A CHANGE IN THE IRISH PARTY.

Evening Post, Volume LVII, Issue 34, 10 February 1899, Page 4

A CHANGE IN THE IRISH PARTY.

Sir William Hakcottrt's resignation of the / Liberal Leadership in the Imperial Parliament has, we learn from yesterday's cable messages, been promptly followed by Mr. John Dillon's retirement from the sessional chairmanship of the Irish Nationalist Party. The reason alleged for Mr. Dillon's action is his desire to reunite the Home Rule Party that was divided by the unfortunate divorce proceedings of 1890. Both these changes of headship are tributes to the success that has attended the administration of the Salisbury-Chamber-lain coalition Government. They remind one forcibly of the changes of bowling to which a losing team is bound to resort in presence of their opponents' superior batting. Ably as Sir William Harcourt led his Liberal remnant, he has not made any lasting impression upon the Ministerial position, and the disunited Irish Party has learnt by adversity that so long as it is divided against itself, Home Rule— the re-establishment of an Irish National Parliament — is practically hopeless. Mr. Parnell was quite right in his contention that England would never become enthusiastic in the cause of Irish Nationality, and that the only hope of an independent Legislature lay in the Irish people and their Parliamentary representatives showing their power and their combined determination. How cleverly and persistently Mr. Parnell trod upon the toes of the selfcomplacent Englishman is now a matter of history. The privileges, or perhaps we should say rights, ho thus won for his country are proofs of his political insight, and an earnest to Irishmen that a constitutional Fenianism, as expounded by their late leader, is a wiser method than the revolutionary ardours of the past. In his recently published biography of Mr. Parnell, Mr. Barry O'Brien quotes Mr. Gladstone as saying so recently as 1897—" Ah 1 had Parnell lived, had there been no divorce proceedings, I do solemnly believe there would be a Parliament in Ireland now. Oh ! it was a terrible tragedy.' In truth, it was one of the cruellest tragedies in modem political history. Charles Stewart Parnell was leading a united Party towards a goal that loomed nearer day by day. His unbounded energy, his great talents of organisation, his fixed determination to emancipate and avenge his country — all these qualities seemed destined to make him the regenerator of Ireland. Suddenly, when success seemed almost within his grasp, the story of a ten years' liaison with the wife of a colleague began to be bruited abroad, and with true classic irony the evil consequences of a secret sin fell upon him at the very moment when the future for which he had toiled was all but an accomplished fact. The sad history is well known. When the divorce proceedings were first instituted, Mr. Parnell unwisely and almost treacherously deceived his supporters by sending them semi-official denials of his guilt. The Catholic clergy, among others, trusted him still, and thought that his character would have been vindicated once more, as it had -been from the forgeries of Pigott. But when the case proved beyond a doubt the falsity of his denials, a natural wave of indignation passed over the Irish Clerical party and the English Nonconformist Home Rulers. Had Mr. Parnell " faoed the music," and admitted the facts before the trial with as much courage as he did after it was over, he might possibly have still remained at the helm, at any rate he would have saved his Party from the disastrous dissensions that have for so long paralysed its efforts. With the Nonconformist conscience roused and the Irish clericals justly indignant at the deception practised upon them, Mr. Parnell's leadership was, for the time at least, out of the question. But he refused to resign the reins, and the, Party split after the famous week of anc™ discussions in the Commons committee-room No. 15. Mr. Justin M'Carthy, formerly vice-chairman of the Party, was elected chairman by 44 members, while 26 still looked to Mr. Parnell as their chief. The death of Mr. Parnell and the retirement of Mr. M'Carthy failed to reunite the hostile fragments, and since the fatal disruption the two Home Rule sections have been bitterly hostile to one another. Mr. Dillon, who at one time was a devoted lieutenant of Mr. Parnell's, has since the rupture been a pronounced antiParnellite. He is consequently not a persona grata "s^ith the little band who follow Mr. Redmond, and, seeing the hopeless condition into which the Home Rule movement has lapsed, he now seeks with apparent disinterestedness to pave the way for union by his own self-effacement.