General Election (1880)

Chapter VII

General Election (1880)

On the voyage home, Parnell, always temperate and economical, surprised me by ordering champagne for dinner on St. Patrick’s Day, and we drank to the Cause of Ireland in mid-ocean. Nearing land early on Sunday morning (21st March), the ship threaded her way along the coast. We rose at dawn. Parnell watched in vain for a tender from Queenstown, bearing friends to greet him. As nothing appeared; he spoke bitterly of this neglect, and asked me did his colleagues not think it worth while to meet him? His disappointment, contrasted with his usual calm, was tragic. The morning was raw, but he grew hot with indignation.

He enlarged on the work he had done in America, and said it deserved better reward than indifference.

This stirring of heart was a revelation, and unveiled the true character of one who was outwardly a man of bronze. In an instant he bared his soul and let me know that his ordinary reserve was merely a mask. The March wind heightened his petulance, and I tried in vain to soothe him.

About 7 a.m., however, a tender from Queenstown was descried rounding Cork harbour full of cheering friends. Then Parnell hardened into steel. With intent eyes he scanned the offing to see who was aboard. Cheery voices and beaming smiles from old comrades broke out, and he banished all traces of emotion and became the superman once more.

Biggar, in his shabby sealskin waistcoat, shouted us welcome. His Belfast accent sounded like music in our ears. Beside him stood Michael Davitt, Thomas Sexton, T. D. Sullivan, Finegan, and many others, making glad noises and waving handkerchiefs. Parnell, now cool as ice, received them unmoved. As he stepped into the tender no one would have dreamt that his chagrin of a few minutes before had been transformed into gratification. His acting was superb.

At Queenstown we took train to Cork, where Parnell laughingly referred to his surprise when a railway porter asked for his ticket - since he travelled free in the United States.

Cork turned out with enthusiasm, spontaneous and instantaneous in pride of his achievments.

That night we left for Dublin to take up the work of the General Election which Parnell left in my hands. We had few good candidates and no money. The cash gathered in America had been sent to the Land League, whose leaders, being anti-Parliament men, passed a resolution that “none of the funds of the League shall be used … for furthering the interests of any parliamentary candidate.” Nevertheless, the treasurer, Patrick Egan, helped to overcome this. Parnell argued that he was at least entitled to £1,000 to promote the candidature of supporters out of the £40,000 he had collected. His backers were opposed by Do-nothings who were well-to-do, and had failed for years to win reforms at Westminster. The Freeman, however, “boomed” them as political worthies.

The League secretary, Brennan, was “a sea-green incorruptible” (aged, like myself, less than 25), who insisted on “the rigour of the game,” and thought the decrees of his organization infallible. Nevertheless, Parnell managed, thanks to Egan, to “wangle” £1,000 of the hard-won American collections for his candidates.

On the Good Friday of 1880 the Freeman delivered a withering onslaught against every man he put forward. These included Thomas Sexton, Dr. Commins, LL.D., John Dillon, Arthur O’Connor, James O’Kelly, John Barry, T. D. Sullivan, and myself.

During the General Election Egan grew distressed at Parnell’s wish to adopt as candidate a man styling himself” St. John Brenon,” who had a pretty wife. Brenon was the son of a chorister of Christ Church, Dublin. Egan maintained that he lived by defrauding an imbecile who was given him in charge to teach.

Brenon’s wife was so dainty that Parnell often went to Kingstown to dine with her while the election was in progress. She was a most virtuous woman, but her husband was hated by Egan. Once when Brenon joined our train on a Western expedition, I protested at his sharing our intimacy. He left the carriage, and one of Parnell’s toadies made fun of my zeal.

Egan rightly suspected the source of Brenon’s affluence, and felt indignant that Parnell was planning to foist him on an Irish constituency.

Thirty years afterwards, in the Court of the Master of the Rolls, Dublin, Brenon was held to have “marooned” in Naples a feeble-minded gentleman named Boyce, whom he had exported from Ireland.

Boyce was afflicted with the delusion that he was an artist who could paint like Raphael, so Brenon took him to Italy to study the Old Masters.

After some years he left Boyce penniless in Naples, having wasted his means. The relatives of the ibecile could not discover his address, and he was made, for Brenon’s benefit, to sign agreements for the sale of his estate to tenants in Co. Cork under the Land Purchase Act. A will in Brenon’s favour was also drawn. The lodgin-keeper in Naples, being left unpaid, appealed to the British Consul, who ascertained that Boyce’s solicitors were Messrs. Murdock, Green, Foley, of Dublin. Mr. Foley sped at once to Naples, and found Boyce housed under squalid and degrading conditions. An action was taken against Brenon, who failed to go into the witness box. A scathing judgment against him was delivered by the late Master of the Rolls (Meredith), from which he never appealed.

Boyce was bestowed meanwhile in the Stewart Institution for Imbeciles, Dublin, where he died. Brenon made no attempt to the will in his favour.

Easter Sunday, 13th April, 1880, Parnell went to Enniscorthy to speak in favour of John Barry and Garrett Byrne, who were candidates for Co. Wexford. Keyes O’Clery, with Sir George Bowyer, had represented that constituency since 1874. O’Clery was a papal “Chevalier,” and had passed a Bill through the House of Commons in 1879 enabling a volunteer force to be raised in Ireland. The House of Lords threw it out. Ireland was indignant, and O’Clery, through the Enniscorthy Echo, asked its readers to rally to his call. When Parnell’s meeting began, O’Clery’s mob showered on him filth and rotten eggs. Parnell’s clothes were torn; he was covered with mud; and this outrage was made much of next day in the Freeman. Wexford priests, however, headed by Canon Tom Doyle, P.P. Ramsgrange, rallied to his side, and at the polls O’Clery was beaten. Still, the rowdiness encouraged many hostile candidates elsewhere to stand, and deplete our resources.

After the Enniscorthy riot, Parnell never uttered a complaint beyond saying that his sympathizers, who formed the bulk of the meeting “stood like a flock of sheep and looked on.” So did the police course, a dozen organized corner-boys at an election are worth a hundred scattered units, and a single blackguard looms larger than a score of respectables in broadcloth.

To offset Enniscorthy, Parnell’s friends in Cork poured in messages beseeching him to stand there. He agreed, and I telegraphed an address for him to the local papers. Down he went, but we lacked cash for the contest. The sitting members for Cork (a Conservative and a Whig) were wealthy men. The Conservative was confident he must win if Parnell stood, as three opponents were in the field. Their credulity was not without justification, for the day before the polling (Sunday) an address was read at Mass in all churches from the Bishop, Dr. Delany (a Whig), accusing Parnell of trying to divert charity from our starving people. Parnell had sent relief amounting to nearly £40,000 from America, which was almost as large a sum as that raised by the New York Herald, then the most powerful paper in U.S.A.

Bishop Delany’s aim was to help N. D. Murphy, a brewer, but the Tories put up £1,000 through T. V. Riordan for Parnell, who won. On the Sunday before the poll he made a “whirlwind” tour through Cork and aroused the masses.

That night, however, he left by special train for Mayo to become a candidate there, nominally against George Brown, but in reality against O’Connor Power, on whom he wished to be revenged. Yet Power was returned at the head of the poll. Parnell came second, but his prestige was enhanced by a triple election as M.P. for Cork, Meath, and Mayo.

In his absence from Cork I started A. J. Kettle against the sitting members for the County (Shaw and Colthurst). Their solicitor, J. G. McCarthy, ex-M.P. for Mallow, was more than a match for us, and got Bishop Delany and the other three bishops wielding jurisdiction in Cork County to declare for his candidates. Their dioceses were Cork, Cloyne, Ross, and Kerry.

A placard bearing the names of these prelates appeared to support Shaw and Colthurst, and Kettle was beaten.

Shaw was the pietist who, in 1885, brought the Munster Bank to ruin. Colthurst had voted for flogging in the Army, and after the franchise was extended in 1885, neither dared face the electorate. Their triumph in 1880 affected Irish Gladstonian policy until 1885. Had they been driven from the stage in 1880 the Government would have behaved differently. Irish churchmen, however, distrusted “new young men,” and Shaw and Colthurst were no worse than the ruck of the parliamentary humbugs of that era.

After the elections Davitt came several times to Parnell to urge him to put forward a scheme of Land Purchase on behalf of the Land League. The number of years’ rent to be paid to the landlords was a bone of contention, and stormy outcries came from the camps both of owners and tenants. The Conservative Government had, I think, previously appointed a Select Commitee to consider the question of price. Anyhow, on a Sunday night, Parnell after much wrangling with Davitt, decided on an offer of 25 years’ purchase on behalf of the tenants. I sympathized with Davitt’s view that lower terms should’ be proffered, but after a long conflict Parnell asked me to shape and take his proposal to the Freeman’s Journal.

I knew that he and his Party would be harmed if an offer of 25 years’ purchase was published, and walking to the Freeman ruminating on this I determined to lessen Parnell’s figure, lest his prestige should suffer. At Carlisle Bridge (now O’Connell Bridge) I stopped under the gas lamps and changed “25” into 20 years’ purchase. I knew that Parnell, although he would not yield to Davitt, would accept the fait accompli. The Freeman editor, Gallagher (whom we called “Black Jack”), received the MS. with a scowl, and questioned me about the change. The draft was all in my handwriting, and I had been careful completely to obliterate the figure “25,” so he was compelled to accept it as the decision of the Land League Executive.

Next day, when published (26th April, 1880), Parnell didn’t resent my daring, and Davitt was gratified. Now that the Land Question has been settled, it is hard to realize that the purchase price was then the thorniest question of the hour. Davitt at the Balla meeting, a few days later, demurred even to the terms as reduced by me.

Before the session began, Parnell left Dublin for Manchester, where another drama was being staged. There a certain Hotel was an Irish centre. The barmaid, whom I shall disguise as “Lizzie from Blankshire,” was a gracious and amiable girl. Her connection with politics seems remote, but was real. Parnell often stayed at that hotel.

After he left Ireland Shaw called the newly-elected Home Rule M.P.’s together, and they again appointed him Chairman of the Party. Dallying at Manchester during these important days, Parnell forgot ambition. When he returned we urged him to demand a fresh meeting to choose a Chairman. Shaw, deeming secure, yielded, and made no push to muster his friends. Parnell, however, brought up all his supporters, and displaced Shaw 17th May, 1880, by five votes.

Shaw in consequence, with his backers, sat on the Government Benches when the House of Commons met three days later. Captain O’Shea, who voted for Parnell, also sat there.

On 19th May, 1880, Parnell and his men went to London for the opening of the session, and sat in opposition. His lodgings in Keppel Street were abandoned for the Westminster Palace Hotel, but a few months later his address became guesswork,

Gladstone installed W. E. Forster, M.P. for Bradford, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, with Lord Cowper as Lord-Lieutenant.

Of the 103 members returned to Westminster from Ireland in 1880, 33 were Liberals and 30 were Tories. Forty Nationalists (including those whom Gladstone, in 1881, styled “nominal Home Rulers”), made up the rest of the representation. No Ulster County returned a Home Ruler except Cavan, where Biggar was the popular idol. Of his colleague, Charles Fay (a respectable solicitor), Biggar used to grumble that he was “merely a gold medallist.”

Sexton, a writer on the Nation, was the most brilliant of the men newly elected. In the first session he studied the procedure of the House of Commons and reserved his speech.

Dublin City elected two Liberals, one of whom declared against Home Rule. Parnell’s colleague in Cork, John Daly, scarcely pretended to support him. Less than 30 M.P.’s in effect adhered to him. Still, his qualities, aided by the ability of half a dozen of his friends, gave him a dominant position in the new Parliament.

At the opening of the session the extremists of the Land League in Dublin yelped at Parnell’s heels. They demanded instant legislation to stop evictions. From their standpoint this was natural, and they carried what amounted to a vote of “No confidence” against Parnell’s new party.

It was easy to raise complaints. Want devastated the West, and landlords were clamorous for rents which could not be paid. The newly-sown potato, called the “Scottish Champion,” would not be ripe until August, and “hungry June and July” had to be faced.

Parnell asked me to frame a letter to squelch the fault-finders, who were only important because their leader was our late candidate for Co. Cork - A. J. Kettle. I dispatched in Parnell’s name a lively rebuff.

Gladstone left Irish affairs to Forster, because he deemed the Eastern question more urgent. Forster, in the famine of 1847, acted towards Ireland like a Good Samaritan when representing the Quakers, but as Chief Secretary he fell entirely into the hands of the permanent officials, and frequented the landlords’ club in Dublin.

Lysaght Finegan, M.P., advised me in 1880 to go to the English Bar. I knew little Latin, and a fortnight only remained before the June examinations. The Gray’s Inn Benchers then held the examinations in person, and I came before a kindly old gentleman, who gave me some easy sentences from Caesar. I translated them badly. Instead of ploughing me, he was benign. Otherwise I should never have been admitted to the Bar, for try again I could not.

Iwrote my brother:

London,

5th June, 1880.

“I have passed the Bar Preliminary examination. I only began to read for it Thursday week - eight days ago. The examination was English, English history, and Latin (Caesar). As I had otherwise little to do I thought I might as well get it over. I received from the Land League £140 for work ” at home and abroad,” and have entered as a student at Gray’s Inn.

I shall get just as much thanks as if I took nothing. I eat my first dinner to-night.”

Thirty years later I saw a letter in The Times from a solicitor, referring to the days when the judges controlled the entrance of solicitors to their profession. The writer recalled that the judge who examined him asked where he came from. He answered, “Bristol.” “Ah,” said the judge, “there’s a very fine view from the Suspension Bridge at Clifton, isn’t there?” “Yes, my Lord,” was the reply, and a “pass” was allowed. If I knew the name of the bland old man who let me “through” at Gray’s Inn I should pour out a libation to his memory.

After two months’ experience of the new Parliament as an onlooker I wrote Maurice

London,

18th July, 1880,

” … The more experience I get, the more frightful becomes the impression that money, money, money, is at the root of everything, and without it the National Cause cannot be successfully conducted. If Parnell could raise, say, £10,000 throughout the world for the next election we could laugh at the crew opposing us.

The great want is a daily paper, but this might in time be established. The sum received for political purposes by the League is about £40,000, but, as I tell Parnell, it is the greatest farce for him to have exhausted himself raising this in order that it may be pieced away by a little knot of nobodies in Dublin - Heaven knows how! Without some change Parnellism will not sweep all before it at a future election, when there will be the errors and failures of the next three or four years recorded against it…

Parnell has a number of enemies in the Party watching his every movement, and as this Parliament may not last he should be preparing himself every day to make a clean sweep of them. O’Connor Power and others wish his downfall as heartily as O’Donnell or Shaw; and if his popularity does not wane before their turn comes, there may be a cry for more “heads.”

As to the legal exams., I shall learn no more grammar, but will do as I did with dear delicious “Caesar,” and I feel sure the examiners won’t baulk me. My achievement in the “preliminary” was a splendid piece of fluking when I reflect on the way you, poor boy, used to fag.

Yes, Finegan lives with me, and will until his marriage. A more decent fellow, and one with more contempt for the House of Commons, I never met. In fact, he has raised the worrying of that House into a system. Villiers Stewart has become quite friendly with him on account, Finegan says, of his fears that he will roar him down whenever he rises to speak. Finegan’s jeers have become an institution, and whatever he can do to bring the place into contempt, the same he will do. Any question that he puts I have drawn for him. The secret of O’Donnell’s annoying the Government re Challamel Lacour, the French Ambassador, was that Ministers refused to redress the grievance of his brother in India… .

O’Donnell will become a nuisance, and it was a mistake of his “friends” to treat him as they did on the Challamel Lacour question, as it hardened him in his determination to be a blister. It would be unwise to notice him in the Press. He is full of ability, and it is a pity that he has gone wrong. I wonder did Shaw lend him money? Shaw doesn’t look at me since the Cork election! Shaw has brains, and if it were not that he would gather an ugly little party round him, it would have been a pity to evict him.

I have come to be a believer in Parnell’s capacity and all-round cleverness, and don’t fear that he will not hold his own, only he has not social qualities to bind his men to him, as Butt used. If Gladstone doesn’t make some Land concession next year these men may break his heart.

Until John Dillon arrives it is hard to say how Parnell may determine as to returning to America. Davitt’s taking up the post of permanent secretary to the League has a good deal altered the aspect of affairs, as this is such a jealous crowd they might prefer Parnell to stay at home, though, of course, I don’t know that this is so, or what sort of story Dillon will relate of U.S.A. His return looks to me meaningful, for if he were to bring word that the people generally expected Parnell, and looked forward to his return to the States, that would, I imagine, decide him.

Dr. Carroll, of the “Skirmishing Fund,” has taken an absurd pique against the Land League, and though he is not friendly with O’Donovan Rossa and his crowd, it is impossible to say what turn, between them, they might give things. The permanency of the Land League organization was scarcely contemplated by them, and is only too likely to be regarded now as an “opposition shop.""

In 1880 Forster brought in a “Compensation for Disturbance” Bill, to check evictions of tenants under £30 valuation, but it was thrown out by the House of Lords. Lord Beaconsfield described it in his last dramatic gesture (eight months before his death) as a “reconnaissance in force” against property. I watched him raise a white handkerchief aloft and drop it on the Lords’ table as he ended on these words.

The alarm amongst the propertied classes was such that a peer so moderate and benevolent as the late Duke of Norfolk travelled from Lourdes to oppose the measure.

The Irish peasantry, however, for the first time since Daniel O’Connell, stood solidly together. The Liberal Government was helpless for the Land League grew in strength. Its branches spread to counties like Wexford, where there was no distress.

Gladstone confessed afterwards that, having come into power on the controversy about Eastern affairs, he found that the Irish question had come down on them “like a flood,” and reduced every other issue to small dimensions. I wrote my brother:

London,

4th August, 1880.

“I am doing an “Interview “supposed to have taken place between Parnell and Redpath, for the Tribune, New York, and sent it off to him yesterday, and wish to make arrangements for simultaneous publication of it here.

You will observe in it a reference to myself, and I beg you to note that it has been inserted at Parnell’s request, and did not stand in the original.

Parnell is an extraordinary man. He would not even give me five minutes for a real interview, but simply told me to write it, and then only made a slight suggestion after he read it, as if I, and not he, were the man who would be responsible for what appears!

Finegan has earned only one guinea at the Bar, and has taken up the defence of a poor devil who threatened Lord Oranmore, and paid the solicitor out of his own pocket.

The scene in the Commons last night over Phil Callan’s suspension was painful. Afterwards he went to the Reform Club and made another row. They are talking of calling a meeting to expel him. To-day he made an apology to the House…

The Land League has lately received about £13,000 for political purposes, and has spent £5,000.”

Towards the close of August, Dillon arrived from America. The new M.P.’s, knowing little of his labours there, seemed to give him the cold shoulder. Yet he made no boast of his achievements, although he had been slaving for the movement in the United States since we left there in March. At the General Election Parnell wished to have him returned for Tipperary. P, J. Smyth, the other member for the constituency, used to prepare his speeches carefully, and Parnell asked me to write out some tags that would “go down” at Thurles. I had chosen for him a bit from “Eva’s” beautiful lines on Tipperary, but these he forgot and fell back on Moore’s which O’Connell had made familiar to the world. Parnell, however, delivered Moore in this wise:

Great, glorious and free,

First flower of the earth and first jewel of the ocean.

When he finished I said, “‘gem of the sea,’ Parnell.” “I think ‘jewel of the ocean’ is better, Healy.” He never owned it a mistake.

Dillon was returned unopposed, and it soon became gossip that Archbishop Croke wanted to back him against Parnell. For this not a shred of evidence exists.

There appears in the next note to my brother an inkling of a new amour of Parnell’s:

London,

August, 1880.

“Dillon will make a considerable figure in the House after a while, as his outspokenness will win him a position. T. P. O’Connor is the cleverest of them all, but he is more of an English Radical and only stood for an Irish constituency because he could not get elected for an English one. His popularity in the House is extraordinary, and he is always listened to with interest and attention. I accused him, the other day, of ruining Parnell (in Parnell’s hearing), and Parnell laughingly whispered to me (having inveigled him into some Motion or another), “I think it is rather we who are ruining T.P.”

It is he who writes the weekly letter in the Irishman, though he takes no trouble with it, and those sketches in Vanity Fair, quoted in the Nation, are his also. He writes for the Echo, for the Pall Mall Gazette (those the Nation quotes), is the London correspondent of a St. Petersburg paper, and has his finger in a thousand other pies. He told me last Sunday he was making at the rate of £1,200 a year, and that a few years ago he was starving. He is very likeable.

I am glad you think Parnell has been doing well. For myself, I have been rather dissatisfied, and have told him so. Over the House of Lords business this week I certainly thought he would keep fighting a few nights to draw attention to the subject, but he absolutely discouraged anything approaching obstruction, and laughingly told Barry that, if John got up to speak, he would cry “Divide,” as he wanted to take a division and go away. Why is this?

There must be a lady in the case, else he would not be in such a hurry to leave the House as he has been, two or three times this week! I wanted him badly to keep the House sitting till Sunday on the Appropriation Bill, and he almost promised to do so.

I went down to the Freeman office at 3 a.m., to get in the paragraph you have seen, and also went to The Times with Finegan, who actually cadged a reference to it, but all to no use. However, a great impression has been made on the House, and Parnell’s position in it is unexampled. It might be supposed he could make effective points in speeches, but there is not a spark of anything but expediency at the back of his action.

Lord Hartington’s remarks on the number of speeches on the work of the session were clever, and have established him as a power. There is more in him than I thought, but, of course, position often makes men. It gives them opportunities.

It was I who discovered “Buckshot,” which has since become famous, and drew up the first question about it, I got Finegan to ask that other question since respecting “reverting to bullets.”

It has been the annoyingest incident in my attendance on that House to see duffers missing all the points that might be made. (“The man on the ditch always hurls well.”)”

At this time we had no knowledge of Parnell’s dalliance with Mrs. O’Shea. We disliked her husband, and thought that Parnell, on account of O’Shea’s whiggishness3 would have no dealings with his household.

I wrote my father:

London,

5th August, 1880.

I shall meet Barry at Stockton-on-Tees to-morrow, where We are to speak, and I shall be for the next two days in Newcastle-on-Tyne. My disinclination to turn my thoughts beforehand to what I have to say on such occasions remains a disability, and though I have been aware for a week that I would have to speak for half an hour to-morrow, I have not a single idea as to what I should say.

I agree with you that O’Donnell must be nearly “off his nut,” though there is a great deal of method in his madness. That letter you refer to was mine, excised and cut down. Every time he gets up to speak (as last night, for instance) he inflicts wounds on the feelings of honest-minded politicians. He is ungrateful. The extension of the franchise is what he has in his mind when he flouts Dungarvan, as that borough must disappear into the Ewigheit.

Arthur O’Connor will turn out our best man as an obstructive, from his knowledge of the Estimates. Finegan is the champion howler of the establishment, and has the devil’s pluck. About eight or nine first-rate men have been returned, but Lalor and T.D.S., honest as they are, are only valuable in council.

Callan, judged by his letters in the O’Reilly-Dease libel case, is unsavoury, but his parliamentary record is by no means bad. You will find it difficult to point out anything in it save zeal for the public interest. In ‘70 he was one of the few advanced members who voted against the Land Bill after mutilating alterations had been accepted. The O’Donoghue was taken back to the Party lately, though he had done more mischief to the Cause than Callan.

Taught by experience, I have no reason to suppose that Collan was not the injured party in his private dealings with A. M. Sullivan, and deserving commiseration. It is true he is now an Ishmael, with his back to the wall hurling abuse on everything. Yet it occurred to me some months ago to organize a rapprochement between him and the “active section,” which would be politically justifiable if it were worth while.

O’Donnell is a worse enemy, and more deserves to be expelled if there are to be expulsions, which I doubt. I had been a couple of times insulted by Callan before the General Election, but that didn’t sway me.”

I never understood why O’Donnell deserted us. Callan, on the contrary, quitted the Government Benches and sat with us, but he created an ugly scene with the Chair at the close of the session of 1880.

I went to Ireland at Parnell’s request after Parliament rose, and wrote my brother:

Wexford,

23rd September, 1880,

“Parnell has asked me to organize Wexford! I shall not, therefore, be in Cork next Sunday, as there is to be a meeting here.

Tell me what you think of that Redpath “interview” which I wrote for Parnell.”

I cannot remember what Maurice thought of my masterpiece! Redpath was a great journalist, a Scotsman by birth, but impregnated with all the Radicalism then asserting itself in Europe. His American correspondence rendered great service to the Irish cause. I wrote Maurice:

Wexford,

October, 1880.

“I heard yesterday from Pat Egan that the Land League last Tuesday voted me an additional £150 for my services, This was unexpected and undemanded by me, and was done, I suppose, at Parnell’s request, as he was there that day, though I never spoke to him on the subject.

We had a fine meeting on Sunday, and a pleasant evening after, with a lot of P.P.’s. Father Furlong and Father Dunne are good fellows.

A large body of independent farmers cultivate this county, and are sturdy, unlike the rest of Irish tenants. There is a mixture of English and Welsh blood amongst them, as can be seen from their names, as well as from their nature,

Every day that passes, I feel the loss of Co. Cork more and more, although I don’t regret that it was fought.”

In Wexford, visiting a venerable farmer, I heard of a moving sequel to the 1798 rebellion. When the insurgents retreated from Vinegar Hill, a remnant escaped through Bridgetown to their homes. Afterwards one of them became noted in peace-time for his exemplary conduct, but though he attended Mass weekly and reared a pious family, he could never be brought to approach the Sacraments. This almost amounted to excommunication, but no exhortation could move him. When his death drew near, the parish priest urged him to contrition, and pleaded that he should make his peace with God. The unyielding rebel turned his face to the wall. “Oh, Michael,” cried the priest, “in a few hours you will stand at the Judgment Seat of your Redeemer. Would you not, even without going to confession, tell me, as a friend, what is on your conscience?” The dying man groaned, and turning round, gasped, “Your Reverence, we were coming home after being beat at Vinegar Hill, I can’t explain it, for it’s about another priest.” “No matter,” said his ghostly friend, “go on. Don’t be ashamed.” After a pause the dying man brought up words like these:

“On our retreat we were attacked outside Bridgetown by yeomen. We killed them all, except one, and I had him at my pike’s point. Then a priest ran out and threw himself in between us. Myblood was up, for comrades lay dead and wounded around me. The priest would not let me at him, and stood between us.” Suddenly he became mute “Well, Michael, what happened?” With a sob the answer came, “I turned my pike in the pair of them, priest and all!”

This had gnawed his heart for half a century. He sent for wife and, thanks to her persuasions, died shriven.

Parnell, in the autumn of 1880, in Ennis, Co. Clare, had given the tenants their keynote in a speech for which he was much assailed by opponents. The measure of benefit, he declared, that farmers would get from a Land Bill would be proportioned to the strength of their agitation beforehand. At many other meetings he electrified the country. To an Athlone muster he came with his beard shaved so as to be almost unrecognizable. Though wonder was aroused, no one could explain the metamorphosis.

I left Wexford to attend a meeting in my native town, Bantry, Co. Cork, which I had not visited since I left as a child in 1862, and wrote my brother:

Bantry,

18th October, 1880.

“We had a fine meeting here yesterday, wretchedly reported. I will go to Glengariff by Wednesday, and we shall remain in the district” organizing” until Sunday, when we go to Castletown Bere.”

I had spoken in Bantry in condemnation of the treatment of a farmer named McGrath, whose rent had been raised from £60 £105. Being unable to pay in a wet season, he was evicted. Houseless, he took refuge with his family under an upturned boat on the seashore, and there died from exposure. He received the last rites of the Church in pouring rain, under the priest’s umbrella. His wife, her sister, and his children, one after the other, re-took possession, and were successively sent to jail. For denouncing this I was arrested after the Berehaven meeting and returned for trial (on bail).

The searchlight we concentrated on events like these, drew from General (Chinese) Gordon a noteworthy protest. Writing from Roche’s Hotel, Glengariff, to The Times (3rd December, 1880), he declared: “From my own observation the state of our fellowy-countrymen here is worse than that of any people in the world- let along Europe. I believe that these people are made as we are, that they are patient beyond belief, loyal, but at the same time broken-spirited and desperate, living on the verge of starvation in which we would not keep our cattle. The Bulgarians, Anatolians, Chinese and Indians are better off than many of them are. I am not well off, but I would offer Lord Bantry or his agent £1,000 if either of them would live a week in one of these poor devils’ places and feed as these people do.”

After my arrest a vacancy in Wexford was caused by the death of W. A. Redmond. His son, John Redmond, wrote Parnell and myself, claiming the seat. John had been made a clerk in the Bill Office of the House of Commons by father’s influence. His oratorical skill I had noticed at a meeting called by O’Connor Power in the Westminster Palace Hotel to hear O’Neill Russell on the Gaelic revival.

As correspondent of the Nation, I foretold that a public career lay before him. Straitened means alone forced him to accept a post in the Bill Office.

When I reached Dublin, whither Parnell had summoned me, he inquired who John Redmond was. T. P. O’Connor was then with us in Morrison’s Hotel, and declared Parnell must know him, “Because,” said he “he hands you out the Orders of the Day.” Parnell exclaimed, “What! that d---d fellow!

I replied to Redmond that I would do my best to secure him a nomination later on. On 6th November, 1880, I wrote my brother from Dublin:

“Pat Egan was seen off by me this morning to Wexford to spy out the land.

The Wexford Home Rule Club telegraphed they would have anyone Parnell sent and young Redmond telegraphed also, that he would not stand against Parnell’s nominee.

Parnell wrote telling Redmond it was important I should be returned, but that if he surrendered his claims he would not be forgotten.

The local Whigs are mad at the democratic section of the town taking control - which they are quite unused to. The Club is a new institution, but comprises something like 150 voters, all of whom are with me.”

On reaching Wexford, I found the townspeople in my favour - not for anything they knew of me, but because I had been arrested, and had helped Parnell in America. I wrote Maurice:

Wexford,

10th November, 1880.

“There is a capital fellow here named Laffan, who used to do all the work for old Redmond without accepting anything for it and he has stuck to me and is working like a brick.

Redmond leaves to-day. He has acted frankly since the Club gave him his Dimittis, but had he got any encouragement from them he would have gone forward in spite of Parnell.

The farmers of the County are greatly interested in the election, and have gone around among the shopkeepers giving gentle hints (not, indeed, that they were needed) that if I were not returned, they would never deal with them again. Were I to hold a meeting here next Sunday we could bring in half the County.”

Meanwhile I was announced to speak at a far-off meeting in Cullen near Milistreet, Co. Cork. There Canon Griffin, P.P., though it was his curate’s turn to say Mass, came to displace him. He denounced me from the altar, as I sat in the church, as an accomplice of Parnell, and sent a report of his “sermon” next day to the Cork Examiner. The Synod of Maynooth forbids such denunciations, and, on the advice of a learned priest, I stated the facts to his Bishop, without result. Canon Griffin gave evidence for The Times at the Forgery Commission of 1888. His parish was a hot-bed of illegality, owing to his lack of influence with his flock, but the Viceroy, Lord Spencer, paid him the compliment of a visit.

I was elected unopposed for Wexford on the 24th November, 1880. No English paper announced the fact.

In December, 1880, I was tried as a “white-boy” at the Cork Winter Assizes, with John Walsh, for my speech in Bantry, exposing McGrath’s sufferings. I then gained some experience of Crown devices in empanelling juries. Our trial was fixed for 11 a.m., but beforehand the Crown indicted a horse-stealer and put twelve Nationalists on his jury. While that jury were considering their verdict, we were arraigned, and by this means the Crown escaped the odium of “standing-by” an extra dozen Nationalists.

Still, we were found “Not guilty,” and Parnell used chaffingly to proclaim that I was the only one of his colleagues who had been “honourably acquitted.” Peter O’Brien, Q.C. (afterwards Attorney-General and Lord Chief Justice), defended us. Later on, he was retained for Parnell and the other traversers in the Conspiracy prosecution of 1880. In that great trial, so little did defendants’ counsel know of the agrarian question, that Parnell asked me to make up an historical summary to supply them with information. This I did, drawing largely on the works of Father Lavelle and Isaac Butt.

Large subscriptions towards the costs of the traversers tumbled in, and many districts, which till then hesitated, became after the prosecutions feverishly roused. Egan reproached his junior counsel, Adams, for not subscribing, and Dick satirically replied, “The next £50 you see acknowledged from ‘Nemo’ will be mine!

Adams’s small boy came to court on the opening day of the trial and got into the seats reserved for senior counsel. Dick sharply ordered him out. Thereupon McLaughlin, Q.C., soothed him with the sarcasm, “De minimis non curat lex.”

The prosecution lasted several weeks. When the newsboys shouted “Trial of Parnell,” Egan grew vexed, as it seemed that the other traversers were forgotten. The jury refused to find for the Crown, and before the trial collapsed Parnell went to London with his colleagues.

Amongst their Counsel was an old gentleman in white gloves, MacDonogh, Q.C., who then made almost his last appearance. He never lost his temper, and maintained an unruffled, if artificial, politeness in every emergency. Stories about him were endless. Retained in a Tyrone poisoning case, he interviewed the accused inside the jail. The version of his visit which the Bar used to retail was that he addressed the prisoner thus:

John, you are a Presbyterian elder, and the evidence against you is black. You may have papists on the jury. You have been kind enough to bring me down to defend you. Do you wish to be hanged?”

“Oh, no! Mr. MacDonogh, surely not! I can rely on you to prevent that.”

“Then, John, will you explain to me how you poisoned Jane?”

“Your honour, I never gave Jane poison.”

“Ah,” sighed his advocate, “you’ve thrown your guineas away in bringing me here. I shall be useless, and to-morrow the Clerk of Arraigns will rise and ask you: ‘What have you to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon you?’ Good evening, John.”

MacDonogh bowed and went towards the cell door.

The accused cried out, “Come back, sir, and I’ll tell you all about it.” MacDonogh responded, “Thank you, John, I knew I could rely on your candour.” The prisoner then owned, “One time, sir, I gave her arsenic, and another time strychnine.” MacDonogh blandly commented, “I knew you would tell the truth, John, and now I hope to be able to defend you, and even to secure an acquittal. Good evening.”

Next day the Crown proved the purchase of arsenic by the accused, but MacDonogh extracted from the doctor that the woman showed symptoms of poisoning from strychnine.

The prosecution had made no attempt to prove the purchase of strychnine, and the evidence, moulded by MacDonogh, pointed to a death from that poison.

The jury brought in a verdict of” Not guilty,” and MacDonogh turned with uplifted hand toward the dock, saying, “John, did I not tell you that innocence must triumph!”

Chief Baron Palles told me that when junior to MacDonogh in a Chancery case, the latter added a plea which was successfully “demurred” to by the opposing lawyers. Palles had opposed the insertion of the plea in consultation with him. After judgement against them, MacDonogh turned round to Palles in open Court, saying, “Young man, I hope this will teach you to be more careful in the future!

Another story of the Chief Baron’s ran: “I received a brief in a case in which English solicitors were instructing the Irish solicitor who briefed me. There was a great deal at stake and MacDonogh had been retained to lead me. Everything turned upon a point of law, upon which it appeared to be impossible to discover any authority. Day by day I ransacked the ‘Digests’ and text-books, in vain. However, I did not desist, and in the King’s Inns Library I got on the track of a ruling in 7th Bevan. It was an express decision upon the point at issue. Next morning, flushed with triumph, I went to MacDonogh and told him this. He sent for the report, perused it, and remarked, ‘My young friend, you have found a treasure; and in the nick of time, for unless my memory plays me false the consultation is fixed for to-morrow evening. Keep your discovery to yourself. One never knows how things leak out and reach the other side, who would then, perhaps, mend their hand.’

“Next night I came to the consultation at MacDonogh’s. Not only was the Irish solicitor there, but the English solicitors. McDonogh sat with white kid gloves, and, addressing the solicitors, said, ‘Refresh my memory upon the salient facts.’ Then, closing his eyes and putting the tips of his fingers together, he listened attentively while they ran over the outlines. ‘A most interesting story,’ he remarked, ‘and everything turns upon a point which is remarkably free from authority. Have you been able to discover no decision upon it?’ The Irish solicitor said, ‘No.’

Turning to the English solicitors he said, ‘Have you?’ They confessed they had not. I was beginning to think he had forgotten the discovery, but he looked at me saying, ‘Strange; I am almost certain that I once read a report of a case on this point. Frank,’ said he, turning to his man-servant, ‘bring me down 9th Bevan.’ There was something in his look that forbade me to speak, so I watched him searching the volume. Next he ordered, ‘Frank, bring me 8th Bevan.’ Once again a vain search followed. He sighed ,‘No, it must have been my fancy. Yet I could have sworn … Frank, bring me 7th Bevan.’ A moment later he announced, “Ah, gentleman, I was right-here we have it,’ and he read to the awestruck assembly the case which I had found.”

At consultations, MacDonogh rang for his footman to bring the law-book he required, and would not allow anyone else to remove it from, or replace it on, his shelves. In his young days, when the jurisdiction of the Dublin magistrates was scattered over four divisions, he went round in a chaise with his valet to each court, and seldom returned without 50 guineas in his wallet - made up of small fees.

Once an attorney’s clerk brought him an affidavit to “settle.” He recalled that a previous affidavit to the contrary effect had been filed. Sweetly turning to the clerk, MacDonogh asked if the former affidavit had been delivered to the other side. “Oh, yes, sir,” was the reply. “Then, my young friend,” said he, “would you accept an old man’s advice? It is the fruit of ripe experience and easy to remember. It simply is that, when you have sworn an affidavit which is in the possession of your adversaries, never swear a second one to the opposite effect, for that, my young friend, would be a lie.”

Biggar used to relate of him that, having been brought to Belfast in a big case, MacDonogh failed to appear in court on the second day of the trial. The perturbed attorney drove to his hotel and found him with his toes to the fire, reading a newspaper.

“Oh, Mr. MacDonogh,” said he, “why aren’t you in court?

“Why?” was his answer. “How could I suppose I was needed when you didn’t send my refresher?”

MacDonogh brought about the disfranchisement of the borough of Sligo owing to his largesse as a parliamentary candidate. Speaking to a hired mob on the night before the poll, he wound up from his hotel window as a peroration to the unwashed with Juliet’s farewell to Romeo:

“Good night, good night, parting is such sweet sorrow,

That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”

Ireland’s parliamentary representation then was mostly drawn from like material. .

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