Ireland Since Parnell written by Daniel Desmond Sheehan

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The efforts to induce in the intransigeant section of the Party a
spirit of sweet reasonableness were, however, foredoomed to failure.
Mr Dillon declined to address a meeting at Limerick, specially
summoned to establish a concordat between the Irish leaders. Mr
Redmond and Mr O'Brien accepted the invitation, and the former made it
clear that he still regarded the Land Conference policy as the policy
of the nation. He said: "It has been stated in some newspapers of our
enemies that the Land Conference agreement, which was endorsed by the
Irish Party, endorsed by the Directory of the League and endorsed by
the National Convention and accepted by the people, has been in some
way repudiated recently by us. I deny that altogether.... I speak
to-day only for the people and, so far as the people are concerned, I
say that the agreement, from the day it was entered upon down to this
moment, has never been repudiated by anybody entitled to speak in
their name."

Had the spirit of the Limerick meeting and the unity which it
symbolised been allowed to prevail, all might yet have been well and
the national platform might have been broadened out so that all men of
good will who wished to labour for an independent and self-governed
Ireland could stand upon it. But such a consummation was not to be.
There was no arguing away the hostility of Mr Dillon, _The Freeman's
Journal_ and those others upon whom they imposed their will. Mr
Dillon could give no better proof of statesmanship or generous
sentiment than to refer to "Dunraven and his crowd" and to declare
that "Conciliation, so far as the landlords are concerned, was another
name for swindling."

From the moment Mr Wyndham had placed his Purchase Act on the Statute
Book, with the assent of all parties in England and Ireland, his hopes
were undoubtedly set on the larger and nobler ambition of linking his
name with the grant of a generous measure of self-government. The
blood of a great Irish patriot, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, coursed
through his veins, and it is not impossible that it influenced his
Irish outlook and stimulated his purpose to write his name largely on
Irish affairs. And at this time nothing was beyond his capacity or
power. He was easily the most notable figure in the Cabinet, by reason
of the towering success that had attended his effort to remove from
the arena of perennial contention a problem that had daunted and
defeated so many previous attempts at solution. In all quarters the
most glorious future was prophesied for him. His star shone most
brightly in the political firmament--and there were many in high
places who were quite willing to hitch their wagon to it. He was
immensely popular in the House and he had captured the public
imagination by his many gifts and graces of intellect and character.
He had an exquisite personality, a wonderful charm of manner, a most
handsome and distinguished presence and was a perfect courtier in an
age which knew his kind not at all. His like was not in Parliament,
nor, indeed, can I conceive his like to be elsewhere in these rougher
days, when the ancient courtesies seem to have vanished from our
public life. There can be no doubt about it that in his first
tentative approaches towards Home Rule Mr Wyndham received
encouragement from leading members of the Cabinet, including Lord
Lansdowne and Mr Balfour. Sir Antony MacDonnell had been the welcome
guest of Lord Lansdowne at his summer seat in Ireland, and the latter
made no secret of the fact that their conversation turned upon the
larger question of Irish self-government. When Lord Dunraven was
attacked in the House of Lords for his Devolution plans Lord Lansdowne
"declined to follow Lord Rathmore in the trenchant vituperation Lord
Dunraven's scheme had encountered," and he admitted that Sir Antony
MacDonnell had been in the habit of conferring with Lord Dunraven on
many occasions, with the full knowledge and approval of the Chief
Secretary, and had collaborated with him "in working out proposals for
an improved scheme of local government for Ireland."

The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Dudley, made open avowal
of his sympathies and stated repeatedly that it was his earnest wish
to see Ireland governed in accordance with Irish ideas.

It was in this friendly atmosphere that the Irish Reform Association
propounded its scheme of Devolution which Mr T.P. O'Connor (before he
came under the influence of Mr Dillon) happily described as "the Latin
for Home Rule," and which Mr Redmond welcomed in the glowing terms
already quoted. The Convention of the United Irish League of America,
representing the best Irish elements in the United States, also
proclaimed the landlord concession as embodied in the Irish Reform
Association to be "a victory unparalleled in the whole history of
moral warfare." Here was an opportunity such as Wolfe Tone, Robert
Emmet, Thomas Davis and the other honoured patriots of Ireland's love
sighed for in vain, when, with the display of a generous and forgiving
spirit on all sides, the best men of every creed and class could have
been gathered together in support of an invincible demand for the
restoration of Irish liberty. I do not know how any intelligent and
impartial student of the events of that historical cycle can fail to
visit the blame for the miscarriage of a great occasion, and the
defeat of the definite movement towards the widest national union upon
Mr Dillon and those who joined him in his "determined" and tragically
foolish campaign. As a humble participator in the activities of the
period, I dare say it is not quite possible for me to divest myself of
a certain bias, but I cannot help saying that I am confirmed in the
opinion that in addition to being the most melancholy figure in his
generation Mr John Dillon was also the most malignant in that at every
stage of his career, when decisive action had to be taken his judgment
invariably led him to take the course which brought most misfortune
upon his country and upon the hopes of its people.

Attacked on front and flank, assailed by Sir Edward Carson and his
gang and denounced by Mr Dillon and his faithful henchmen, deserted by
Mr Balfour at the moment when his support was vital, Mr Wyndham weakly
allowed himself to be badgered into disowning Home Rule, thus sealing
his doom as a statesman and as potential leader of his own party. The
secret history of this time when it is made public will disclose a
pitiful story of base intrigue and baser desertion and of a great and
chivalrous spirit stretched on the rack of Ireland's ill-starred
destiny. I do not think it is any exaggeration of the facts to say
that Wyndham was done to death, physically as well as politically, in
those evil days. Driven from office, with the ruin of all his high
hopes in shattered disorder around him, his proud soul was never able
to recover itself, and he drifted out of politics and into the greater
void without--so fine a gentleman in such utter disarray that the
angels must have wept his fall.

That Mr William O'Brien did not meet a similar fate was due only to
the fact that he was made of sterner fighting stuff--that he possessed
a more intrepid spirit and a more indomitable will. But the base
weapons of calumny and of viler innuendo were employed to injure him
in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen, to whom he had devoted, in a
manner never surely equalled or surpassed before, a life of service
and sacrifice. _The Freeman's Journal_, whilst suppressing Mr
O'Brien's speeches and arguments, threw its columns open to ruffianly
attacks which no paper knowing his record should have published. In
one of these he was charged with "unnatural services to insatiable
landlordism." He was charged by Mr Dillon and the _Freeman_ with
being actively engaged with Mr Wyndham, Sir Antony MacDonnell and Lord
Dunraven in a plot to break up the Irish Party, and to construct a new
Moderate Centre Party by selling eighteen Nationalist seats in
Parliament to Lord Dunraven and his friends, and he was further
charged with being concerned in a conspiracy having for its object the
denationalisation of the _Freeman_. There were six libels in all,
of so gross a character that Mr O'Brien, since reports of his speeches
were systematically suppressed in every newspaper outside of Munster,
was obliged to take his libellers into court and, before a jury of
their fellow-countrymen at Limerick, to convict them of uttering six
false, malicious and defamatory libels, and thus bring to the public
knowledge the guilt of his accusers. Asked what his "unnatural
services to insatiable landlordism" were, Mr O'Brien made this
memorable reply: "To abolish it! All the Irish tenants had gained by
the land agitation of the previous twenty years was a reduction of
twenty per cent. My unnatural services under the Land Conference
Agreement was to give them a reduction of _forty per cent._ more
right away and the ownership of the soil of Ireland thrown in."

Lord Dunraven on his own part took Mr Dillon publicly to task for his
misrepresentations of him. He said that Mr Dillon "mentioned him as
being more or less connected with a great variety of conspiracies and
plots and with general clandestine arrangements.... He and George
Wyndham were said to have been constantly plotting for the purpose of
driving a wedge into the midst of the Nationalist Party. Well, as far
as he was concerned, all these deals and all these conspiracies
existed only in Mr Dillon's fervid imagination." And Lord Dunraven
went on to express his sorrow that a man in Mr Dillon's position
should have taken up so unworthy a line.

Mr Dillon, when he had the opportunity of appearing before the
Limerick jury, to justify himself, if he could, never did so. And he
never expressed regret for having defamed his former friend and
colleague and for having vilified honourable men, honourably seeking
Ireland's welfare. Upon which I must content myself with saying that
history will pass its own verdict on Mr Dillon's conduct.

CHAPTER XII

THE LATER IRISH PARTY--ITS CHARACTER AND
COMPOSITION

To enable our readers to have a clearer understanding of all that has
gone before and all that is to follow, I think it well at this stage
to give a just impression of the Party, of its personnel, its method
of working and its general character and composition.

The Irish Party, as we know it, was originally the creation of
Parnell, and was, perhaps, his most signal achievement. It became,
under the genius of his leadership, a mighty constitutional
force--disciplined, united, efficient and vigilant. It had the merit
of knowing its own mind. It kept aloof from British Party
entanglements. It was pledged to sit, act and vote together, and its
members loyally observed the pledge both in the spirit and the letter,
and did not claim the right to place their own individual
interpretation upon it. Furthermore, it was a cardinal article of
honour that members of the Party were to seek no favours from British
Ministers, because it needs no argument to demonstrate that the Member
of Parliament who pleads for favours for himself or preferment for his
friends can possess no individual independence. He is shackled in
slavery to the Minister to whom his importunities are addressed. He is
simply a patriot on the make, despised by himself and despised by
those to whom he addresses his subservient appeals. There was no place
for such a one in Parnell's Irish Party, which embodied as nearly as
possible that perfect political cohesion which is the dream of all
great leaders. There were men of varying capacity and, no doubt, of
differing thought in Parnell's Party, but where Ireland's national
interests were concerned it was a united body, an undivided phalanx
which faced the foe. And by the very boldness and directness of
Parnell's policy, he won to his side in the country, not only all the
moral and constitutional forces making for Nationalism, but the
revolutionary forces--who yearned for an Irish Republic--as well. He
was, therefore, not only the leader of a Party; he was much more--he
was the leader of a United Irish nation. His aim was eminently sane
and practical--to obtain the largest possible measure of national
autonomy, and he did not care very much what it was called. But he
made it clear that whatever he might accept in his time and generation
was not to be the last word on the Irish Question. He fought with the
weapons that came to his hand--and he used them with incomparable
skill and judgment--with popular agitation in Ireland, with "direct
action" of a most forcible and audacious kind in Parliament. A great
leader has always the capacity for attracting capable lieutenants to
his side. We need only refer to the example of Napoleon as
overwhelming proof of this. And so out of what would ordinarily seem
humble and unpromising material Parnell brought to his banner a band
of young colleagues who have since imperishably fixed their place in
Irish history. I am not writing the life-story of the members of
Parnell's Party, but if I were it would be easy to show that most of
the colleagues who have come to any measure of greatness since were
men of no antecedent notoriety (I use the word in its better
application), with possibly one exception, and it is somewhat
remarkable that the son of John Blake Dillon, who owed perhaps not a
little to the fact that he was his father's son, should have been the
one who first showed signs of recalcitrancy against Party rule and
discipline when he inveighed against the Land Act of 1881 and betook
himself abroad for three years during the time when the national
movement was locked in bitterest conflict with the Spencer Coercionist
regime. Let it be at once conceded that Parnell's lieutenants were men
whose gifts and talents would have in any circumstances carried them
to eminent heights, but it might be said also they lost nothing from
their early association with so great a personality and from the fact
that he brought them into the gladiatorial arena, where their mental
muscles were, so to speak, trained and tested and extended in combat
with some of the finest minds of the age.

In the days when the later Irish Party had entered upon its
decrepitude some of its leaders sought to maintain a sorry unity by
shouting incessantly from the house-tops, as if it were some sacred
formula which none but the unholy or those predestined to political
damnation dare dispute: "Majority Rule." And a country which they had
reduced to the somnambulistic state by the constant reiteration of
this phrase unfortunately submitted to their quackery, and have had
grave reason to regret it ever since. Parnell had very little respect
for shams--whether they were sham phrases or sham politicians. He was
a member of Butt's Home Rule Party but he was not to be intimidated
from pursuing the course he had mapped out for himself by any foolish
taunts about his "Policy of Exasperation"; he was a flagrant sinner
against the principle of "majority rule," but time has proved him to
be a sinner who was very much in the right. Mr Dillon used to hurl
another name of anathema at our heads--the heads of those of us who
were associated with Mr O'Brien in his policy of national
reconciliation--he used to dub us "Factionists." It was not fair
fighting, nor honest warfare, nor decent politics. It was the base
weapon of a man who had no arguments of reason by which he could
overwhelm an opponent, but who snatched a bludgeon from an armoury of
certain evil associations which he knew would prevail where more
legitimate methods could not.

I entered the Party in May 1901, having defeated their official
candidate at a United Irish League Convention for the selection of a
Parliamentary candidate for Mid-Cork on the death of Dr Tanner. In
those days I was not much of a politician. My heart was with the
neglected labourer and I stood, accordingly, as a Labour candidate, my
programme being the social elevation of the masses, particularly in
the vital matters of housing, employment and wages. I was not even a
member of the United Irish League, being wholly concerned in building
up the Irish Land and Labour Association, which was mainly an
organisation for the benefit, protection and the education in social
and citizen duty of the rural workers. Mr Joseph Devlin was sent down
to the Convention to represent the Party and the League. It was sought
to exclude a considerable number of properly accredited Labour
delegates from the Convention, but after a stiff fight my friends and
myself compelled the admission of a number just barely sufficient to
secure me a majority. This was heralded as a tremendous triumph for
the Labour movement, and it spoke something for the democratic
constitution of the United Irish League, as drafted by Mr O'Brien,
that it was possible for an outsider to beat its official nominee and
thereby to become the officially adopted candidate of the League
himself. In due course I entered the portals of the Irish Party, but
though in it was, to a certain extent, not of it, in that I was more
an observer of its proceedings than an active participant in its work.
My supreme purpose in public life was to make existence tolerable for
a class who had few to espouse their claims and who were in the
deepest depths of poverty, distress and neglect. Hence, except where
Labour questions and the general interests of my constituents were
concerned, I stood more or less aloof from the active labours of the
Party. I was in the position of a looker-on and a critic, and I saw
many things that did not impress me at all too favourably.

In the years immediately following the General Election of 1900 the
Party had a splendid solidarity and a fine enthusiasm. There had been
just sufficient new blood infused into it to counteract the jealous
humours and to minimise the weariness of spirit of those older members
who had served in the halcyon days of Parnell and had gone through all
the squalidness and impotence of the years of the Split. Had the Party
been rightly handled, and led by a man of strong will and inflexible
character, it could have been made the mightiest constitutional power
for Ireland's emancipation. Unfortunately Mr John Redmond was not a
strong leader. He unquestionably possessed many of the attributes of
leadership--a dignified presence, distinguished deportment, a wide
knowledge of affairs, a magnificent mastery of the forms and rules of
the House of Commons, a noble eloquence and a sincere manner, but he
lacked the vital quality of strength of character and energetic
resolve. He was not, as Parnell was, strong enough to impose his will
on others if he found it easier to give way himself. And thus from the
very outset of his career as leader of the reunited Party he allowed
his conduct to be influenced by others--very often, let it be said,
against his own better judgment. Mr Redmond had a matchless faculty
for stating the case of Ireland in sonorous sentences, but too often
he was content to take his marching orders from those powers behind
the throne who were the real manipulators of what passed for an Irish
policy. In the shaping of this policy and in the general ordering of
affairs, the rank and file of the members had very little say--they
were hopelessly invertebrate and pusillanimous. The majority of them
were mere automatons--very honest, very patriotic, exceedingly
respectable, good, ordinary, decent and fairly intelligent Irishmen,
but as Parliamentarians their only utility consisted in their capacity
to find their way into the voting Lobby as they were ordered. To their
meek submission, and to their rather selfish fear of losing their
seats if they asserted an independent opinion, I trace many if not all
of the catastrophes and failures that overtook the Party in later
years. Needless to say, neither the country nor the other parties in
Parliament had the least understanding of the real character and
composition of the Nationalist Party. It had always a dozen or more
capable men who could dress the ranks and hold their own "on the floor
of the House" as against the best intellects and debating power of
either British party. Irish readiness and repartee made question time
an overwhelmingly Irish _divertissement_. Our members had a
unique faculty for bringing about spectacular scenes that read very
well in the newspapers and made the people at home think what fine
fellows they had representing them! All this might be very good
business in its way if it had any special meaning, but I could never
for the life of me see how taking the Sultanate of Morocco under our
wing could by any stretch of the imagination help forward the cause of
Ireland.

The policy of the Party, in the ultimate resort, was supposed to be
controlled by the United Irish League acting through its branches in
Convention assembled. Inasmuch as the Party derived whatever strength
it possessed in Parliament from the virility and force of the
agitation in Ireland, it was in the fitness of things that the country
should have the right of ordering the tune. When he founded the United
Irish League Mr O'Brien unquestionably intended that this should be
the case--that the country should be the master of its own fate and
that the constituencies should be in the position of exercising a
wholesome check on the conduct of their Parliamentary representatives,
who, in addition to the pledge to sit, act and vote with the Party,
also entered into an equally binding undertaking to accept neither
favour nor office from the Government. As the Party was for the
greater part made up of poor men or men of moderate means, members
received an indemnity from a special fund called "The Parliamentary
Fund," which was administered by three trustees. This fund was
specially collected each year, and in principle, if the subscriptions
came from Ireland alone, was an excellent method of making members of
the Party obey the mandate of the people, under the penalty of
forfeiting their allowance. But in practice, most of the subscriptions
were collected in America, and we had in effect the extraordinary
situation of Irish representatives being maintained in Parliament by
the moneys of their American kith and kin. And the situation after
1903 was rendered the more ludicrous by reason of the fact that the
Party could never have dragged along its existence if it had been
dependent upon Irish contributions to its funds. These were largely
withdrawn because the Party was delinquent in adhering to the policy
of Conciliation. It is a phenomenon worth remarking that the Irish
people never failed to contribute generously what Parnell had termed
"the sinews of war" so long as the members of the Party deserved it of
them. But when symptoms of demoralisation set in, or when contentions
distracted their energies, the people cut off the supplies. This would
undoubtedly have been an effective means of control in normal
circumstances, but when the Party, of its own volition, was able to
send "missions" to America and Australia to collect funds, it was no
longer dependent on the popular will, as expressed in terms of
material support, and it became the masters of the people instead of
their servants.

Not that I want for one moment unnecessarily to disparage the
personnel of the Party--it was probably the best that Ireland could
have got in the circumstances--nor do I seek to diminish its
undoubtedly great services to Ireland in the days of Parnell and
during the period that it loyally adopted the policy of Conciliation.
But what I do deplore is that a few men in the Party--not more than
three or four all told--were able, by getting control of "the
machine," to destroy the fairest chance that Ireland ever had of
gaining a large measure of self-government. Knowing all that happened
within the Party in the years of which I am writing, knowing the
methods that were employed, rather unscrupulously and with every
circumstance of pettiness, to bear down any member who showed the
least disposition to exercise legitimately an independent
judgment--knowing how the paid organisers of the League were at once
dispatched to his constituency to intrigue against him and to work up
local enmities, I am not, and never was, surprised at the compelled
submission of the body of the members to the decrees of the secret
Cabinet who controlled policy and directed affairs with an absolute
autocracy that few dared question. One member more courageous than his
fellows, Mr Thomas O'Donnell, B.L., did come upon the platform with Mr
Wm. O'Brien at Tralee, in his own constituency and had the manliness
to declare in favour of the policy of Conciliation, but the tragic
confession was wrung from him: "I know I shall suffer for it." And he
did!

I mention these matters to explain what would otherwise be
inexplicable--how it came to pass that a policy solemnly ratified by
the Party, by the Directory of the League, and by a National
Convention was subsequently repudiated. Whilst Mr O'Brien remained in
the Party there was no question of the allegiance of these men to
correct principle. Mr Joseph Devlin, who later was far and away the
most powerful man in the Party, had not yet "arrived." (It was the
retirement of Mr O'Brien from public life and the resignation of Mr
John O'Donnell from the secretaryship of the United Irish
League--under circumstances which Mr Devlin's admirers will scarcely
care to recall--which gave him his chance.) Mr Dillon was a more or
less negligible figure until Mr O'Brien made way for him by his
retirement. Right up to this there was only one man for the Party and
the country, and that man was William O'Brien. Let me say at once that
in those days I had no attachments and no personal predilections. John
Redmond, William O'Brien and John Dillon were all, as we say in
Ireland, "one and the same to me." If anything, because of my
Parnellite proclivities, I rather leaned to Mr Redmond's side, and his
chairmanship of the Party had certainly my most loyal adherence.
Otherwise I was positively indifferent to personalities, and to a
great extent also to policies, since I was in the Party for one
purpose, and one alone, of pushing the labourers' claims upon the
notice of the leaders and of ventilating their grievances in the House
of Commons whenever occasion offered. Furthermore, I do not think I
ever spoke to Mr O'Brien until after the Cork election in 1904, when,
convinced of the rectitude of his policy and principles, I stood upon
his platform to give such humble support as I could to the cause he
advocated, and thereafter, I am proud to say, never once turned aside,
either in thought or action, from the thorny and difficult path I had
chosen to travel. I take no credit to myself for having taken my stand
on behalf of Mr O'Brien's policy. I knew him in all essential things,
both then and thereafter, to be absolutely in the right. I was aware
that, had he so minded, in 1903, when he was easily the most powerful
man in the Party and the most popular in Ireland, he could have
smashed at one onslaught the conspiracy of "the determined
campaigners" and driven its authors to a well-deserved doom. But the
mistake he made then, as mistake I believe it to be, was that he left
the field to those men, who had no alternative policy of their own to
offer to the country, and who, instead of consolidating the national
organisation for the assertion of Irish right, consolidated it rather
in the interests of their own power and personal position. Thus it
happened that a movement conceived and intended as the adequate
expression of the people's will became, in the course of a short
twelve months, everywhere outside of Munster, a mere machine for
registering the decrees of Mr Dillon and his co-conspirators.

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