MR PARNELL'S MOTHER.

Grey River Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 5396, 16 January 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

MR PARNELL'S MOTHER.

From time to time we have heard that Mrs Parnell, mother of the Irish agitator, has been so unfortunate in business as to lose the whole of the considerable property she once possessed. It is now announced that application has been made to the Secretary of the American Navy for a pension in consideration of her straitened circumstances and the services rendered by her father, Admiral Stewart, in the war against England in 1812. This has led an English contemporary to remark : — The announcement cannot but excite a good deal of wonder as to the view taken by the Irish people of Mr Parnell's observance of domestic duties. There is no more pleasing trait in the character of the Irish peasantry than the cheerfulness with which they assist their aged relatives to the utmost of their ability. What, th n, asks a contemporary, can they think of the conduct of a gentleman who, having received a sum of something like £40,000 from his admiring countrymen to clear his estate of encumbrances, permits his mother in her old age to become an object of public compassion in a distant land? To ordinary persons it must seem nothing short of an outrage on public decency that an individual who was the presiding genius of an organisation which taught its adherents the d ity of robbing their landlords in order to provide a good livelihood for their relatives, should neglect to furnish his own mother with the means of passing her declining years in comfort. If the Irish people pass over this matter with indifference, the fact will be a melancholy proof of the extent to which their traditional notions of morality have been undermined by the agrarian agitation of the last few years.