going to his seat on the Liberal side, made for the corresponding place on the Opposition bench below the gangway, which was occupied by John Redmond. There he hustled Redmond out of his place with a surly jostle. Liberals looked on in surprise, and Irishmen, crowding in from the division, set up an ironical cheer. Forster then looked round in a puzzled way, and after an attempt to smile, hunched himself together and made gradually across the floor to his own corner on the Liberal benches.

Journalists in the gallery tenderly suppressed the incident.

The Irish Party, after the suspension of so many of its members, withdrew from the debate, and this soon led to a defeat of the Government by its own supporters. Gladstone, because of our arguments, wished to drop the “night-search” clause of the Crimes Bill, but the Hon. G.E. Russell and Mr. Beilby Lambton (afterwards Lord Durham), both Liberals, opposed this. Seeing the imminence of defeat, Gladstone sent Hugh Shields, Q.C., with an urgent message to Sexton and myself, as we watched the proceedings from the Members’ Gallery, to come to his rescue.

Chewing the cud of revenge, we treated with disdain the appeal from a Government which had unjustly suspended us. The Prime Minister had announced that he would, if defeated, “reconsider his position.” Yet Russell and Lambton acted as” tellers” against him, and the Government was beaten.

Gladstone evidently could not comprehend our abstention, for 11 years later, when again in power, while upholding Home Rule, he questioned me about it at a dinner he gave.

“You knew,” he catechized, “we were omitting a clause to which your Party had taken just exception because, under it, domestic sanctity might be violated any night? ” “Yes,” I replied. “Then, why didn’t you support me in getting it struck out, instead of allowing it to remain on the Statute Book?

Well,” I confessed, “because you said, if defeated, you would reconsider your position.” “Yes,” he shot out,” and so I did, but having reconsidered it, I decided to retain office. What of your abstention? ” I asked, “How could we know your intentions? Had you resigned, the Crimes Bill and the Government were both gone.

He seemed mystified. Oblivious of the fact that we wished to bring about the loss of the Bill and a General Election in which the Irish Party would be strengthened, he rained further questions on me. I could not make him see our point of view, without being over-blunt. Probably he had in mind that the Arrears Bill might perish too with his resignation, and that this was a basic part of the Kilmainham Treaty.

I wrote my brother:

4th July, 1882.

“I sent you the Lords’ amendments to the Arrears Bill, and wish you would think of any alternative proposal consequent upon them. They have made the “hanging gale” sharper, and it occurs to me to propose to alter “November, 1881” into ” November, 1882,” as the date from which the tenant should pay or compound for a year’s rent. what do you say?”

Parnell refused to take a division against the third reading of the Crimes Bill. His Party were, therefore, forced to allow it to pass as an unopposed measure. The Speaker on the 7th July, 1882, ruled that he could call upon the “Noes” under the new Standing Order to “rise in their places.” Only five were found, thanks to Parnell’s surrender, to challenge its passage. Several men were hanged unjustly under the procedure it enacted.

Dr. Playfair, who suspended us, was a doctrinaire chemist of the old school. In 1890, when Goschen increased the whisky tax, he was made chairman of a Select Committee to consider the question whether” whisky” distilled in a pot-still from malt and grain should be entitled exclusively to that name, as distinguished from ” patent spirits” made under Coffey’s process from materials less orthodox. I had contended that the pot-still product should alone be known as “whisky,” and that the produce of patent stills should be called “spirits” and that some years should elapse before sale, to give them maturity. Playfair conceived that from whatever ingredients alcohol came, its qualities were alike, and must be discerned or governed by scientific formulae. My chief witness, Mr. Bell (the chemist of the Customs, or Excise, I forget which), was challenged by him, and asked whether sawdust, treated with sulphuric acid, would not produce alcohol. “Yes,” he owned.

“Then as whisky is alcohol, and the chemical formulae is the same, what difference can exist in the effect on the health of the consumer as between one brand or another?

The witness paused and answered, “I have a more delicate apparatus than any which a chemist can employ.” Playfair thundered, “What is it, sir? ” Bell murmured, “My head the morning after, and my stomach, too.”

Still, the Committee’s report did not support me. Years later another Select Committee balked at the same fence. The Government, in both inquiries: refused to disclose the ingredients from which whisky is made, although their gaugers are furnished by each distillery with the contents of the mash-tub. Trade secrets were held to be more sacred than public health.

When the tax on whisky was increased fourfold, the Immature Spirits Act, 1915, was passed (during the war) forbidding the sale of whisky aged less thin three years. (In the Irish Free State the prescribed age was made five years.) Yet the House of Commons laughed, in 1875, at W. H. O’Sullivan for trying to pass a “Spirits in Bond” Bill to prevent ” torchlight processions going down men’s throats” (an American jest). Years of agitation and a war were needed to convince the permanent officials who control the British Parliament that raw whisky should not be allowed to injure humanity. When O’Sullivan died, Father Jim Delany, P.P., said to me, “Let’s hope he has not joined the Spirits in Bond!” On the order paper on which a question of mine asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer when the Select Committee on Bonding and Blending Whisky would be appointed, Frank Lockwood pencilled “at once” and handed me the scrawl underneath:

Bradlaugh’s expulsion from the House, in 1882, was the saddest sight I witnessed at Westminster. We disliked the man for his truculent writings in the Free Thinker, and, as I was the only member who witnessed his humiliation, I set down that I could not avoid a feeling of pity for him at the handling he received from the police, much as he provoked it.

The House had made an order excluding him from its benches because of his persistent attempts to take the oath, despite his atheistical avowals.

He was a burly man, six feet high, and strong as a bull. He announced that he would attend the Commons on a Wednesday at noon to demand admission. Few members were about and strangers were excluded. I was the only person save the police who saw what occurred. Inspector Denning stood on guard at the closed door of the chamber. Bradlaugh huried him aside. Instantly half a dozen policemen sprang forward and, in spite of Bradlaugh’s struggles, forced him to the members’ exit door.

He fought furiously, but the constables relentlessly hurled him from one flight to another. He had no friends to uphold him, and he soon presented a shocking spectacle. His tie and collar were torn off; his shirt-front lay open; sweat poured from his forehead. I thought his agony dreadful, and felt that the police would not have handled any Irishman so ungently as that lone, friendless Englishman. With the frame of a giant and the courage of a lion, he resisted. Eight or ten policemen beset him, and it took all their strength to bring him to the bottom of the steps. Each stair he fought step by step as gamely as a prize-fighter, but the constables never slackened until they bore him outside to Palace Yard. There, crumpled and weary, the Titan shook himself free. No word was spoken on either side, and Bradlaugh, utterly beaten, hailed a hansom and disappeared. Misliking the atheist, I pitied the man. Pressmen begged me to describe the scene, but I refused, as the police were invariably friendly to Irish members. That friendship “knew no wane” till we departed from Westminster.

Bradlaugh’s persistence in resisting the law led to its being changed, and soon a “declaration” instead of an oath sufficed for those who preferred to “affirm” instead of swearing allegiance.

John Bright’s argument in one of the debates on Bradlaugh’s case impressed me. He said, “This is no court to judge a colleague. The judges are continually passing in and out through those swinging doors. Hall of them vote not knowing or hearing the arguments.” This was also true of debates of Irish import.

Though most of the Irish Party voted against Bradlaugh, he never wavered in his support of Home Rule after he took his seat. In a speech he declared that he had witnessed, while serving as a dragoon in Tipperary, eviction scenes which led him to see that all was not right in Irish conditions.

Biggar could hardly be got to oppose him because be had attended Bradlaugh’s lectures before becoming a Catholic. “I sat under him, misther,” be used to explain.

Bradlaugh’s days were those of the deification of “science” and the Higher Criticism of the Bible. Huxley and Darwin were regarded by many as more infallible than the Evangelists. Hackel published a bogus plate showing man’s anatomy with the rudimentary tail. Renan based his rejection of Scripture on the fact that the Bible said rabbits chew the cud. (They do.) Tyndall shook the British Association at Belfast by a crib from Hans Breitmann. “When you and I like streaks of morning cloud shall melt into the infinite azure of the past.” Carlyle croaked his plaudits of force as the supreme truth, and the world was assured that the seizure of Rome in 1870 marked the end of “Papal superstition.”

The “monkey brand” theory got a rest for a generation until 1927. Then Bolshevism, spiritism, theosophy and “birth control “jostled one another in crazy competition. A bishop in a moment of Brummagem infallibility dispensed Westminster boys from a belief in scripture sacred alike to Jew and Christian.

Bradlaugh’s last illness was tempered by the generosity of a Tory, Sir Walter Bartelott, who moved the cancellation of his suspensions and expulsion. The House unanimously agreed to speed him in his dying moments this comfort. Sir Walter made a touching prayer for pity. This I recalled later when equally moving accents were employed by another Tory, Colonel Acland Hood (afterwards Lord St. Audries), at the outset of the Boer War in 1900. Hood, who was no orator, appealed to still the clash of controversy “when brave men are dying on both sides.” This captured the Commons. Outpourings of that kind by unemotional men are always moving.

A dramatic scene in the session of 1882 arose out of the Egyptian expedition.

After the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, Sir Drummond Wolf made pathetic appeals to the House of Commons for the reprieve of Sulieman Salmi, an Egyptian insurgent. My memory is that as the clock approached midnight Wolff said, “It is now two o’clock in Egypt. Sulieman Salmi is to be shot at dawn. There remain four hours for the Prime Minister to telegraph to Cairo and save him.” The “Fourth Party” joined in this appeal, but Gladstone refused a reprieve. An hour was consumed in by-play and Wolff again got up. Taking out his watch he began, “It is now 3 a.m. in Egypt. There’s still time to telegraph for mercy.” Gladstone assigned reasons why the death sentence could not be cancelled, and at two o’clock Sir Drummond rose once more. Drawing forth his watch again, he recited a like formula. At 3 and 4 a.m. the same liturgy was chanted. When the hour came when Sulieman Salmi must have faced the firing squad, Wolff said, “It is now four o’clock in England, and your victim has met his fate. What a tragedy, and how little will the Prime Minister enjoy his sleep to-night!”

Thrusting his watch into his fob he left the House, and the Fourth Party with him ran down the steps to the cloak-room chuckling cheerily, for the Old Man had been upset.

When the Crimes Act and the Arrears Act became law, Davitt urged Parnell in August, 1882, to found a new organization to succeed the suppressed Land League. Parnell resisted, and Davitt made a couple of visits to Avondale before he yielded.

Parnell had asked me to take command of the Mansion House Committee for the restoration of the evicted tenants under the Arrears Act. After some weeks I told him I was going to get married and would be away some time. “How long? “he inquired anxiously. “A fortnight,” was my reply. “Oh, that isn’t long,” he said laughing.

In August, 1882, I married Erina, daughter of T. D. Sullivan, who died in July, 1927. When I returned from the honeymoon in September, Parnell asked me to draw up a constitution for a new body to be called the “Irish National League.”

On the same day Biggar appeared at the Mansion House with a parcel in his hand. “Spoons, Tim Healy, spoons! My father always thought a wedding-present should be something useful.” Poor Joe! These are my most valued possession.

On the 18th September, 1882, I issued invitations for a Conference of representative men, mostly ex-suspects (as Forster’s late prisoners were called), to assemble on the 17th October.

In October Parnell fell ill, and on the Sunday before the Convention he lay in bed at Morrison’s Hotel, Dublin. I went there to submit to him the draft constitution of the new League. Finding him listless, I inquired what ailed him. He made little of his trouble, but replied, “Oh, something always happens to me in October.” (On the 13th October, 1881, he was arrested, and ten years later he died, 6th October, 1891.)

I set to work beside his bedside at a table lit by four candles. Hours passed, and in my engrossment I did not notice that one of the candles had burnt out. Parnell suddenly sat up in bed, and leaning over my table, fiercely blew out a candle. Amazed at this, I asked, “Why lessen my light?” With gleaming eyes, he muttered, “Don’t you know that nothing is more unlucky than three candles burning?” Sarcastically, he added, “Your constitution of the new League would not have much success if I allowed you to work with three candles.” He then turned his face to the wall.

The sincerity of his tone, the motion to quench the candle, the seer-like face, and the foreboding about October gruesomely impressed me. Yet I marvelled that anyone could believe that the Almighty would allow His decrees in the government of human affairs to be affected by a candle more or less.

Justin MacCarthy once told me that a Liberal M.P. said to him, “There’s only one sensible man amongst you, and he is mad.”

In the evening Dwyer Gray, M.P., owner of the Freeman, called to urge Parnell to answer attacks by Lady Florence Dixie as to the Land League funds. Parnell listened languidly in bed to his excited appeals to reveal the details of expenditure, and when Gray left, he commented, “In vino veritas.”

Gray had been cudgelled into a grudging acceptance of the Land League policy. United Ireland, a weekly under the editorship of William O’Brien, blazed fiercely against the Freeman. Published from the musty den which had sheltered Richard Pigott, it out-swayed all opposition. O’Brien was not yet a member of the Irish Party. Genius, courage, and self-sacrifice animated him. Later on, when he and I differed, I still bent in acknowledgement of his finer parts. From 1882 to 1890 O’Brien maintained the war on the Crimes Act single-handed. Dillon resigned his seat in Parliament in 1882, and withdrew to Colorado, although he had signed the “call” for a Convention.

Parnell’s desire for agrarian peace at that juncture is evidenced by the fact that, to qualify tenants of the O’Connor Don and other landlords to avail themselves of the “Arrears Act,” he sanctioned payments to them of rent from the League fund. This was one of the “profound secrets ” of that epoch, for, had it been revealed, Davitt would have smashed the kaleidoscope!

A letter to my brother states:

Dublin,

13th November, 1882.

“We have been making great exertions about an amendment to the Arrears Act.

I agree that there is no chance of the Government passing such a Fill this year. Still, you might draw up suggestions, and we will have it brought in next session. If I were to have made a note of all the points that came before us, it would take a Bill as long as the Land Act! The question is complicated by that of costs, and Parnell’s idea is to get the Government to allow the costs, and he has some notion that they will do this next year.

He is alive to the necessities of the situation, but I don’t think anything can b. decided before 30th November.”

Few members of the Government, Irish or English, save lawyers, knew anything of the Arrears Act.

In November, 1882, Parliament met to pass the Closure. It was made permanent, though Liberals as well as Tories disliked it.

Passmore Edwards, proprietor of the London Echo, M.P. for Salisbury, joined me in a talk with Sam Storey, M.P. for Sunderland, the day before the division. “I hate the closure,” said Edwards, “and won’t vote for it.” “Then vote against it,” said Storey, “as I shall do.” “Ah!” Edwards sighed. “You represent a popular constituency, Sunderland, but I sit for a small borough at the mercy of a handful of voters.” “Still,” returned Storey, “have courage and vote with me.”

Next night, so strong was party pressure, that both gentlemen voted with the Government.

In that debate Sexton made a thrilling speech. He attacked John Bright for consenting to restrictions on discussion, and spoke of a “brain once bright and glowing, but now grey and cold.” I never heard him as an orator to more advantage. Yet he turned Bright’s sympathies against Ireland. Bright had suffered a temporary loss of mental power which was unknown to Sexton, and had been obliged to enter a home. He was said to be salmon fishing on the Dee, and soon recovered. His opposition to Home Rule in i886 was ascribed to the taunt of 1883, although T. P. O’Connor in 1926 took some blame on himself. Irish members then knew little of the personal or domestic gossip relating to their opponents.

Chief Secretary Trevelyan remarked to me that politicians resent slights like a prima donna, and are equally jealous.

The then Chief Secretary was a kindly man. He blenched under his burthen in 1882-4, and his moustache, at first black, grew white. He uttered no bitter word, and was amused at the sallies against him.

Spencer was Lord-Lieutenant and he enforced Coercion with high courage and low insight. The impression created abroad against Ireland is shown by a letter in a Bengal newspaper, quoted in the London Press in 1882:-

“The ill-fame of Ireland appears to have reached the natives of India. A lady in this station engaged a woman as ayah, and the agreement, regularly ‘signed, sealed and delivered,’ is to the effect that the woman is to go with her mistress all over the world if necessary (including Egypt), but Ireland is especially barred in the agreement, and at the ayah’s request.”

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