Second Home Rule Bill (1892-5)

Chapter XXX

Second Home Rule Bill (1892-5)

On 12th August, 1892, the Tory Government was ousted on a vote of “No Confidence” moved by Asquith, then a young M.P. Gladstone became Prime Minister. The strength of the Parnellites had been reduced to nine, and my bet with Dillon that they would not get eight seats he won.

The Liberal majority was precarious, and during the formation of the new Government, in order to avoid the intrigues inseparable from the creation of an Executive dependent on Irish votes, I went to Norway with my brother.

We returned iin September, when a note from Morley, the new Chief Secretary, reached me: *

Confidential.*

Chief Secretary’s Lodge,

Phoenix Park,

13th September, 1892.

My Dear Healy, -

“I learn with some consternation from a common English friend who met you at dinner on Saturday [Byles], that you think of treating this place and its tenant as if we were a scheduled area under a pleuro-pneumonia Act. Pray don’t make up your mind to do this. I won’t begin to argue the matter because such a resolution as this must come from points of view that argument does not reach.

To be quite frank. I have sometimes thought that you don’t like me, and I’m heartily sorry for it, as my own feeling to you is the exact opposite, though I have not always liked everything you have done.

Anyhow, personal considerations ought not to count in such a business as that which both you and I have before us. So I do really hope that you will not refuse me the advantage of consultation with you, and pretty frequent, too. Unless I have opportunity of exchanging views freely with you and the other leaders, how can I carry on? Cato and Brutus were all very well, but that is a long while ago.

I hope and believe you won’t misunderstand my motive in writing to you. Whatever happens I shall stick to the helm (until I’m swept into the sea) - but it will be rather a shame if my messmates stand by with hands in pocket.”

Yours sincerely,

John Morley.

I replied:

My Dear Morley, -

“I am very sorry if I ever caused you to suppose that I felt towards you anything except a high regard. There is nothing personal towards the present holder of your office affecting the view I take as to the attitude best befitting us in regard to the Chief Secretary. If there were I could recall (perhaps more than any Irish member relations of personal kindliness with yourself. “I was sick and you visited me.”

Moreover, more than others I can sympathize with you in the persecution by Joe Cowen (though, he too, was ill-requited locally), and to no one did your recent triumph give keener pleasure, personally and politically, than to me.

So far, then, as non-political elements may enter into judgment, they are all upon your side. But it is precisely because of this, and because personal relations of a friendly kind tend to blunt or destroy the power or the will to criticize, that I conceive for the present it is our duty to hold aloof.

If in my own case I were to assume that there would be no relaxation of fibre, I believe our interviews would end either in your being angry with me or my being angry with you. Imprimis Dublin (being Pamellite) is the citadel of difficulty at present and Lord Aberdeen is not even offered the Viceroyalty, while the first thing the new incumbent does after being sworn in is to advertise the public of the Doncaster entertainments to the Duke of Devonshire and Lord Londonderry. I never spoke to Lord Aberdeen in my life but I know he could win Dublin workpeople. Yet to fill a purely ceremonial office the Government send over a gentleman [Lord Houghton, now Lord Crewe] who can do nothing but attract Tories and courtly people - all of whom detest the Liberal administration and whose attendance at his levees counts as much for Home Rule as the grouse they shot on the 12th August.

Starting with what I regard as a cardinal error of policy, I argue from it a great deal. If there was not sufficient “touch “to appoint the right Viceroy, what can he expected in administrative details? You are surrounded with difficulties legal and personal. Your official advisors consist of the amiable Orangemen who coached Mr. Balfour and did his work with love. Your law officers would shudder at any “revolutionary” suggestion. You are one in a Cabinet of 17, all of whom are charged with zeal for their own special interests and bound to push them forward, regarding the Irish “banshee” as a spectre to be exorcised from Downing Street. I, therefore, consider it my duty to scan with a watchful eye every move (or stagnation) of the Executive, ready, though far from eager, to comment publicly upon its errors.

I do not conceive that the suggestion of prior advice or consultation is a possible one. What previous council would show that Father Humphreys was to have been imprisoned yesterday, or that towards the purification of the magistracy Lord Westmeath was about being gazetted D.L. for Galway? These are incidents flowing from the poisoned sources within your power to dry up, or neutralize, and the only advice I could give is that unless executive action is applied, scandal will be constant.

It is very bold of me to make these remarks, and to a man harassed, groping, and, I know, passionately anxious to do what is right, they must seem ungracious and unsympathetic. You have besides the reply you made in 1886 when I remarked on the fact that the sole appointment of your regime was given to a Unionist (FitzGerald), that you were engaged on the task of trying to enable us to manage our own affairs, which should silence all minor criticism. I, however, regard these things as weapons or vantage ground for use in the struggle, while I am satisfied your advisers want to be “respectable,” to do nothing to “shock” what they are pleased to call “public opinion,” and to keep to the old cankered routine.

I hope I have said nothing to impose a reply upon you, and, in closing, may I wish you heartily good luck?”

Truly yours,

T. M. Healy.

Chief Secretary’s Lodge,

Phoenix Park,

Sunday, 18th September, 1892.

My Dear Healy, -

“I am very glad to have your letter: some of it I have read with very lively pleasure, and some of it with perplexity.

I’d give a good deal to have all your brilliant gifts actively and undisguisedly on my side, and I believe that I shall have them when any real pinch comes. Anyhow, there is nothing for me but to go ahead as intrepidly as I can. I am chained to the oar, whatever other folk may do, be, or say.

I fancy I can find a pretty convenient means of gathering your views from time to time, though it will be a poor substitute for personal meetings, where face answereth to face.

We’ve no more to do with making Lord Westmeath D.L. for Galway than you have. The Lieutenant of the County sends up the name to the Lord-Lieutenant and there is no instance of its being refused by the Lord-Lieutenant since 1863, and on that occasion a name was only refused because the man was already D.L. for the next county,

As for the Viceroyalty, I knew quite well what I was doing, and I’ll tell you the whole case whenever you like; only, it cannot properly be written. I should do just the same if it were to occur again.

The whole interest of you all lies in making me as strong as ever you can. If I sink, a good many other things sink with me. ‘Tis true, I’m only “one in 17,” as you say, but there are cases where one man holds 16 in the hollow of his hand. You’re too acute a Parliamenteer and Cabineteer not to know that.

Well, goodbye, and thank you for friendly words,

Yours as you use me,

J.M.

I may justify my reply by stating that colleagues of mine were then spreading the story that I had all enginery perfected to inaugurate (or revive) the corrupt regime of Sadleir and Keogh, having got control of the Freeman!

Until the Split of December, 1890, my relations with the Freeman were friendly. This appears from a letter to my father on Christmas Eve, 1888:

“Young Gray was at my house last night, and asked me to write regularly for the Freeman to try to redeem its character, for if they don’t do something it will cease to have any influence. I promised to see him on Thursday, but don’t like putting my neck into the dog-collar again.

This is all my Christmas intelligence, unless you didn’t hear that I “dined lately with Gladstone and Lord Spencer” and that Trevelyan “invited me to his place in the country”! Should not liars draw the line somewhere!”

The Freeman, just before the Dissolution of 1892, atoned for its “blood-money” falsehoods, and asked me, as appears from my letters of January and March, 1892, to refer the question of damages to ex-Lord Chancellor Walker. I consented, and he awarded me £700 with costs.

The late E. H. Ennis, who wrote the libels, having got a job from the incoming Liberal Government, wrote me:

Private.

20th September, 1892.

Dear Mr. Healy, -

“Will you do me the favour of granting me a private interview, whenever you like, for the purpose of offering you the humblest apology in my power for the injury I tried to do you?

I have sent in my resignation to the Freeman, and I was waiting until I had taken that step before writing you this note. I am thus in a position to approach you with greater freedom from any charge of merely self-interest.

I can only rely upon the friendship of better days long past for your favourable consideration of this note.”

Yours very faithfully,

E. H. Ennis.

He was made Registrar of the Court of Appeal by Lord Chancellor Walker, and afterwards became Assistant Under-Secretary for Ireland under Morley. I replied to his appeal that there was no need to meet him, as I forgave him and bore him no ill-will. Yet I recalled that in 1887, when The Times levelled at Parnell the Pigott forgeries, its editor believed them to be true, and they did not endanger his life.

The Freeman concoctions were published by a staff which knew them to be false, The editor, Byrne, avowed publicly in 1893 that he was opposed to their being printed, but was overborne.

Byrne died almost shoeless and shirtless, but Ennis died a notable servant of the Crown. He claimed to have prevented Lord Ashbourne, who left office as Lord Chancellor in 1892, from taking from the Four Courts a chair which had been occupied by Lord Norbury when he sentenced Robert Emmet to death in 1803.

The question of criticism by the Irish Press of the new Government became acute in 1892 between leading members of the Party. I wrote my brother:

Dublin,

2nd October, 1892.

“There is a deadlock between us and the Executive as to magistrates. Asquith, when in Dublin, frightened Morley and Walker [Lord Chancellor].

It seems that in the history of England only one man was appointed a J.P. over the head of the County Lieutenant, and that was the solicitor to Lord Cairns. Morley has written Walker that it would outrage English opinion if a number of magisterial appointments were made, and we have appointed a Committee of protest to meet him when he returns.”

Dillon saw Morley constantly, and through him views filtered to us as to what was the orthodox line for Irish members to take towards the Government.

I wrote Maurice:

Dublin,

10th October, 1892.

“Until yesterday I refused to see Morley, but Asquith having called on me here when I was not in, I wrote asking him to dine, whereupon Morley sent a line asking might he call - to which I was obliged to say yes. Still, I desire to hold aloof as much as possible from people connected with the Government, as one never could tell into what such an intimacy might lead.

I have had rows with Dillon in the Freeman office over the line the paper should take about the Liberal administration. I think we should be “civil and strange “if they are to be kept up to the scratch. God knows, it’s hard enough to get them to do anything. I did expect to see the Gweedore prisoners released by now, but there is a want of courage among Morley’s advisers.

As to the so-called “dynamiters,” except Egan, none of them has any chance of release, and if we lose the election to-day the “quakers” will get the upper hand. They say they cannot dismiss “Removables ” under the Act of Parliament… .

Dublin,

20th October, 1892.

“The subject of our interviews with Morley, and our relations generally with the Executive, is not a simple one. Walker invited me to dinner on Monday to meet Morley, and I am most reluctant to go, but don’t like refusing, on account of what you say.

I cannot get over the feeling that they are the same “Castle” lot as of yore, and that we should have nothing to do with them.

Morley means well, but I fear he may not do well, fettered as he is, and, therefore, I am sure we shall only be listening to his excuses.

I hear the Cabinet are to settle the Home Rule Bill shortly, and after that will not meet until before the assembling of Parliament.”

After the Elections of 1892 the Redmondites lodged election petitions in North and South Meath against Davitt and Fulham, charging intimidation in a Pastoral of the Bishop, Dr. Nulty - a prelate of the old school. His youth was, spent in famine days, and his description in 1871 of evictions he had witnessed became a classic. He was a fearless shepherd of his flock. Yet his Pastoral lost us the petitions. A mob had insulted him, shrieking under his windows “Blind Tom,” and he wrote under exasperation. So ferocious was Parnellite feeling that the petitioners got the parish priest at Summerhill (Father Fay) sent to jail for contempt of court because of comments on the case.

The petitions were heard in November, 1892. Davitt’s return for North Meath was set aside on the ground of “undue influence,” by reason of the Pastoral, as Dr. Nulty was held to be his “agent.” I was junior counsel for Davitt, and felt from the animus shown by witnesses against the clergy that many of their stories were untrue, They savoured of the tales on which (in the reign of Charles II) Archbishop Oliver Plunket was convicted in London. Thus, a labourer alleged that because he was a Parnellite a priest whom he named had refused his wife the last rites of the Church on her death-bed. The impugned ecclesiastic proved that he knew nothing of the labourer’s politics, but that when he came with the Viaticum to his wife a fierce mastiff rushed at him from under her bed. She lay in a cabin of only one room, and the clergyman begged the husband to get the dog away, as he was afraid that, if it attacked him, the Blessed Sacrament might fall from his hand. The man refused, and the priest told him he could not remain unless the brute was put out. The husband, however, declined to remove the dog, and, presumably, the wife died without the Sacrament.

Another witness, covered with sores, the most hideous object of filth and disease I ever saw, swore that a priest “thumped” him because he was a Parnellite. (One would prefer to rub skirts with a leper.) The clergyman, a benign old man, was put in the witness box by us, and the judges instantly accepted his assurance that the story was false.

At last came a witness whom we were unable to discredit, for he knew his tale could not be gainsaid, He swore to something alleged to have been said in the Confessional. The priest, being approached by our solicitor, merely smiled, and we had to let it go at that, knowing that the sigillum was never broken.

A lady of good standing, and in good faith, assured the Court that the sins she confessed on the Saturday were denounced by her priest in his sermon on Sunday.

Four centuries earlier a theologian combated this delusion. Sins are common to all humanity, and have to be reproved, even though elections are pending. Yet penitents, like patients, think their own scruples and ailments specially “peculiar.”

The petitions succeeded, but we carried both seats afterwards,

Dr. Nulty asked me to visit him at Mullingar to receive his thanks for acting without a fee. He told me stories from which interest has not since faded. One was of the Vatican Council, which proclaimed Papal Infallibility in 1870,

The Irish bishops then were a main strength to Pio Nono, and were regarded by Cardinal Antonelli, Secretary of State, as his Pretorian Guard. Dr. Nulty recounted: “We got very tired of Rome in July. It was so hot. The French bishops were obstructing, and we felt our separation from our flocks. To be away so long overburthened our vicars at home. One day Darbois, Archbishop of Paris, got into the Tribune and made an appeal against the definition of Infallibility on the ground of ‘expediency.’

“He asked the Council was it wise to make a pronouncement unpalatable to Napoleon III, who honoured the Church, gave a military salute to every bishop, and showed respect for religion. Why should they throw a brand of discord into France without urgent necessity?

“Many were impressed by this, until a little swarthy Mexican prelate sprang into the Tribune, hardly waiting to be called.

“With flaming eyes and impassioned gesture his tanned face contorted with emotion, and his Spanish blood boiling over, he thundered: ‘I am no Imperial favourite. No Royal carriage awaits my orders. My diocese extends over thousands of square miles, stony, arid, scorpion-stricken and serpent-ridden. Amidst heats and desolation I trudge on foot and in solitude to preach the Gospel of Christ to Christian and heathen. I carry neither scrip nor purse.

“‘No salute of soldiery or greetings of emperors solace my loneliness. Yet I dare to claim that my wayfaring approaches nearer to the traditions of the Apostles than the courses of my Lord Archbishop of Paris.’

“Cheers shook the Council, and then a curt final phrase came: ‘My Lords, I pronounce for Infallibility.’”

Dr. Nulty thought this the turning-point of the contest. Archbishop Darbois (soon to be a martyr at the hands of the Communists) was so moved that he humbly asked leave to return to the Tribune. Leave was granted, and he craved pardon. Six months later Darbois and his priests were shot without trial in Paris.

Dr. Nulty thought that if the French bishops could have foreseen that war with Germany would break out, they would have obstructed more determinedly the promulgation of Infallibility.

He and his brethren grew tired of Roman hotels and foreign fare. They sent a protest to Cardinal Antonelli against delay, and threatened to go home unless the French were held in check. Most of them were old, and some of their dioceses were in disarray. Italian diet and Roman heats distempered their stomachs. Antonelli regarded them as a mainstay, and felt that if they left a powerful buttress would be gone.

Clashes between the Gael and the Italian were delightfully sketched. Antonelli asked, “Can nothing be done to soothe the discomforts of Your Lordships’ exile from your native land?

“Nothing,” they said. The Cardinal’s face fell. Then an Ulster prelate interposed. “Speaking for myself,” he said, “we distaste your wines. We are old, and your climate is terrible in summer. Besides, we lack the vintage of our own country.”

“What is the Irish wine?” inquired Antonelli. The Ulster humorist replied, “The best grower is John Jameson, Dublin.”

“Good,” agreed His Eminence. “My secretary will telegraph.” “As he left,” said Dr. Nulty, “we burst out laughing, and sent the Secretary a message that it was a jest.

Of course,” Dr. Nulty added, ” we had no more notion of leaving Rome, or flouting Pio Nono than the Old Guard had of deserting Napoleon. Some of us were feeble, and Italian wine sat heavy on our hearts, but we would stay till Judgment Day rather than forsake the Pope. We were only funning with Antonelli.”

He said the influence of the Pope (Pius IX) on the assembly was nil. His Holiness presented theses for consideration, but the Council turned several down. With a vast gesture Dr. Nulty said, “We tore them into flitters!” Pio Nono, he insisted, was no factor in the decision. He told me that during the Council the German prelates criticized the Cardinal and Congregation which presided over their country’s affairs in Rome, and blamed them for delay in authorizing the issue of a catechism. The culprits were summoned to explain, and when they appeared were given a “dressing,” by the Germans. “With Italian subtlety,” said Dr. Nulty, “the Cardinal concerned placated them by a dexterous confession of delay and a promise of amendment.” This led him to enlarge on the wisdom of the Italians.

He entertained me also with stories of Irish impatience at the long Masses of the Orientals when their turn came to open the proceedings of the Council. Each bishop had in private offered his own Mass beforehand, but when they met at the Vatican they were irritated by the Greeks’ thumbings and fumblings to find the right Collects, Epistles or Gospels which the Roman ritual had long settled.

Our bishops thought it intolerable that the Council should be delayed by this searching for rubrics. “So,” said Dr. Nulty, “we walked the corridors as a protest, as we wished to get on with the work for the whole Church, without being hindered by Greek liturgies.”

Thus in Mullingar broke out flashes of the controversies which separate Rome from Constantinople.

When Dr. Nulty was consecrated bishop he visited his native place to see his mother. She would not receive him, however, because (in the midst of the plague which followed the famine) he remitted Lenten fasts. He sent for her to ask an explanation, and she came reluctantly, but ordered him not to come near her until he justified his remissions.

“Oh, Tom,” she cried, “dare you excuse your flock from God’s holy fasts ?

“Well, mother,” he answered, “there’s hunger and pestilence all round.” “Yes,” she agreed, “but the friars of ‘Multy’ say you are wrong.”

“Now,” he asked, “don’t you think I’ve as good judgment as the friars of Maltyfarnham?

Snapping her fingers at him, she retorted, “Not at all, boy. How could you, at your age!”

It was long before peace was made between him and this relic of penal days.

Dr. Nulty told me that some of the bishops in the famine of 1846-7, when the prohibition against eating meat on Friday was withdrawn, felt doubtful that their flocks would, when better times came, be brought back to the ancient abstinence. The case of the Spaniards after the wars against the Moors was cited in apprehension. “But,” said the old man, “we found no difficulty in restoring Friday abstinence.”

Healy Index. Home.