Ireland Since Parnell Part 3

Public and parish libraries and village halls were widely established.

These were supplementary to the greater movements to which reference has been made, but they were indicative of the steady bent of the national mind towards enlightenment and education, and of a desire in all things appertaining to the national life for more and better instruction. Another important movement there was to which little reference is made in publications dealing with the period--namely, the organisation of the town and country labourers for their political and social improvement. It was first known as the Irish Democratic Trade and Labour Federation, but this went to pieces in the general confusion of the Split. It was resurrected subsequently under the t.i.tle of the Irish Land and Labour a.s.sociation. I mention it here as an additional instance of the regenerative agencies that were at work in every domain of Irish life, and among all cla.s.ses, at a time when the politicians were tearing themselves to pieces and providing a Roman holiday for their Saxon friends.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BIRTH OF A MOVEMENT AND WHAT IT CAME TO

Whilst Ireland was thus finding her soul and Mr Gerald Balfour pursuing his beneficent schemes for "killing Home Rule with kindness,"

the country had sickened unto death of the "parties" and their disgusting vagaries. Mr William O'Brien, although giving loyal support and, what is more, very material a.s.sistance to Mr Dillon and his friends, was not himself a Member of Parliament, but was doing far better work as a citizen, studying, from his quiet retreat on the sh.o.r.es of Clew Bay, the shocking conditions of the Western peasantry, who were compelled to eke out an existence of starvation and misery amid the crags and moors and fastnesses of the west, whilst almost from their very doorsteps there stretched away mile upon mile of the rich green pastures from which their fathers were evicted during the clearances that followed the Great Famine of 1847, and which M. Paul Dubois describes as "the greatest legalised crime that humanity has ever accomplished against humanity."

"To look over the fence of the famine-stricken village and see the rich green solitudes, which might yield full and plenty, spread out at the very doorsteps of the ragged and hungry peasants, was to fill a stranger with a sacred rage and make it an uns.h.i.+rkable duty to strive towards undoing the unnatural divorce between the people and the land"

(William O'Brien in an _Olive Branch in Ireland_).

Mr Arthur Balfour had established the Congested Districts Board in 1891 to deal with the Western problem, where "the beasts have eaten up the men," and when Mr O'Brien settled down at Mallow Cottage he devoted himself energetically to a.s.sisting the Board in various projects of local development. But his experiences proved that these minor reforms were at the best only palliatives, "sending men ruffles who wanted s.h.i.+rts," and that there could be only one really satisfactory solution--to restore to the people the land that had been theirs in bygone time, to root out the bullocks and the sheep and to root in the people into their ancient inheritance. It was only after years of patient effort that he at last succeeded in persuading the Congested Districts Board to make its first experiment in land purchase for the purpose of enlarging the people's holdings and making them the owners of their own fields.[1] The scene was Clare Island, "the romantic dominion of Granya Uaile, the 'Queen of Men,'" who for many years brought Elizabeth's best captains to grief among her wild islands. The lords.h.i.+p of this island of 3949 acres, with its ninety-five families, had pa.s.sed into the hands of a land-jobber, "with bowels of iron," who sought to extract his cent. per cent. from the unfortunate islanders by a series of police expeditions in a gunboat, with a crop of resulting evictions, bayonet charges and imprisonments.

The result of the experiment was, beyond expectation, happy. After many delays the Congested Districts Board handed over the island to its new peasant proprietors, now secure for ever more in their own homesteads, but this transfer was not completed until the Archbishop of Tuam and Mr O'Brien had guaranteed the payment of the purchase instalments for the first seven years--a guarantee which to the islanders' immortal credit never cost the guarantors a farthing.

Fired to enthusiasm by the success of this experiment Mr O'Brien conceived the idea of a virile agitation for the replantation of the whole of Connaught, so that the people should be transplanted from their starvation plots to the abundant green patrimony around them. He avows that no political objects entered into his first conceptions of this movement in the West. But the approach of the centenary of the insurrection of 1798, with its inspiring memories of the United Irishmen, furnished him with the idea, and the happy t.i.tle for a new organisation which, in his own words, "drawing an irresistible strength and reality from the conditions in the West, would also throw open to the free air of a new national spirit those caverns and tabernacles of faction in which good men of all political persuasions had been suffocating for the previous eight years." Accordingly the United Irish League was born into the world at Westport on the 16th January 1898, to achieve results which, if they be not greater--though great, indeed, they are--the fault a.s.suredly rests not with the founder of the League, but with those others who malevolently thwarted his purposes. The occasion was opportune. The three several movements of the Dillonites, Redmondites and Healyites were in ruins, and Ireland went its way unheeding of them. The young men were busy with their '98 and Wolfe Tone Clubs. They drank deep of the doctrines of a heroic age. Centenary celebrations were held throughout the country, at which men were exhorted to study the history of an era when men were proud to die for the land they loved. For a s.p.a.ce we listened to the martial music of other days, and our hearts throbbed to its stirring notes. The soul of the nation was uplifted above the squalid rivalries of the "'ites" and the "'isms." It awaited a unifying influence and a programme which would disregard the factions and leave a wide-open door for all Nationalists to come in, no matter what sides they had previously taken or whether they had taken any at all.

This wide-open door and this broad-based programme the United Irish League offered. Mr Dillon attended the inaugural meeting, but from what Mr O'Brien tells us he did not seem to grasp the full potentialities of the occasion, "and he made his own speech without any indication that any unusual results were expected to follow." Mr Timothy Harrington, one of the leading and most levelheaded of the Parnellite members, also attended, in defiance of bitter attack from his own side, showing a moral courage sadly lacking in our public men, either then or later. By what I cannot help thinking was a most fortuitous circ.u.mstance for the League, at a moment when its existence was not known outside three or four parishes, Mr Gerald Balfour determined to swoop down upon it and to crush it with the whole might of the Crown forces. Two Resident Magistrates and the a.s.sistant Inspector-General of Constabulary, with a small army corps of special police, were sent to Westport. Result--the inevitable conflict between the police and people took place, prosecutions followed, extra police taxes were put on and a store of popular resentment was aroused, the League getting an advertis.e.m.e.nt which was worth scores of organisers and monster meetings. I am myself satisfied that it was the ferocity of the Crown attack upon the League which gave it its surest pa.s.sport to popular favour. Whilst the United Irish League was struggling into life in the west I was engaged in the south in an attempt to lead the labourers out of the bondage and misery that encompa.s.sed them--their own sad legacy of generations of servitude and subjection--but I am nevertheless pleased to recall now that, as the editor of a not unimportant provincial newspaper in Cork, I followed the early struggles of the new League with sympathy and gave it cordial welcome when it travelled our way.

As a mere statement of indisputable fact, it is but just to say that the entire burden of organising the League fell upon the shoulders of Mr O'Brien. When it was yet an infant, so to speak, in swaddling-clothes, and indeed for long after, when it grew to l.u.s.tier life, he had to bear the whole brunt of the battle for its existence, without any political party to support him, without any great newspaper to espouse his cause and without any public funds to supply campaign expenses. Nay, far worse, he had to face the bitter hostility of the Redmondites and Healyites "and the scarcely less depressing neutrality" of the Dillonites, whilst under an incessant fire of shot and sh.e.l.l from a Coercion Government. After Mr Dillon's one appearance at Westport he was not seen on the League platform for many a day. At Westport he had exhorted the crowd to "be ready at the call of their captain by day or night," but having delivered this incitement he left to others the duty of facing the consequences, candidly declaring that he had made up his mind never to go to jail again. Mr Harrington, however, remained the steadfast friend of the League, and Mr Davitt also gave it his personal benediction, all the more generous and praiseworthy in that his views of national policy seldom agreed with those of Mr O'Brien. Confounding all predictions of its early eclipse, and notwithstanding a thousand difficulties and discouragements, the League continued to make headway, and after eighteen months' Herculean labours Mr O'Brien and his friends were in a position to summon a Provincial Convention at Claremorris, in the autumn of 1899, to settle the const.i.tution of the organisation for Connaught. Two nights before the Convention Mr Dillon and Mr Davitt visited Mr O'Brien at Mallow Cottage to discuss his draft Const.i.tution. It is instructive, having in mind what has happened since, that Mr Dillon took exception to the very first clause, defining the national claim to be "the largest measure of national self-government which circ.u.mstances may put it in our power to obtain." This was the logical continuance of Parnell's position that no man had a right to set bounds to the march of a nation, but Mr Dillon seemed to have descried in it some sinister purpose on the part of Mr O'Brien and Mr Davitt to abandon the const.i.tutional Home Rule demand in the interest of the physical force movement. Eventually a compromise was agreed on, but in regard to other points of the Const.i.tution--particularly that which made the const.i.tuencies autonomous and self-governing--Mr Dillon was obstinately opposed to democratic innovation. It would appear to me that in these days was sown the seeds of those differences of opinion between those close friends of many years' standing which were later to develop into a feeling of personal hostility which, on the part of one of them (Mr Dillon) at least, was black and bitter in its unforgivingness. The Claremorris Convention was such a success its "dimensions and character almost took my own breath away with wonder; all other feelings vanished from the minds of us all except one of thankfulness and rapture in presence of this incredible spectacle of the foes of ten years' bitter wars now marching all one way 'in mutual and beseeming ranks,' radiant with the life and hope of a national resurgence" (Mr O'Brien).

The first test of the strength and power of the League was shortly to come. Mr Davitt resigned his seat for South Mayo and proceeded to South Africa to give what aid he could to the Boers in their desperate struggle for freedom. A peculiar situation arose over the Parliamentary vacancy that was thus created. The enemies of the United Irish League hit upon the astute political device of nominating Major M'Bride, himself a Mayo man, who was at the moment fighting in the ranks of the Irish Brigade in the Boer service. Mr O'Brien was naturally confronted with a cruel dilemma. To allow the seat to go uncontested was to confess a failure and to give joy to another brigade--the Crowbar Brigade--who wished for nothing better than the early overthrow of the League, which was the only serious menace to their power in the country. To contest the seat was to have the accusation hurled at his head that he was lacking in enthusiasm for the Boer cause, which Nationalist Ireland to a man devotedly espoused.

The question Mr O'Brien had to ask himself was what was his duty to Ireland and to the oppressed peasantry of the West. It could not affect the Boer cause by a hair's-breadth who was to be future member for South Mayo, but it meant everything to Irish interests whether the United Irish League was to make headway and to gain a grip on the imagination and sympathies of the people. And, influenced by the only consideration which could be decisive in a situation of such difficulty, Mr O'Brien offered to the electors of South Mayo Mr John O'Donnell, the first secretary and organiser of the League, who was then lying in Castlebar Jail as the result of a Coercion prosecution.

After a contest, in which all the odds seemed to lie on the side of the South African candidate, Mr O'Donnell was returned by an overwhelming majority.

The South Mayo election meant the end of one chapter of Irish history and the opening of another in which the political imbecility and madness which had distorted and disgraced the years since the Parnell Split could no longer continue their vicious courses. The return of Mr O'Donnell had focussed the attention of all Ireland on the programme and policy of the League. Branches multiplied amazingly, until it would be no exaggeration to say that they spread through the country like wildfire. The heather was ablaze with the joy of a resurgent people who had already almost forgotten the weary wars that had sundered them and who blissfully joined hands in one more grand united endeavour for the old land.

Having in several pitched battles defeated the forces of the Rent-offices and the politicians and disposed of some of the vilest conspiracies which the police emissaries of the Castle could hatch against it, the League had to engage in more desperate encounters before it could claim its cause won. I have already remarked that when the Local Government Bill was receiving the benediction of all parties in Parliament, except Mr Dillon, Mr Redmond promised that his influence would be extended to an effort to return the landlord and ascendancy cla.s.s to the new Councils. The United Irish League determined to take issue with him on this. When the elections under the new Act were announced, Mr Redmond, honestly enough, proceeded to give effect to his promise. Mr O'Brien decided, and very rightly and properly in my judgment, that it would be a fatal policy, and a weak one, to surrender to the enemy, whilst he was still unconquered and unrepentant, any of those new Councils which could be made citadels of national strength and a new fighting arm of the const.i.tutional movement. It meant that having driven the landlords forth from the fortresses from which they had so long oppressed the people, they should be immediately readmitted to them, having made no submissions and given no guarantees as to their future good behaviour. Mr Redmond and his followers made brave appeal from the landlord platforms to their supporters "not to be bitten by the Unity dog." Mr Healy's newspaper and influence took a similar bent. Mr Dillon's majority, as usual helpless and indecisive, promulgated no particular policy. For Mr O'Brien and the United Irish League there could be no such balancings or doubts. It is good also to be able to say of Mr Davitt that he a.s.sisted in fighting the insidious attempt to denationalize the County and District Councils. The League and its supporters won all along the line. The few reverses they sustained were negligible when compared with the mighty victories they obtained all over Ireland, and when the elections were over the League was established in an impregnable position as the organisation of disinterested and genuine nationality.

The Parliamentarians, seeing how matters stood, and no doubt with a wise thought of their own future, now proceeded to compose their quarrels. They saw themselves forgotten of the people, but they were resolved apparently that the people should not forget them. They took their cue from a country no longer divided over sombre futilities, and unable to make up their minds for themselves they accepted the judgment of the country once they were aware that it was irrevocably come to. Mr Dillon after his re-election to the chair of his section in 1900 immediately announced his resignation of the office, and being, as we are a.s.sured on the authority of Mr O'Brien, always sincerely solicitous for peace with the Parnellites, he caused a resolution to be pa.s.sed binding the majority party in case of reunion to elect as their chairman a member of the Parnellite Party, which numbered merely nine.

Naturally Mr Redmond and his friends did not hesitate to close with this piece of good fortune, which opened an honourable pa.s.sage from a position of comparative isolation to one of triumph and power. The Healyites, whose quarrel appeared to be wholly with Mr Dillon, to whom Mr Healy in sardonic mood had attached the sobriquet of "a melancholy humbug," made no difficulty about falling in with the new arrangement, and the three parties forthwith met and signed and sealed a pact for reunification without the country in the least expecting it or, indeed, caring about it. Probably the near approach of a General Election had more to do with this hastily-made pact than any of the n.o.bler promptings of patriotism. I believe myself the country would have done much better had the United Irish League gone on with its own blessed work of appeas.e.m.e.nt and national healing unhampered by what, as after knowledge conclusively proved to me, was nothing but a hypocritical unity for selfish salvation's sake. Mr O'Brien puts the whole position in a nutsh.e.l.l when he says: "The Party was reunified rather than reformed." The treaty of peace they entered into was a treaty to preserve their own vested interests in their Parliamentary seats.

But a generous and forgiving nation was only too delighted to have an end of the bickerings and divisions which had wrought such harm to the cause of the people, and accordingly it hailed with gratification the spectacle of a reunited Irish Party.

It is probable, nevertheless, that had the process of educating the people into a knowledge of their own power gone on a little further the United Irish League would have been able at the General Election to secure a national representation which would more truly reflect national dignity, duty and purpose.

The first result of the Parliamentary treaty was the election of Mr John E. Redmond to the chair. In the circ.u.mstances, the majority party having pledged themselves to elect a Parnellite, no other choice was possible. Mr Redmond possessed many of the most eminent qualifications for leaders.h.i.+p. He had an unsurpa.s.sed knowledge of Parliamentary procedure and seemed intended by nature for a great Parliamentary career. He was uniformly dignified in bearing, had a distinguished presence, a voice of splendid quality, resonant and impressive in tone, and an eloquence that always charmed his hearers. Had he possessed will power and strength of character in any degree corresponding to his other great gifts, there were no heights of leaders.h.i.+p to which he might not have reached. As it was, he lacked just that leavening of inflexibility of purpose and principle which was required for positive greatness as distinct from moderately-successful leaders.h.i.+p. At any rate, he was the only possible selection, yet once again Mr Dillon exhibited a disposition to show the cloven hoof. For some inscrutable reason he made up his mind to oppose Mr Redmond's election to the chair, but when Mr O'Brien and Mr Davitt (who had returned from the Transvaal) got word of the plot they wired urgent messages to their friends in Parliament that Mr Redmond's selection was the only one that could give the leaders.h.i.+p anything better than a farcical character. Result--Mr Redmond was elected by a very considerable majority, and Mr Dillon had further reason for having his knife in his former friend and comrade, Mr O'Brien.

The three sectional organisations--the National Federation, the National League and the People's Rights a.s.sociation thereafter died a natural death. There were no ceremonial obsequies and none to sing their requiem.

The first National Convention of the reunited country was then summoned by a joint committee consisting of representatives of the United Irish League and the Party in equal numbers, and it gave the League a const.i.tution which made it possible for the const.i.tuencies to control the organisation, to select their own Parliamentary representatives and generally to direct national affairs within their borders. The conception of the Const.i.tution was sound and democratic.

But in any organisation it is not the const.i.tution that counts, but the men who control the movement. And the time came all too soon when this was sadly true of the United Irish League.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: To Dr Robert Ambrose belongs the credit for having first introduced, as a private member, in 1897, a Bill to confer upon the Congested Districts compulsory powers for land purchase. This was subsequently adopted as an Irish Party measure. Dr Ambrose was also the author of a measure empowering the County Councils to acquire waste lands for reclamation. He was one of the pioneers of the Industrial Development Movement and wrote and lectured largely on the subject. He was, with the late Bishop Clancy, prominent in promoting "the All-Red Route," which would have given Ireland a great terminal port on its western coast at Blacksod Bay. He, at considerable professional sacrifice, entered the Party, at the request of Mr Dillon and Mr O'Brien, as Member for West Mayo. The reward he received for all his patriotic services was to find himself opposed in 1910 by the Dillonite caucus because of his independent action on Irish questions.

Mr Dillon had no toleration for the person of independent mind, and thus a man who had given distinguished service to public causes was ruthlessly driven out of public life.]

CHAPTER IX

THE LAND QUESTION AND ITS SETTLEMENT

The General Election of 1900 witnessed a wonderful revival of national interest in Ireland. Doubtless if the const.i.tuencies had been left to their own devices they would have returned members responsive to the magnificent resolves of the people. But the Parliamentarians were astute manipulators of the political machine: they had for the most part wormed themselves into the good graces of the local leaders, and arranged for their own re-election when the time came. But there was nevertheless a considerable leavening of new members--young, enthusiastic and uncontaminated by the feuds and paltry personalities of an older generation. They brought, as it were, a whiff of the free, democratic air of the country to Parliament with them, and gave an example of fine unselfishness and devotion to duty which did not fail to have their influence on their elder and more cynical brethren. The feud between the Dillonites and Healyites had not, however, been ended with the general treaty of peace. Mr Redmond did not want Mr Healy fought, but in the interests of internal peace Mr Dillon, Mr Davitt and Mr O'Brien appear to have come to the conclusion that they could not have Mr Healy in the new Party. Accordingly, Mr Healy and his friends were fought wherever they allowed themselves to be nominated, and Mr Healy himself was the only one to survive after a desperate contest full of exciting incidents in North Louth.

I made my first bid for Parliamentary honours in the 1900 election, when I had my name put forward as Labour candidate at the South Cork convention. I was not very strongly supported then, but the following May, on the death of Dr Tanner, I was nominated again as Labour candidate for Mid-Cork, and after a memorable tussle at the Divisional Convention I headed the poll by a substantial majority. Hence I write from now onward with what I may claim to be an intimate inside knowledge of affairs.

The first few years after the 1900 election saw us a solidly united opposition in Parliament for the first time for ten years. Question time was a positive joy to us younger members, who developed almost diabolical capacity for heckling Ministers on every conceivable topic under the sun. Our hostility to the Boer War also brought us into perennial conflict with the Government. The Irish members in a very literal sense once more occupied "the floor of the House," and there were some fierce pa.s.sages-at-arms, resulting on one occasion in the forcible ejection of a large body of Nationalists by the police--an incident which had no relish for those who were jealous of the prestige and fair fame of the Mother of Parliaments. In Ireland the fight for const.i.tutional reform went on with unabated energy. All the old engines of oppression and repression were at work, and the people proved that they had lost none of their wit or resource in the struggle with the forces of the Crown. Mr George Wyndham, whom I like to look back upon as one of the most courtly and graceful figures in the public life of the past generation, was installed in Dublin Castle as Chief Secretary. I can imagine that nothing could have been more distasteful to his generous spirit than to be obliged to use the hackneyed weapons of brute force in the pursuance of British policy.

As an answer to the agitation for compulsory land purchase and a settlement of the western problem Mr Wyndham introduced in 1902 a Land Purchase Bill which fell deplorably short of the necessities of the situation. It would have deprived the tenants of all free will in the matter of the price they would be obliged to sell at, and left them wholly at the mercy of two landlord nominees on the Estates Commissioners, whilst it did not even pretend to find any remedy for the two most crying national scandals of the western "congests" and the homeless evicted tenants. No doubt there were many good and well-meaning men in the Party, and out of it, who thought this Bill should have been accepted as "an instalment of justice." But there are times when to be moderate is to be criminally weak, and this was one of them. It is as certain as anything in life or politics can be that if the Bill of 1902 had been accepted, the Irish tenants would be still going gaily on under the old rent-paying conditions. The United Irish League was still in the first blush of its pristine vigour, and when the delegates of the National Directory came up from the country to Dublin they soon showed the mettle they were made of. They wanted no paltry compromises, and it was then and there decided to enter upon a virile campaign against rack-renters, grazing monopolists and land-grabbers such as would convince the Government in a single winter how grossly they had under-estimated the requirements of the country.

Some of the older men of the Party were pessimistic about the new campaign. Messrs Dillon, Davitt and T.P. O'Connor wrote a letter to Mr O'Brien remonstrating with him, in a tone of gentle courtesy, on the extreme character of his speeches and actions. But Mr O'Brien was not to be deflected from his purpose by any friendly pipings of this kind.

The country was with him. The country was roused to a pitch of pa.s.sionate resistance to the Wyndham Bill, and the Government, seeing which way the wind blew, and realising that the time for half-measures was past, withdrew their precious Purchase Bill. Then followed a fierce conflict along the old lines. The Government sought to suppress the popular agitation by the usual antiquated methods. Proclamation followed proclamation, until two-thirds of the Irish counties, and the cities of Dublin, Cork and Limerick, were proclaimed under the Coercion Act and the ordinary tribunals of justice abolished. Public meetings were suppressed. The leaders of the people were thrown into prison: at one time no less than ten members of Parliament were in jail. The country was seething with turmoil and discontent and there was no knowing where the matter would end. The landlords, feeling the necessity for counter-action of some kind, organised a Land Trust of 100,000 to prosecute Messrs Redmond, Davitt, Dillon and O'Brien for conspiracy. The United Irish League replied by starting a Defence Fund and arranging that Messrs Redmond, Davitt and Dillon should go to the United States to make an appeal in its support. All the elements of social convulsion were gathering their strength, when an unknown country gentleman wrote a letter to the Irish newspapers dated 2nd September 1902, in the following terms:--

"For the last two hundred years the land war in this country has raged fiercely and continuously, bearing in its train stagnation of trade, paralysis of commercial business and enterprise and producing hatred and bitterness between the various sections and cla.s.ses of the community. To-day the United Irish League is confronted by the Irish Land Trust, and we see both combinations eager and ready to renew the unending conflict. I do not believe there is an Irishman, whatever his political feeling, creed or position, who does not yearn to see a true settlement of the present chaotic, disastrous and ruinous struggle. In the best interests, therefore, of Ireland and my countrymen I beg most earnestly to invite the Duke of Abercorn, Mr John Redmond, M.P., Lord Barrymore, Colonel Saunderson, M.P., the Lord Mayor of Dublin, the O'Conor Don, Mr William O'Brien, M.P., and Mr T.W. Russell, M.P., to a Conference to be held in Dublin within one month from this date. An honest, simple and practical suggestion will be submitted and I am confident that a settlement will be arrived at."

The country rubbed its eyes to see who it was that had put forward this audacious but not entirely original proposal. (It had been suggested by Archbishop Walsh fifteen years before.) Captain John Shawe-Taylor's name suggested nothing to the Nationalist leaders. They had never heard of him before. In the landlord camp he stood for nothing and had no authority--he was simply the young son of a Galway squire, with entire unselfishness and boundless patience, who conceived that he had a mission to settle this tremendous problem that had been rendered only the more keen by forty-two Acts of the Imperial Parliament that had been vainly pa.s.sed for its settlement. It is surely one of the strangest chances of history that where generations of statesmen and parliaments had failed the _via media_ for a final arrangement should have been made by an unknown officer who prosecuted his purpose to such effect that he forced his way into the counsels of the American Clan-na-Gael, and even, as we are told, "beyond the ante-chambers of royalty itself." It is probable that Captain Shawe-Taylor's invitation would have been regarded as the usual Press squib had it not been followed two days later by a public communication from Mr Wyndham in the following terms:--

"No Government can settle the Irish Land Question. It must be settled by the parties interested. The extent of useful action on the part of any Government is limited to providing facilities, in so far as that may be possible, for giving effect to any settlement arrived at by the parties. It is not for the Government to express an opinion on the opportuneness of the moment chosen for holding a conference or on the selection of the persons invited to attend. Those who come together will do so on their own initiative and responsibility. Any conference is a step in the right direction if it brings the prospect of a settlement between the parties near, and as far as it enlarges the probable scope of operations under such a settlement."

This official declaration gave an importance and a significance to Captain Shawe-Taylor's letter which otherwise would never have attached to it. The confession that "no Government can settle the Irish Land Question" was in itself a most momentous admission. It was the most ample justification of nationalism, which held that a foreign Parliament was incompetent to legislate for Irish affairs, and now the accredited mouthpiece of the Government in Ireland had formally subscribed to this doctrine. This admission was in itself and in its outflowing an event comparable only to Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule. It amounted to a challenge to Irishmen to prove their competence to settle the most sorely-beset difficulty that afflicted their country. Not only were Irishmen invited to settle this particularly Irish question, but they were given what was practically an official a.s.surance that the Unionist Party would sponsor their agreement, within the limits of reason.

Immediately Captain Shawe-Taylor's proposal became canva.s.sed of the newspapers and the politicians. Mr Dillon seemed to be sceptical of it, as a transparent landlord dodge. It was, however, enthusiastically welcomed by the _Freeman_, whilst _The Daily Express_, the organ of the more unbending of the territorialists, denounced it mercilessly, and no sooner did the Duke of Abercorn, Lord Barrymore, the O'Conor Don and Colonel Saunderson learn that Mr Redmond, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr T.W. Russell and Mr O'Brien were willing to join the Conference than they wrote to Captain Shawe-Taylor declining his invitation. The Landowners Convention, the official landlord organisation, also by an overwhelming majority decided against any peace parley with the tenants' representatives. But the forces in favour of a conference were daily gaining force even amongst the landlord cla.s.s; whilst on the tenants' side a meeting of the Irish Catholic Hierarchy, attended by three archbishops and twenty-four bishops, with Cardinal Logue in the chair, cordially approved the Land Conference project and put on record their earnest hope "that all those on whose co-operation the success of this most important movement depends may approach the consideration of it in the spirit of conciliation in which it has been initiated." The Irish Party, on the motion of Mr Dillon, also unanimously adopted a resolution approving of the action taken by Messrs Redmond, O'Brien and Harrington in expressing their willingness to meet the landlord representatives. The ma.s.s of the landlords were so far from submitting to the veto of the Landowners' Convention that, headed by men of such commanding position and ability as the Earl of Dunraven, Lord Castletown, the Earl of Meath, Lord Powerscourt, the Earl of Mayo, Colonel Hutcheson-Poe and Mr Lindsay Talbot Crosbie, they formed a Conciliation Committee of their own to test the opinion of the landlords over the heads of the Landowners Convention. The plebiscite taken by this Committee more than justified them. By a vote of 1128 to 578 the landlords of Ireland declared themselves in favour of a Conference, and empowered the Conciliation Committee to nominate representatives on their behalf.

Thus the first stage of the struggle for a settlement by consent was victoriously carried.

The next stage was the discussion of the terms upon which the landlords would allow themselves to be expropriated throughout the length and breadth of the land. Here there were, unfortunately, violent divergences of opinion on the tenants' side. Mr O'Brien postulated, as an essential ingredient of any settlement that could hope for success, that the State should step in with a liberal bonus to bridge over the difference between what the tenants could afford to give and the landlords afford to take. When this proposal was first mooted it was regarded as a counsel of perfection, and Mr O'Brien was looked upon as a genial visionary or a well-meaning optimist. But n.o.body thought it was a demand that the Government or Parliament would agree to. Happily, however, for the foresight of Mr O'Brien, it was his much-derided bonus scheme which became the very pivot of the Land Conference Report.

Meanwhile events were moving rapidly behind the scenes. It was conveyed to Messrs Redmond, Davitt, Dillon and O'Brien that Mr Wyndham had offered the Under-Secretarys.h.i.+p for Ireland to Sir Antony MacDonnell, who had lately retired from the position of Governor of Bengal. They were told by his brother, Dr Mark Antony MacDonnell, who was one of the Nationalist members, that Sir Antony was hesitating much as to his decision. Sir Antony conveyed that he had made it clear to Mr Wyndham that, as he was an Irish Nationalist and a believer in self-government, he could not think of going to Ireland to administer a Coercion regime, and, further, that he favoured a bold and generous settlement of the University difficulty. Mr Wyndham, it was understood, had given the necessary a.s.surances, and Sir Antony now wished it to be conveyed to the Irish leaders that he would not accept the post against their will or without a certain measure, at least, of benevolent toleration on their part.

All these happenings foreshadowed a joyous transformation of the political scene, to the incalculable advantage of those who had made such a magnificent stand for Irish rights; but the Irish Party was determined that until rumours had crystallised into realities they were going to relax none of their extra-const.i.tutional pressure upon the Government. It was, for instance, resolved to begin the Autumn Session with a resounding protest against Coercion and to carry on the conflict in the country more determinedly than ever.

The just and reasonable demand for a day to debate the administration was unaccountably avoided by the Government, whose reply was that a day would be granted if the demand came from the official Liberal Opposition. The Nationalists could not submit to this degradation of their independent position in Parliament, and when they attempted to secure their end by a motion for the adjournment of the House they found that two Irish Unionists had "blocked" them by placing on the Order Paper certain omnibus resolutions on the state of Ireland. Since the days of Parnellite obstruction such scenes were not witnessed as those that followed. The Party defied all rules of law and order, worried the Government by all sort of lawless interruptions and irrelevant questions, flagrantly flouted the authority of the chair and, finally, after a week of Parliamentary anarchy, it was determined that even more extreme courses would be adopted unless the const.i.tutional right of Ireland to be heard in the Chamber was conceded. Hint of this was conveyed to Mr Speaker Gully, who, regardful of the honour of the House, used his good offices with the Government to such effect that the blocking motions were incontinently withdrawn and the discussion in due course took place.

Whilst these developments were taking place Mr O'Brien had taken every possible precaution to guard himself against any charge of autocracy in the direction of the movement, whether in Parliament or in the country. At the request of his colleagues on the Land Conference he had drafted a Memorandum containing the basis of settlement which would be acceptable to Nationalist opinion. This was submitted to Messrs Redmond, Davitt and s.e.xton, with an urgent entreaty for their freest criticism or any supplementary suggestions of their own. None of these could, therefore, complain that Mr O'Brien was attempting to do anything over their heads. And impartial judgment will declare that if either Mr s.e.xton, Mr Dillon or Mr Davitt had views of their own, or had any vital disagreements with Mr O'Brien's suggestions, now was the time to declare them. Far from committing himself to any dissent, when Mr O'Brien, after a fortnight, wrote to Mr s.e.xton for the return of his Memorandum, Mr s.e.xton wrote:

"I have read the Memo. carefully two or three times and now return it to you as you want to use it and have no other copy. It will take some time to look into your proposals with anything like sufficient care.

You will hear from me as soon as I think I can say anything that may possibly be of use."

Be it here noted that Mr s.e.xton never did communicate, even when he had looked into Mr O'Brien's proposals "with sufficient care." Later he waged implacable war on the Land Conference Report and the Land Act from his commanding position as Managing Director of _The Freeman's Journal_ (the official National organ). He did so in violation of the promise on which the Party had entrusted him with that position, that he would never interfere in its political direction.