THE O'CONNOR MEMOIRS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20242, 30 April 1929, Page 8

THE O'CONNOR MEMOIRS.

REMINISCENCES OF " T.P."

ANGRY. IRISH PASSIONS.

LANDLORDS AND ASSASSINS

JVHAT PARNELL HAD TO COMBAT,

(Copyright..) No. XIII. There is no achievement in the life of Parnell which is more remarkable and more surprising than his success in a few years in producing the extraordinary transformation in the attitude of nearly all the Irish people (o constitutional agitation. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1875, and it took him less than five years to restore Irish faith and hope in Parliamentary methods. Parnell. instead of creating and maintaining, had reduced the revolutionary movement to a mere shadow of its former self.

Up to the election of 1830, all that ! could apparently be said about Parnell was that, by a policy of violent obstruction, he held up the House of Commons, had created scenes, had driven Ministers and big majorities to impotent fury, had introduced the eventful phenomenon of allnight sittings, and now and then, by methods like these, was able to wring from tho badgered and helpless Government some small concession. All kinds of things, combined at what proved to be tho psychological moment, as in other countries and in other revolutions, to mark tho hour as the last day of slavery and the da\vn of emancipation, the Land Leagtio swept from village to village, gathering force, strength, and adherents with every hour. Tho passion grew by what it fed on, until in the end there was in Ireland an outburst of revolutionary feeling that in its intensity was on the same level as that of tho Parisian mob that dragged the King; from iV ersailles. A Sensational Murder. The old landlordism in Ireland had only cne final weapon against it—that of assassination. It was a terrible but it ,was an ineffective weapon, as the success of the landlords and of the British Government in exiling more than half of the Irish population proved; but still, it Was in the tradition. There were all over the country the relics of the old ribbon societies, as they were called, which carried on this deadly war against the landlords; and they burst once more from their long lull of impotence into ominous activity. The first instance of the recreation of this force' was a sensational murder. Far away in a small village in the west of Ireland there was a landlord called Lord iMountmorres, whose small property left him with almost as scanty an income as that of the penniless peasants by whom he was surrounded. From all I have heard, he was rather a harmless person, hail-fellow-well-met in market or publichouse with his tenants. One morning, within half a mile of his own house, this landlord was found shot dead, with six revolver bullets in his body. The cruelty of this murder was emphasised by the painful and tragic incidents which followed, for a cottager near the spot where the body was found would not allow it to be brought into his house for a doctor to make assurance that the victim was dead. / The crime sent a shiver through Ireland, and still more, of course, through England. The bitter opposition by which the Government of Gladstone was assailed by the landlord party was enormously helped and increased by this murder. Lord Randolph Churchill went ramping around the country, and —though in less inflated language —Loid Salisbury and Sir Stafford Northeote joined in the chorus of violent denunciation both of the Government and of the Irish leaders. The Policy ol Coercion.

Not the centuries of oppression which had gone before, but the immediate injcirlonts of this revolutionary movement and the inaction of a Liberal i.-overnment ■were,/ with characteristic superficiality, described as the causes of this outburst of violence, tlie roots of which lay in six centuries of history. _ Gladstone was held Up as the chief culprit. Those denunciations at once of the .Ministers and the Irish leaders were .accompanied by the demand for the only alternative policy which the Tory leaders had to propose —namely, the policy of coeicion. Ireland was lawless in the throes of civil war, making demands which the Tories denounced as confiscation, but most of which they themselves have translated in a later period into law. The Government had to stand between these two policies; lieland demanding the abolition of rent and of landlordism and the creation of a peasant proprietorship, and the lorv Opposition challenging all attempts at reform and offering the bleak alternative of coercion. . This produced ft revolt in the , mo . re Liberal section of the Ministry and 111 tllG Liberal press. Mr. Bright was against coercion, at least as the last word, arid so was Mr. Chamberlain. The general feelin0 * among Liberals was that an attempt should be made to meet the tragic situation in Ireland by the offer of real remedial land legislation. But the revolution by this time—it might be called the sanguinary revolution—had got beyond both enemies and friends. There was thunder and lightning and tragedy m ©very breeze that blew on the Irish hills. Parnell's Platform Campaign. The '"effect of this revolution had been as violent on Parnell, and indeed on ail Irish politicians, as on the British parties. Up to the foundation of the Land League the Irish demand of land reform had not cot beyond what were known as the three TT's'* —fixity of tenure, fair re"it, and tree salo—and up till then any measure which offered these things to Ireland would have been joyfully accepted as almost tlio last void in the emancipation of the tenants. The Land League transformed this ancient demand into an anachronism which was only mentioned to be derouncod and rejected. Parne powiblj foeeari as an advocate of the three is. but had been swept on by the Land League, and perhaps also by the tempestuous and wildly enthusiastic receptions which he got, at the crowded and tumultuous meetings through which he swept frotr/ one part of Ireland to the other. Evervw-here the people prostrated themselves before him. The man who, but a few months before, had been reluctantly atid/bv a small majority elected as leader of a disunited party was qu'.cldv ra,^; '2 the tempestuous voices of the multitude into the irresistible and adored leader of a nation-wide and revolutionary movement. Compensation to Landlords. In speech after speech Parnell adopted the Land League programme, and reacted ftnV form of compromise which still lctt, rent and the landlord. Neither t hen nor at anv other time did tl.e Irish Party propose the expulsion of the landlords without full compensation, and their plan, after venrs of struggle, was put forward and finally adopted—that the State should advance the purchase money to the landlords.' and the tenants should pay back to the State the purchase money by .instalments spreading over a certain number of There was no justification in attributing the confiscation of ertates and the " expulsion" of landlords as the aim of Parnell. Parnell had a tremendous sense of his personal dignity, and with all his apparent imperturbability there were very tempostuous depths in bis strange soul. He tounded me one day—it was in one of the dining rooms of the House of winm&ns, when he was perfectly tranquil—-bv •saying that he had made up his mind that if any policeman or any other official of the Crown were to make an assault upon him, he would shoot him. (To be continued daily.)