THE New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1891. TABLE TALK.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1024, 16 October 1891, Page 22

THE New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1891. TABLE TALK.

It is a curious coincidence that Parnell and Boulanger should have gone out of the world suddenly, almost at the same time, There was only ono other coincidence in their career—both fell into the sin of which King David of old repented. In other respects a difference as wide as the poles asunder. The French leader was a quibble and mountebank, who owed his position to the accident of circumstances. Parnell, on the other hand, was a strong, capable, masterful spirit, who rose to the leading rank by sheer force of character, main strength of will, tremendous talent for command. In this last respect he was undoubtedly the greatest Irishman who has appeared for eight centuries. One such man in the days of Henry 11., there could have been no conquest. There was such a ono in Ireland then, but his name was Strongbow, and he was not an Irishman. At the next great crisis in Irish history, when Edward Bruce, the brother of the great soldier-of Bannockburn, was carrying all before him, nothing but the absence of a man of the Parnell stamp prevented the country winning back her own by the honour of all the talents of her sons.

The luck has been against old Erin' right through. After the rebellion in which the loyalty of the people to the miserable Stu arts was so conspicuous, the strong man who'appeared in the field was called Cromwell, and he was not an Irishman ; but many Irishmen disappeared from the face of the earth. Later on another strong man appeared, and ho was still on the side of the invader, while the leader of the Irish was that popr played out James 11. What luck it was to be sure ! So long as he was merely the Duke of York and Admiral of England, he was, in many respects, a great man. He fought many a grand naval action, and won many a noble victory - from the sturdy Dutch and the French, better skilled in shipbuilding than any men of their time. It is said even that the tactics invented by the Duke of York were those which Nelson himself afterwards used with such tremendous effect. Such was the Duke of York. But when he became King there never was such a miserable poltroon, and when he went to Ireland to lead his Irish subjects to the conquest of his crown, he descended to the lowest depths of vacillating terror.

Had there been a man of the Parnell stamp, what a difference it might have been. Sarsfield was a great soldier, truly ; but amongst tho jealousies of the native leaders, and the pretensions of the French Generals (capable men they were, let it be said) he was nowhere. The occasion required a vigorous uncompromising masterful iron spirit, dominating every other, inspiring all hearts with confidence in his strength, thinking out all problems to their conclusion, and acting unswervingly thereafter. The qualities of Parnell would have been of invaluable benefit to the Jacobite cause. Unhappily for Ireland- they happened (many of them) to be possessed by the leader on the other side. At the same time, though all men regret the evils that followed, no one can regret the defeat of the Stuarts. Better to be conquered by any sort of foe than serve a Stuart in the agony of oppression, and on the sickness of hope deferred. No reader of history can come to any other conclusion. In 1752 the star of Ireland was once more in the ascendant, solely because her people were united. But unfortunately again for the nation, the leaders were not dominated by auy great personality,

and in less than two decades there was rebellion, and the national Legislature disappeared as darkest shadow.

A great man appeared at last on the Irish side. Daniel O’Connell dazzled with his genius the races on both sides of the Channel ; won the respect of the English by his daring courage ; brought the National movement which he headed into the great harbour of Catholic Emancipation. But great as he was his talents were not equal to the task of keeping the people together so that by their passive weight they might have won back their Parliament. A marvellous orator—a man of magnetic power—but not a man able to restrain tlio young and ardent spirits within the bounds of long suffering resolute patience. Thus the Young Ireland Party—imbued with the doctrines then brinmim all Europe to the disasters of 1848^— prevailed, and O’Connell died of a broken heart. Had he possessed the fibre of Parnell, the unscrupulous dominating power that must command at all liazirds, he would have brought his countrymen triumphantly through the second struggle as he had brought them through the first.

In the appearance of these two great men in her history, so late as the nineteenth century, the proverbial unlujkiness of Ireland is more than ever manifested. The two together would have made a perfect man. Parnell had all the tremendous force and invincible tenacity required to win and hold the leadership ; O’Connell possessed (1) the great qualities which adorns leadership, and (2) the moral balance and elevation which alone can justify it. Parnell could have done without the adorning qualities ; they were supplied after a fashion (far from that of O’Connell, be it understood) by his lieutenants. For example, O’Brien has the ' heart, Dillon the earnestness and common sense, McCarthy the experience of Government and the historical enlightenment, while a whole host can bring to bear the qualities of shrewdness, local knowledge and the rest. But the moral qualities every leader must supply for himself. The want of them gave Parnell the fall which wrecked him after a career of leadership absolutely unexampled. O Connell, like Parnell, rose from obscurity unaided. But unlike Parnell, O Connell had in the religious question an advantage at the outset, vast numbers of thoughtful Englishmen being concerned of the injustice to Ireland in respect of religion, and very favourable to the necessary remedy. A flood of light is thrown upon this fact by the Memoirs of Croker. But Parnell, who had nothing but hostility on both sides of the House of Commons —Gladstone and Forster and Earl Spenser were not backward in Coercion Acts and imprisonment of patriots ; between them and the Tories there was at the time no difference. Even John Bright, who had written and spoken so eloquently at the time of the Famine, was fond of upholding the policy of coercion. Having such hostility against him in the Commons, Parnell first of all made himself a man of mark in the House, and then creating the Irish Party, rallied it round himself, and forced liis countrymen to trust it, in spite of the many records of destruction of national parties by purchase, with which the later Irish history since the date of union is strewn. Having conquered his countrymen, he conquered the Liberal Party, and actually brought his country to that verge of success which is 4represented by the introduction of a Home Rule Bill. It is the most marvellous feat recorded in our Constitutional annals. Had the Irish leaders’ solid good sense been more consulted on that famous occasion, it is possible that his countrymen would now have been sitting under their own Parliament, with himself in the proud position of Prime Minister.

But the long wait imposed upon his cause proved fatal. Parnell s moral steadiness was not strong enough to hold out for seven years. At first he signalised the period of patience by advancing from success to success, attaining bis climax in tho year 1889, when he added two remarkable victories to his record. The first was the defeat of The Times in the great Pigo't case ; the second was the capture of Edinburgh with the flag of Home Rule.

After these events his star began to pale; the evil with which lie had fallen was beginning to be known ; his mysterious absences from duty began to proclaim the fact that he had fo-saketi patriotism for a less worthy passion, to which he was devoting the great qualities destined for higher things. At last came the unmaking, and then the genius for command shone forth with a lustre marvellous but baleful. Everything went into the struggle to recover tho lost command. Eveu the imperative rule of silent obedience, which was required by gratitude to his allies, was broken, his courtesy went to the winds, as did his reverence for the most sacred feelings of his people. The leading instance of this latter fact occurred in Kilkenny, when he horrified the assembled people by his insulting reference to a passing funeral. Worst of all, he forgot truth, and practised deceit, taking advantage of tho touching fidelity with which so many of his people clung to Ins fortunes, to make them believe that one day he would prove his innocence m the face of day. That prop fell in due time,

as all such props fall, by the hand of its unscrupulous inventor. After his marriage it was impossible for tho pretentions of innocence to bo kept up, and the nation left him to his fate. He know it well, a 3 the unconscious pathos in his last speech at Thales, delivered in reply to the declarations of Dillon and O’Brien made on their release from prisons, abundantly proves. It is the most piteous incident of his whole career.

The end was not long in coming. Whether lie died by his own hand or by sickness aggravated by bitterness of his terrible situation, may be the cause of much conbrovery. But it matters nothing, because in either case the swiftness of death is proved to bo due to the tension of that most terrible struggle of the last two yeais. In the last hour the nation remembered nothing but his services, mourned him sincerely, and gave his ashes an honoured place in the National Necropolis. “ Peace to his ashes ” was the one sentiment of tho people united before his remains.

The judicious declare that the cause of dissension being removed the Irish wound will now heal up. Time will tell whether unity is possible without the strong compelling arm of a powerful leader. If it shall be, posterity will recognise that unity as the work of hand of Parnell. The historian will say that so strongly did this leader knit the people together, that the strength of the breeding survived his own misdeeds, enduring till long after they were forgotten. But this is a°thing in the keeping of time.

Injudicious men are crying out that they have a successor to Parnell on , his own side. Transparent nonsense it is, for there is no heir to a personality. Every man must make his own, and who on that side has ever been heard of ? Still, the claim to succession is a great element of weakness. So is the criticism hurled at the McCarthyite party that they hunted a great man to his grave. That party, it must be admitted by its best friends, has behaved with singular lack of discretion. They ought to have declared against their leader from the first. Many of them temporised, many declared that they would never desert the great chief, many were out-manoeuvred at the outset and deceived where they ought easily to have kept their heads. They even'actually re elected Mr Parnell tlieir leader. They did not come to their senses till Mr Gladstone moved, and even then the number was limited. Virulence and bad taste, however, characterised the movement on many occasions. The rest of the history of the strengthening McCartheyites is a iiideous farrago of recrimination, irresolution, and lame excuses (like that made by the chief shareholder in the Dublin Freeman, out of which no encouragement to the Irish cause can be legitimately expected to come.

The death of Sir John Pope Hennessy is another coincidence, and in its way a curious coincidence. He was in his youth a patriot like Parnell. Ho was, like him, a Parliamentarian. Unlike him he was bribed by a colonial Governorship, and he disappeared into a region of halcyon calm. A little trouble he had when that uncommonly resolute Sir Hercules Robinson got hold of. him.— Rut he recovered from that, for Sir Hercules was, as the Yankees say, “a little too previous.” Sir John Pope, however, had to bid a long farewell to all his (colonial) greatness. That departed, he returned to the milch cow -of patriotism, and turning up in the nick of time, defeated the Parnell nominee for Kilkenny, where the popular leader, who had done so much, made his first breach of good manners (fatal amongst a sensitive people) by using a passing corpse as a peg on which to bang the flag of party warfare. This gave to Sir John Pope the victory which his own merits would never have gob for him in the teeth of his fribblical history. Having won, Sir John Pope subsided into his original nothing, and out of nothing nothing comes. The chief use of this later career of his was to prove that the instinct of Disraeli was not always to be relied on. That famous educator of parties, thought he discerned in the youthful John Pope sufficient talent to warrant him being regarded as “ dangerous,” and being bribed off the face of the situation accordingly. The end of tho career of John Pope, who had ceased to be youthful, and had become titled (a further instalment of the price of unnecessary silence) shows that he never could have been dangerous, and that he ouerht never, therefore, to have been bought off. That end ought to be a distinct diminution of the brilliancy of the Disraelian tradition.

Let us pause to contemplate the irony of fate. John Pope, the patriot of the Order of Number One, is bought off as dangerous, and launched upon a current which leads by easy degrees through the sunshine of prosperity to knighthood ; he comes back to encounter the real patriot, the greatest Irishman of eight centuries,- tho greatest since the traditional, half legendary, half real “ Brian Boru the man who has not only borne the lieat and burden of tho day, but created a Party and formed an allliance perhaps epoch making.. Him he meets, and conquers. That is all we can see of the working of Fate. To us it appears a trifle ironical. But is it ? Lift the curtain that hides from us the river Styx

and tho region of Hades. Old Charon we see ferrying. Ho has just ferried over two souls. Charles Stewart Parnell and Sir John Pope Hennessy. They meet ; one asks the other who worked for Ireland, and who worked for himself —at that point you can let tho curtain fall without any mystery or any doubt.

“I polished up that handle so carefullee that they made me the ruler of the Queen’s Navee.” The verses were relished when they were first pronounced by Sir Joseph Porter in “Pinafore,” principally because they Were supposed to have been levelled at Mr W. H. Smith, who was about that time First Lord of the Admiralty. They were really aimed at tho system which places the chief control of the navy in the hands of men who know as much about the sea as they kno k of tho inhabitants of the planet Saturn. But they were relished because they made prominent the fact that Mr W. H. Smith had risen from small beginnings. Society takes a malicious, or idiotic, pleasure in gloating over tho details, real or imaginary, of the early days of its nouveaux riches. Why ? Because society is, as a famous author long ago pointed out, largely made up of snobs.

But W. H. Smith’s career really shows that in aristocratic England the highest positions in tho State are open to tho talents, no matter how long they may be lying. John Scott, Lord Eldon, proved it in his day, so did Sugden, the barber’s son, who' became Lord Chancellor, so did Earl Cairns, whose father was a small shopkeeper in Belfast. So did Mr Disraeli, who, as Lord Beaconsfield, is the leading instance, for the simple and obvious reason that he rose without the ladder of a profession which gives to the successful practitioner that heavy golden key having mastery over so many locks. Neither had he any popular cry to float him upward. In his first days of effort he stood before the beetling cliff of aristocratic prejudice, manned by race contempt, and that cliff ho climbed, and dominated by his unaided ability, dying at tho head of the peerage. VV. H. Smith in his turn demonstrated also that the career is in England open to the talents. The newspaper publishing department was the theatre of his first great battle in life. He published The Times, and by energy and power of organisation worked up a great and lucrative business. His fellow citizens admiring him, put him into tho House of Commons, where he justified their confidence by his shrewdness, industry, and honesty of purpose. When he became “First Lord” ridicule descended upon him. When he was advanced to the position of Leader of the House of Commons he won the respect of both sides by his tact, discretion, and remarkable sagacity. “Old Morality,” as the satirists called him, was fast winning his way to the highest honours and universal unalloyed respect when his health gave way. “A good Englishman, sir.” Talk of your merchant princes—yes, sir, princes—why not? Was it not princely to come down to the Governor of the Bank of England in a great financial crisis and offer him a hundred thousand sovereigns as his contribution to the bulwark against the tide of ruin ? If every great mau wou’d take the same view of his duty at such times disasters af fecting national credit would be fower. How many of the men who laughed maliciously at the “polished up the handle of the big front door,” came forward with offers to plank down their sovereigns ? The financial institutions did, and readily, to their honour be it said. But how many private individuals were ready to cut such slices off their private fortunes ?

So fare thee weel, Old Morality ! In going to the land of shadows thou wert jostled by Charles Stewart Parnell and Sir John Hennessy. What didst thou think of the Patriot of Storms and the Patriot of Profits ? I dare swear thy spirit in tint hour made but little or the big things of this life. Patriotism, politics, money-making—what are they all but vauity and vexation of spirit ?