Ireland Since Parnell

his beneficent schemes for "killing Home Rule with kindness," the countr

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 upo

out at the very doorsteps of the ragged and hungry peasants, was to fill a stranger with a sacred rage and make it an unshirkable d

ory 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

prietors, 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

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 assuredly 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

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 Assistant 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 advertisement which was worth scores of organisers and monster meeti

adfast 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 constitution 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 Constitution. 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 circumstances 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

ted 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

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

ceeded 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 constitutional 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

o 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

ment, 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 nobler promptings of patriotism. I believe myself the country would have done much better had the United Irish League gone on with its own

ickerings and divisions which had wrought such harm to the cause of the people, an

wn power gone on a little further the United Irish League would have been able at the General Election

ssive 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 leadership 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 leadership. At any rate, he was the only possible selection, yet once again Mr Dillon exhibited a disposition to show the clo

League and the People's Rights Association thereafter died a natural d

n which made it possible for the constituencies to control the organisation, to select their own Parliamentary representatives and generally to direct national affairs within their borders. The conception of the Consti

TNO

1

e 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'B