First Home Rule Bill (1886)

Chapter XX

First Home Rule Bill (1886)

The Irish Party had been strengthened by able recruits after 1880. John Redmond in 1881, M. J. Kenny in 1882, O’Brien, Harrington and William Redmond in 1883. Other men of remarkable mould joined up afterwards. Few countries flung forth more powerful types in the same period. Afterwards Davitt, Crean, Mat Harris, P. A. Chance, Vesey Knox, Dan Crilly, Pope Hennessy, Maurice Healy, Swift MacNeill, J. E. O’Doherty and F. O’Driscoll fell into the ranks. Lord Balfour, in a generous speech in 1922, extolled their discipline and efficiency.

In March, 1886, when we were on the eve of the Home Rule Bill, Parnell assembled a few confidants at the Westminster Palace Hotel to hear the result of his conversations with Gladstone. Justin MacCarthy, James O’Kelly, Sexton, William O’Brien, Dillon, E. D. Gray and I were of the trusted.

Redmond had no status at that time, and was not invited. I am not sure if T. P. O’Connor was there. Parnell after the Split said Davitt attended, but he was mistaken. What happened was that Davitt came by request to the first meeting of the Party on the day the Home Rule Bill was introduced, although not then an M.P., and Parnell confused the two events.

We met on a raw, foggy night at the Westminster Palace Hotel with hearts aflame. The thought that a British Prime Minister had agreed to realize the dream for which Daniel O’Connell and Isaac Butt in vain had striven quickened our pulses. As Parnell unfolded details, however, we grew disheartened at the niggardliness of Gladstone’s offer as regards finance.

To our murmurs he replied, “Gentlemen, I share your regrets. I took up my hat to-day at one point to leave, and break off the negotiations with Gladstone. If any of you wish to resume them, and you think you can do better, take my place.” Toward midnight, chastened, we went out into the fog and frost.

Before the Home Rule Bill was introduced, Gladstone addressed a letter to Lord de Vesci inviting information from every representative person capable of enlightening him. He especially wished to meet Lord Cloncurry, but could not remember more than the first syllable of his name. So he told Mrs. Gladstone to find out a peer whose name began with “Clon,” and invite him to breakfast.

In the “guide to the peerage” she lit upon the late Lord Clonmel, and that nobleman received an invitation to breakfast with the Prime Minister. In amazement he took it to Lord Randolph Churchill at the Carlton Club, saying, “I don’t know anything about Home Rule, and wish you would tell me something to convey to the Old Man.” Randolph called in Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, and as a joke they told Lord Clonmel, “Be here sharp at 9 o’clock tomorrow and we shall give you every information for the breakfast.” Next day Randolph blended Lord Clonmel’s knowledge of Ireland with so many brandies-and-sodas that he had a difficulty in getting into the hansom which drove him to Downing Street.

On arrival there his Lordship pulled himself together and took a seat at the breakfast table. He had wit enough to keep silent until the Prime Minister began to ply him with questions. The first was: “What now, my Lord, do you think is the present condition of Ireland?

Lord Clonmel gasped, “Oh, hell, sir, bloody!” Gladstone reallized the situation, and after the meal his guest, without being further interrogated, was bowed out.

When the door closed on him the Old Man sighed to Mrs. Gladstone, “I’m afraid, Catherine, we’ve invited the wrong peer!

Gladstone’s thirst for information was such that John Morley (Irish Secretary) used to wail to Labouchere, before the Home Rule Bill was brought in, “He sets me sums.”

On the morning the Bill was introduced, members came down to secure seats at 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 5 a.m., and 6 a.m. By 8 a.m. the overhanging galleries of the House were black with silk hats left by their owners to entitle them to places.

On the floor, chairs were set to accommodate members. It was the only occasion on which such a device had become necessary. A prank of the young member for N. Tyrone, Lord Frederick Hamilton, amused many. He deposited in the members’ hats tracts against Home Rule. This delighted us, but British Liberals deemed it a trespass.

At 4 p.m. Gladstone, arrayed in furs, drove to Palace Yard with Mrs. Gladstone - his noble face reflecting the gravity and dignity of the occasion. Causton, ex-M.P, (now Lord Southwark), approached his carriage as he alighted and convoyed him to the private stairs used by Ministers,

The speech Gladstone made occupied hours. Every one hung upon its majestic phrases. When he sat down members poured out. Sir Edward Clarke rose to reply, and I chaffed Biggar with, “Well, Joe, is he still your ‘industrious man but dishonest’?”

He purred, “Well, he’s industrious, anyhow.”

Next day shadows of antagonism to Home Rule from the Liberal side began to cloud the sky. W. T. Stead, pontiff of Nonconformity, headed his article on the Bill in the Pall Mall Gazette, “This won’t do!” His objections related to the fact that the Bill abolished Irish representation at Westminster.

On the other hand, Lord Rosebery sent Labouchere a reassuring note as to Scotland’s fealty because the Scotsman (afterwards so unyielding) received the proposals kindly. Gladstone sat for Midlothian.

Still, the fact could not be blinked that Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan had resigned. Free from Cabinet fetters they began to “caucus” with Lord Hartington and John Bright - both of whom had refused to take office when the Ministry was formed. A fierce struggle sprang up. Chamberlain, at the outset of his speech after resignation, tried to give reasons for withdrawing from the Government. Before he could complete a sentence Gladstone interposed to ask, “Has my right hon. friend obtained Her Majesty’s permission to make a statement? ” The Irish cheered, and the House felt it was “first blood” for the “old parliamentary hand.”

On the night of the first reading Parnell asked me to come to the Library when the House rose, to go through the draft of the Home Rule Bill before it was circulated officially by the Government. Until day broke we stayed poring over each clause and line, while weary policemen rattled keys, and thrust sleepy faces through the doors to hint that such a vigil was unfair to them.

The emotions of the period are portrayed in a letter sent me by an intimate of Chamberlain’s:

36 Camelford Street,

Brighton,

March, 1886.,

“Did I not tell thee, O my friend, that Gladstone would be the real St. Patrick if his day came?

Give my congratulations to Tim Healy. His speech was like a lyric of Deborah when Israel was freed. It is the finest Irish speech in my time. The day of liberty and the lifting up of a great Nation has come. Hurrah!

Thine always,”

G. J. Holyoake.

W. H. Duignan, Esq.,

Walsall.

The debate on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill was maintained for a week. Meanwhile Chamberlain’s plans to capture John Bright were skilful. A committee on “procedure” was sitting upstairs, of which Bright, Chamberlain, Beach and the Marquis of Hartington were members. So was I.

Nominally we all were occupied by the reform of parliamentary rules, but our hearts were far away. Chamberlain continually took Bright out into the corridor, and with intense earnestness argued and expostulated with him. Bright’s waverings became visible in his weighty gestures of doubt. I saw this whenever I had occasion to leave the Committee Room. Lord Hartington had been separated from Chamberlain by a quarrel which arose in 1878 on a motion of Parnell’s against flogging in the Army. Chamberlain, then in a thin House, spoke of Hartington as “the late leader of the Liberal Party” because he supported flogging. His frigidity when he dropped these words was awesome.

Both men afterwards sat in the Cabinet of 1880, but the feud between them was only made up in their resistance to Home Rule. In 1886 the Liberal phalanx of dissent was organized by Chamberlain. No other opponent could have marshalled it.

Gladstone in the previous five years had dominated his Party so that few could believe he would be defeated.

In the debates on the Home Rule Bill T. P. O’Connor saw otherwise, and made a speech suggesting compromise. This offended Parnell, who said to me, during a division, “It isn’t T.P.’s Bill we want; it’s this Bill,” slapping the text against his hand. Nevertheless, T.P.’s judgment was sound, and I told Parnell so, but he was unable to forecast the Unionist-Liberal strength.

During the crisis Chamberlain came to me to ask if I would dine with him. I felt this most embarrassing, as I had never met Ministers or accepted their hospitality.

I had attacked him previously, but feared that a refusal might add another brand to the flames. I, therefore, reluctantly consented.

Then Chamberlain told Morley that I was to be his guest, and Morley carried a tale of “intrigue” to Parnell. Morley boasted later that his own friendship with Chamberlain survived their political differences and that they continually dined together. Yet he fell into a “taking,” because I agreed to consume a Birmingham mutton chop!

Parnell asked me to break the engagement, and I acquiesced. Chamberlain then was as wishful to help Ireland as Gladstone, though by different plans. Davitt records that Parnell said he had caught me “intriguing with Chamberlain” - in other words, that I was willing to incur indigestion for the sake of Ireland.

Morley had then only been two months Chief Secretary. He seemed like a hen that had hatched out a clutch of ducks and was beside herself when the brood took to the water.

When appointed Irish Secretary in 1886 he was said to have disposed of God by spelling the Holy Name with a small “G.” Dr. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, mildly protested, but made clear that no personal or political unfriendliness was imported.

Judge Dodd used to tell that at a dinner he gave to some Ulster Presbyterians, one of them asked me, “What religion does Morley profess?” and that I replied, “He is a pious Atheist.” We hailed Gladstone at that date as the “Grand Old Man,” but Morley lies embowered in my mind as the “Grand Old Maid.” His stamina is measurable by his resignation in 1914, on the eve of the Great War, when statesmen were needed.

In 1886, before the division on the Home Rule Bill, Chamberlain’s supporters held a meeting in Committee Room 15. John Bright showed hesitation and favoured abstention. An impassioned speech from Sir George Trevelyan swept objectors off their feet. He urged, “Are we who have made such sacrifices for England, the only Party to show no convictions? Conservatives are opposed to Home Rule and will vote ‘No’ tonight. The Irish favour Home Rule and will cry ‘Aye.’ So will the followers of Mr. Gladstone. Are Liberals like us, who are Unionists and have given up office and friendships, to stand neutral and declare we have no convictions?”

This speech carried the day, and brigaded doubters against Gladstone. While the meeting was in progress the House was nervous and listless. Chamberlain’s friends slowly glided back into their places, and we knew that the fate of the Measure was sealed. I had bet the late Lord Portsmouth £10 that he and his friends would not muster 50 in the lobby. He knew better, and I paid.

On the last night of the debate Parnell got a message from Gladstone which, if acted on, would have baffled the Opposition and averted calamity. Knowing that Lord Carnarvon, the Tory Lord-Lieutenant in 1885, had had an interview with Parnell on behalf of Lord Salisbury to discuss an Irish Parliament, Gladstone wished to avail himself of this crushing fact. Salisbury’s complicity was evidenced by speeches at the Mansion House, and at Newport, in which he foreshadowed a Central Government for Ireland.

The provincial assemblies which Chamberlain favoured were not mentioned. A disclosure of the Carnarvon interview would have smashed opposition to the Bill. Hesitating Liberals (who were many) would have flocked into the Government lobby in spite of Chamberlain.

Gladstone, before rising to wind up the debate, sent his Chief Whip, Arnold Morley, to me saying that in the course of his speech he proposed (if Parnell agreed) to ask him for fuller information about the Carnarvon interview. He felt that if it were made known before the second reading of the Bill, at least an adjournment would be demanded to slit the Tory intrigue.

Arnold Morley begged me to get Parnell to respond to Gladstone’s proposed challenge and make an avowal. Just as he beckoned me out, Gladstone rose. If Parnell consented I was to signal the G.O.M. by dropping a sheet of paper from my hand to show that his request for information would be favourably answered. After a hurried conference with Arnold Morley I went to Parnell on this great business, but found him limp and irresolute.

He drearily talked over the pros and cons, but concluded nothing. The interview with Carnarvon was no secret, and Gladstone again and again darted his eyes in our direction, questioningly, to see would I make the signal. It was never given.

Next day Carnarvon told the House of Lords the story, but the Home Rule Bill had been beaten in the Commons the night before, and a Dissolution lay in front.

Had Parnell made on the Monday the disclosure Lord Carnarvon made next day, it would have changed the course of history. Gladstone would have handled the case like a Napoleon or a Nelson, and either the Opposition would have been routed, or an adjournment carried.

In the latter event a Select Committee would have been set up by the Liberals to investigate the relations of Tory Ministers with Irish politicians, and the fatal Dissolution would have been averted.

Yet Barry O’Brien’s Life of Parnell, vol. ii, p.92 (published in 1898), condemns him for “the most serious offence of his political life” in disclosing “to Parliament the conversations with Lord Carnarvon, which were essentially private.” This is absurd. Parnell made no mention of Lord Carnarvon, or the conversations with him, until they were first disclosed by Lord Carnarvon himself in the House of Lords. The furthest he went (on the last night of the debate) was to say:

“When the Tories were in office we had reason to know that the Conservative Party, if they should be successful at tine polls, would have offered Ireland a statutory legislature with a right to protect her own industries, and that this would have been coupled with settlement of the Irish land question on the basis of purchase, on a larger scale than that now proposed by the Prime Minister.”

Does this warrant the stricture by a friendly biographer that it was “the most serious offence of Parnell’s political life”? Taunts were thrown at Parnell after he spoke, but his reticence was maintained.

Sir Michael Hicks-Beach protested:

“I must, for myself and for my colleagues, state, in the plainest and most distinct terms, that I utterly and categorically deny that the late Conservative Government ever had any such intention.”

Parnell: “Does the right hon. gentleman mean to deny that that intention was communicated to me by one of his own colleagues, a Minister of the Crown?

Beach: “Yes, sir, I do (cries of ‘Name’), to the best of my knowledge and belief; and if any such statement was communicated by anyone to the hon. member, I am certain he had not the authority to make it. (Renewed cries of ‘Name.’) Will the hon. member do us the pleasure to give the name to the House?

Parnell: “The right hon. gentleman has asked me a question which he knows is a very safe one. (Cries of ‘Oh! ’) I shall be very glad to communicate the name of his colleague when I receive his colleague’s permission to do so.” (Cries of “Oh ” “Name! ”)

Beach: “Insinuations are easily made. To prove them is a very different thing; and I have observed that the rules of the code of honour of hon. members below the gangway step in at the point when proof becomes necessary.”

Men unapprenticed to parliamentary situations, with their causes and effects, fail to grasp the importance of apparent trifles. The science of the prize ring, the devices of the betting paddock, the skill of the billiard champion, the calculations of the Stock Exchange, the advocacy of the Law Courts, have their counterparts in the House of Commons.

Parnell was a master of technique, but at the supreme moment Capua overcame his judgment. Had he been quick to appreciate Gladstonian strategy, before the Liberal split, Ireland would have been spared dire consequences. His mind and heart were not at Westminster, but at Brighton.

His inertness may be excused by ill-health. He was visiting, under a false name, a doctor who knew him well. The fool-public, of course, was kept in darkness.

After an assault such as Beach’s, who could have blamed Parnell if he had stated the facts? Yet he kept Carnarvon’s secret.

There is not on record a complaint, whether from Liberal or Tory chroniclers, of a breach of faith by the Irish Party towards English Ministers or politicians. “Deals” or bargains often had to be made, but in my 38 years in the House of Commons no adversary alleged that the humblesz Irishman had broken his bond, or been unfaithful to confidences reposed in him.

A Tory whip, Lord Edmond Talbot, who became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland as Lord FitzAlan, proclaimed that this was the unbroken experience of his Party and of the Liberals. The breach of this tradition in 1921 in the attack on the plenipotentiaries who negotiated the Irish Treaty may be cited to the contrary. This, however, was led by Mr. De Valera, whose foreign extraction unfitted him to understand Irish traditions. It cannot tarnish the repute for the observance of honourable understandings by native Irish representatives for 120 years.

On the night the Home Rule Bill was defeated, O’Shea grinned down on us from the Gallery gloatingly, in derision. He refused to vote, despite Parnell’s sacrifices for him in Galway.

Although Gladstone was beaten, the service he rendered to Ireland was immeasurable. Gratitude cannot repay him. To blazon his achievement in converting world-opinion would need the harnessing of a lightning flash. Sneerers allege his change was due to “votes” and greed for “office,” as if that were a plenary summing-up of a great mentality. Irish strength in the House, it is true, was an argument by which he persuaded his colleagues. His own genius was not moved by such considerations alone. They operated, as every factor operates, to make up a situation, but Gladstone’s mind had long been working and expanding under Irish artificers.

On the night the Home Rule Bill perished, my brother and I drove away in dejection with a well-known authoress who had been in the Ladies’ Gallery. I then foretold that it would take 30 years to undo the disaster. To Liberals or Tories it only meant a change of Ministers. To us it was the triumph of Cromwell’s Ironsides. T. P. O’Connor correctly judged the situation during the debates, but Parnell and William O’Brien had more rosy expectations.

Before long every one realized that another generation of struggle lay before the Irish people. Gladstone at the polls was beaten in July, 1886. The marshalling of forces against Home Rule was overwhelming.

Riots broke out in Belfast. Orangemen murdered policemen, and the R.I.C. shot Orangemen in reprisal and were dubbed “Morley’s murderers.” On the day I lost my seat in South Derry in July, 1886, I came on a police party sheltering from a shower behind a gable in Magherafelt. An Orange mob howled at my heels, but despite their jeers the constables, as I passed, came to the salute.

Could any beaten man in such an hour forget this homage by the R.I.C. to the Cause of Ireland?

Sir Thos. Lea, of Kidderminster, a Liberal-Unionist, defeated me. At my election the year before the “Covenanters “abstained from voting, as their creed obliged them to take no part in political or civic life. They were a remnant of some ancient Presbyterian body, and would not serve as magistrates or jurors, or vote at elections. After the introduction of the Home Rule Bill their authorities passed a resolution declaring that Ireland’s woes were due to the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, and that the Penal Laws should be restored.

In my second contest some of the Covenanting Ministers preached on the Sunday before the polling that their flocks must vote for Lea, as it was now a question between “Christ and Healy.”

In 1885 the Ordnance Survey delimitation of South Derry yielded a constituency overwhelmingly Nationalist. Hence that boundary was set aside by the Commission appointed under the Liberals.

In August, 1886, Parnell told the new House of Commons (to which I had not been elected) that I had threatened Chamberlain and Dilke if they came to Ireland they would be “ducked in a horse-pond.” This was a riposte for Galway. I was in Scotland when he spoke.

I did not take the trouble to find out what foundation Parnell had for his statement. Three months previously, when Colonel Saunderson made a rattling attack on us by means of a quotation from United Ireland against Gladstone, I asked William O’Brien, “Is that mine or yours?” “I don’t know,” said he, “till I examine the file.” Next day he shook his head mournfully, saying, “I’m the culprit.”

Soon there reached me letters of O’Shea to Labouchere proving that Parnell had fathered Chamberlain’s stunted proposals of 1885 in the Fortnightly Review, which I had been restrained from condemning in United Ireland. O’Shea wrote:

1 Albert Mansions, S. W.,

November, 1886.

Dear Labouchere, -

“In writing to Chamberlain to-day I mentioned our correspondence of Monday. In the negotiations which you carried on during the debates on the Home Rule Bill you stated by instruction that Mr. Parnell repudiated all connection with the Irish scheme in the “Radical Programme” which had been supported by Chamberlain, and you were induced to suggest that the information which I had given Chamberlain on the subject was false. The frequent reiteration of Mr. Parnell’s repudiation and the necessary consequences having at length exhausted a patience which is long, I recently took an opportunity afforded by a paragraph in Truth to tell you that I was in a position to establish not only that Mr. Parnell had approved of the scheme in question, but that he was the originator of it. “It came to me from an Irish source,” said Chamberlain in the House of Commons. That source was the fountain-head.

On Sunday I showed you, in Mr. Parnell’s own handwriting, that it was he who proposed the scheme. You know him so well that I could not deny that if challenged he might possibly use the quibbles you so amusingly suggested. But the case was disposed of when, with the cynical persiflage which is one of your greatest charms, you acknowledged that it was “weak” of him to write that he had “proposed” the scheme with which he was afterwards to say he had had nothing to do.

W. H. O’Shea.

P.S.-You understand, of course, that I have no wish to carry the matter further.”

To Labouchere’s reply (not preserved by me) O’Shea answered:

1 Albert Mansions, S.W.,

1st December, 1886.

Dear Labouchere,-

“I have no doubt that I have fully accomplished my object. That object was solely to give you just so much information out of a mass of irrefutable evidence as to render it impossible for the gentleman [Parnell] to repeat, respecting a political business with which I was connected, the error into which through no fault of yours (except misplaced confidence) you were betrayed. There was no misunderstanding whatever.

Such an explanation as you now suggest would hold no more water than a denial of an officially reported speech at Cincinnati. Twice over his own signature you have seen that through me Mr. Parnell himself proposed to our friend” a scheme of Irish administrative reform. Dare he say that our friend” was not Chamberlain, the scheme not the subject of an article in the Fortnightly Review? If not, who was ” our friend,” and what was the scheme which Mr. Parnell proposed?

Any quibble thus tumbles over at a whiff. Dare Mr. E. D Gray [Freeman owner] deny that he was cognizant of the nature of the s home and of the negotiations?”

Yours truly,

W. H. O’Shea.

Although Chamberlain might have exposed Parnell in the matter, he kept silent - doubtless to avoid the imputation of a breach of private confidence.

The defeat of William O’Brien in South Tyrone and that of myself in South Derry were made up for by the return of Sexton in West Belfast. That victory was so great that “personation” was alleged and an election petition was lodged against him.

O’Brien was beaten by a Scotsman of ability, T. W. Russell, and I by an Englishman with money, Sir Thomas Lea, of Kidderminster, who had sat for Donegal. Of Lea there is nothing to tell, but Russell had brains and a history. He was secretary to the Dublin Temperance Association, and a vehement opponent of the Licensed trade. Devoid of the geniality and humour of his race, he sported a bilious face and splenetic manners. In his absence one morning from Licensing Sessions, Dick Adams, counsel for the Vintners, made great headway with Recorder Falkiner. Russell came rushing in, and Adams’s face fell as he growled to me, “Here comes Russell with four fathoms of bilge-water in his hold.”

Russell was given an Under-Secretaryship by Lord Salisbury about 1895, but on the complaints of the landlords in 1900 he was deprived of his post. Then he turned Home Ruler. Before that his biggest feat was to supply Chamberlain in 1893 with material to unhorse John Dillon. Accused of excessive language by Chamberlain, Dillon interrupted to say that his hot words were wrung from him because of the Mitchelstown massacre (when the police fired on a crowd and killed three men in 1887). Russell darted out to the library and came back with Hansard, which he thrust into Chamberlain’s hands. It showed that the Mitchelstown shootings were after and not before Dillon’s speech. As Chamberlain received the volume no smile lit his face, but in icy tones he proceeded to twit Dillon, who became an object of general compassion. So great was the effect that Gladstone sent for Dillon and insisted that an apology to the House must be made. Next day Russell listened mockingly to his contrite appeal for forgiveness.

When Gerald Balfour’s Land Bill of 1896 was under discussion Russell showed himself so open a supporter of the tenants’ claims that he cheered something spoken on our side. Thereupon Walter Long, who was the only other occupant of the Treasury Bench at the moment, shouted, “Damn you! Get off this bench and cheer elsewhere! ” Russell kept silent, and after the next Dissolution lost his job.

Walter Long, though thoroughly honest, was a very high Tory. When he left Ireland for the Colonial Office a special wire connected him with Dublin Castle to enable him to overpower the Chief Secretary. He had been member for South Dublin, and Chairman of the Irish Unionists. A landlord himself and a connection of the Fitzwilliam-Dick family (Co. Wicklow), he naturally cherished landlord sentiments. The question of rent as between owners and occupiers, though akin to that of wages between employer and workmen in Britain, was not so regarded by English Trade Unionists.

In 1880, Walter Long accused Parnell of rack-renting and evictions in Carlow, saying he had given him notice of the attack. Parnell stayed away as usual from the House, and I ran to his hotel vainly to try to find him. Next day he appeared and showed that he was only a bare trustee of the Hacketstown Estate of his brother Henry (for conveyancing purposes) for one day. Thereupon Long handsomely expressed his regret.

Long kept up for years the closest intimacy in the Smoke Room with a modest Nationalist, Donal Sullivan, M.P., -who never spoke and rarely appeared in public. When he died Long wrote a touching letter of sorrow to his family.

In the autumn of 1886 I was busy helping to uphold Sexton’s election in West Belfast, where a petition had been lodged. Its main allegation was that voters had been personated. So they had, for Tory wire-pullers there managed to get the Liberal Government of 1886 to shift the Antrim Militia to Tregantle Fort in England to prevent Nationalists amongst them voting. Their calculation was that their own Militiamen could be spared at the Dissolution. When the General Election came this plan broke down, for Nationalist partisans revenged the transfer by personating Orange Militiamen. The Conservative agents were outwitted. They were alert to prevent the personation of Nationalist absentees, but did not dream that their friends in the Militia would be voted for. Until then personation of opponents was unheard of, and those who got the Militia drafted away provoked many an irregularity.

We reached Belfast after a victory in the Derry Petition, when Sir George Lewis threw up the sponge and yielded to Justin MacCarthy a seat which the Tories had held for centuries with only a single break. In both petitions the MacDermot, Q.C., ex-Attorney-General, and D. B. Sullivan led for the Nationalists. I was Junior Counsel. MacDermot’s handling of the Belfast case was superb. The town was seething with excitement after the riots, in which scores had been killed on both sides. Many, to hide their dead, buried them in back yards. Yet we walked to and from the court without molestation, knowing that an Orange rioter never moves without orders. Unlike the Nationalist mobster, he is a disciplined unit. Orange leaders control the rank and file when they get out of hand by touching the “soft pedal.”

The Counsel against Sexton were John Gerrard, Q.C., and Kisbey, Q.C., who had appeared for the Orangemen at Judge Day’s inquiry into the riots. They could not connect Sexton or his agents with personation, but strove to wipe out his. majority of 100 by invalidating votes wrongfully cast. Personation was proved in some two score cases3 but the petitioners stopped there after a week’s inquiry. They then applied for a subpoena to the Rev. Patrick Convery, P.P., President of the Nationalist organization, to produce the books of the League. It was a disturbing demand, but MacDermot’s motto was “steady riding.” We knew that no personation which could wipe out Sexton’s majority had taken place, but we also knew that someone might be held to be his “agent,” and that if an “agent” abetted a single offence the seat was forfeited. We dared not inquire of Father Convery what his evidence would be, or what his books might disclose.

This devoted priest was dubbed by the Orangemen “Black Pat.” At that time the darkness of his hair and the bristling stubble (now, alas, white) justified the nickname. On the Saturday he entered the witness-box, his face was so pale that no one could think of him under that sobriquet. We assumed “the other side” called him with knowledge of some incident to which he must make a fatal avowal. The galleries of the court were thronged by hundreds of his parishioners-visibly disconcerted.

An election petition at a critical moment surpasses in thrills everything in prize-fighting, bull-baiting, cock-fighting, horse-racing, cricket, football, tennis, golf, or the tables at Monte Carlo. Even in murder trials the audience has time to steady itself after the jury retires to consider the verdict. In election petitions the lightest word of a witness may convulse a constituency, and in Belfast might have provoked flashes from the guns.

The first question Kisbey put was, “Father Convery, have you brought the books and documents of the National League?

“Everything,” he replied, and pointed to bundles weighing at least a hundredweight, which it would require a month to examine. “Are those they? ” asked Kisbey, annoyed. “Yes,” answered the witness.

The books were being shepherded by our solicitor, McGough, who blandly inquired, “Which do you call for?” “Oh! “poohed Kisbey, exasperated. Thereat we, as became opposing Counsel, laughed in derision. The parishioners of Father Convery in the gallery laughed louder.

Then the MacDermot broke in, “Is this a fishing inquiry?

The priest by this time had regained self-possession, and overcome the strangeness of his surroundings. Again he became “Black Pat.”

Kisbey proceeded, “You know, of course, Father Convery, the seriousness of the offence of personation? ” Instantly MacDermot raged to his feet in protest. The judges were Baron Dowse, a famous Liberal Attorney-General, and William O’Brien. The former used to tell us at dinner that the most painful moment of his life after being elected for Derry was when, on being petitioned against, he heard the newsboys shout under his hotel window, “Trial of Dowse.”

His fellow-judge, the Unionist-Catholic William O’Brien, who had been defeated in Ennis in 1879, would have unseated Sexton if ha could. So the MacDermot vehemently intervened with the protest: “My friend has made Father Convery his witness, and he has not proved hostile. Personation is a grave electoral crime, and a felony. Can he cross-examine his own witness? Let him put a straight question to Father Convery and ask, ‘Has he connived at, paid for, or encouraged personation, directly or indirectly?’” “Quite right,” Baron Dowse briskly acquiesced. “Mr. Kisbey, you must put your question in some other form.”

Father Convery, of course, had not been party to any illegality, and Kisbey, instead of renewing his examination, murmured, “Very well, my Lord, the witness may go down.” Adroitness and a knowledge of the tribunal count in advocacy more than any mastery of law. The petition was dismissed with costs.

Baron Dowse was a learned lawyer, but could hardly utter a sentence without a joke. In the ‘seventies he was law officer under Mr. Gladstone. Being attacked in the House by Bernal Osborne, a wit, who sat for Waterford, for a speech he never made, he lay supine on the Treasury Bench. Someone passed his assailant a note telling him he was mistaken, and Osborne stammered, “Mr. Speaker, I find I must withdraw what I have said against the Irish Solicitor-General,” and sat down. Dowse rose with a grin and chirruped, “Mr. Speaker, as the hon. gentleman has withdrawn what he has said about me, I withdraw what I was going to say about him!”

In 1888, Dowse, in the Exchequer Division on a Habeas Corpus Motion by me to discharge a prisoner convicted by “Removables” under the Coercion Act of 1887, paid me the compliment of asking, “Do you go to sleep with your books, Mr. Healy?” “No,” I replied, “for Blackstone declares that ‘the law is a lady that loveth to lie alone.’”

His colleague at the Belfast Petition, Judge O’Brien, was a buyer of rare books. His Munster phraseology was blended with a fine literary taste. In spite of the law then prevailing, he left his library to the Jesuits at his death, although he knew the bequest (if attacked) could not stand. A patient man on the bench, he saw red politically and religiously. He told a friend on the Northern Circuit, “I was glad to be able to decide to-day against that blackavised [Sic. KF.] Presbyterian Edward Cumming.” “Judge,” came the reply, “Cumming is a worse papist than yourself!” Cumming hailed from Armagh, and was a profound lawyer with a dry wit.

One day Adams praised to him the scenery of Bantry Bay whose waters washed his birthplace. Cumming responded, “Yes, where every prospect pleases” - and broke off.

Bishop Heber’s verse concludes, it will be remembered, “And only man is vile.”

The MacDermot had been satirized by Dick Adams as ” the only Irish chieftain who never offered hospitality.” No man, he declared, “ever saw the froth on his pint, or the bead on his naggin.” My experience was different, for the MacDermot was the only client I ever had who rewarded his Counsel beyond his fee.

I was retained by him in a Purchase case when a cranky rector sought to acquire in perpetuity a portion of his estate. Believing that Bar etiquette required that I should give back fees from a fellow-practitioner, I returned them to his solicitor. Many adjournments had taken place, and before the final hearing the MacDermot came to me angrily saying, “I hear you have returned your fees.” “Yes,” I said. “Well,” he retorted,” unless you take them I will engage another Counsel. I charge my own relatives, even the O’Connor Don, for my advice, and will not allow you to act for me without a fee.”

Wishing to beat his opponent in the last round, I consented to take the cheques. Next day I won, and that evening there was delivered at my house a case of old champagne from the MacDermot. The man alleged to be “near “proved to be the most generous client I ever fought for.

A Bar story about him was that as Counsel defending the Midland Railway of Ireland, after the plaintiff’s case opened, he said, “My Lord, I warn the other side that I shall put in evidence the report of the guard of the train as to the accident.”

“No, indeed!” said his opponent. The report would have been fatal to the Railway Company, and the MacDermot trembled lest it should be called for!

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