Evening Memories

New Zealand Tablet, 6 April 1922, Page 7

Evening Memories

(By William O’Brien.)

CHAPTER V.— BRAVE EXPERIMENT (1885) We have now arrived at a stage at which Parnell’s strategy of playing off one English party against another can be luminously seen at work. It was “vigor beyond ' the law” in Ireland — lawlessness, if you will —that overthrew Spencer, as it overthrew Forster before him; but it was at Westminster Parnell now proceeded to turn his raw material from Ireland to account for a more permanent purpose. Chamberlain, who had been himself the Friar Joseph, “the grey cardinal” of the Kilmainham Treaty, had some spiteful things to say of “The Maamtrasna Alliance” which brought the Tories into office —“The Maarntrasna Alliance” being that under which conscientious Tory lawyers like Sir Edward Clarke, and not quite so conscientious Tory politicians like Lord Randolph Churchill and his Fourth Party, collaborated with us in inveighing against the denial of justice even to friendless Connacht peasantsand also, no doubt, incidentally in “dishing the Whigs.” Such recriminations might carry their reproach for English Party politicians, but could only make the Irish leader smile, if he were not too polite to betray any sign of his satisfaction. For equal and impartial independence as between both English Parties —a coldblooded readiness to co-operate with or to chastise either the one or the other according to their deserts for the moment —was the master-key of his policy, as the abandonment of that impartiality was in after years to prove the death-warrant of the great Party which owned its creation to him. This intellectual indifference as between Whigs and Tories has always been one of the puzzles of Irish psychology for Englishmen, and as often as not has been attributed to something inconsequent, or even treacherous, in the Irish nature! The good Liberal is conscious to himself of the desire to do for Irishmen (by degrees) everything that can possibly be good for them, and knows not why we should vex the soul of his dear Mr. Gladstone by con- ' „ certing pranks with an urchin like Randolph to baffle his rgood intentions. The Tory finds the Irishman delightful | in the Army, in the clubs and in the hunting-field, and cannot imagine what he can find in common with those Puritan Radicals. They have never hit upon the simple , explanation that the Irishman is not born either a little Radical or-a little Tory—nay, has a good deal in common with both, and no absolute incompatibility with either but is, in any case, by a decree of nature, a being as different (in furniture of mind and soul and aspiration as

a Frenchman is from an Englishman. I have known English Liberals who would stop at nothing short of dying for Ireland — if at that—for whom the best of Irishmen coming out of a Tory Division Lobby had something of the air of a monster. It was when this feeling, whether through good fellowship, or less avoAvable motives, gained Irish representatives themselves that the decay of Irish Parliamentarianism began. It will be seen that, as soon as a substantial accommodation with England practical politics, Parnell accepted the consequences loyally both in his own conduct and in the orientation of the movement. So long as Ireland had no such guarantee, he acknowledged no constitutional limitations, except those of prudence, in his dealings with the two sets of slippery English politicians who, in their greed for office, were ready either to fawn upon him or rend him as it might best serve their purpose. There is no ’longer any reason for withholding one piece of evidence how little the pedantries of technical allegiance to England were suffered to stand in the way whenever appeals addressed in vain to her sense of justice were likely to be more successful if addressed to her necessities. In the early part of 1885, while the reign of repression in Ireland seemed still unshaken, and when the Russian menace to Afghanistan led to preparations for a vast war on the Indian frontier if the Russian advance to Penjdeh were persisted in, Parnell did not hesitate to engage his personal responsibility deeply in an attempt to turn the crisis to account for Ireland. James Kelly, who had explored the most intricate subterranean ways of Fenianisra in America, and whose romantic relations with the New York Herald had given him an astonishingly ’ widespread influence with American politicians, was despatched to the United States to investigate the possibilities of an armed descent upon Ireland in concert with the Russian war plans. The idea was the swift enrolment of five thousand Irish-American veterans of the Civil War, and their sudden concentration upon an American port, where ships of the Russian Volunteer Fleet were to await them for embarkation, with a cargo of rifles and light guns. O’Kelly subsequently gave me to understand that no less a personage than General Phil Sheridan, the hero of the Shenandoah Valley, had intimated his willingness to take charge of the expedition, and it was known that a high authority in Washington would take care that there was no indiscreet interference with the departure of the Russian squadron, whose Government were at the time the curled darlings of the American public. To the present writer was confided the task of communicating on behalf of the Irish leader with the secret agent of the Czar, then on a mission to London. In a frowsy back drawing-room in Ebury Street, dim enough for a conspirator’s cave, I had the honor of a lengthy conversation with the Russian Envoy, who had long been the most distinguished figure in Russia’s mysterious operations on the Afghan frontier, and who so far as the heavy blinds and curtains enabled mo to see my interlocutor at all, might have been a minor Professor, discussing some curious theory of Greek verse. But his views once formed were expressed with rapidity and quite nettly. From the Russian point of view there was nothing to object. The ships and the arms could be made available without much difficulty. He anticipated no serious hindrance from the United States’ authorities. The raid would serve Russia’s purpose well enough (although he added softly, Russia was never in a hurry),) and might be the means of stirring up a blaze in India, while the Afghan frontier was being fought over. Whether it would be equally good business for Ireland-, he observed with a smile, and, as it struck me, in a tone of unexpected good nature, it was not for him to pronounce. “A raid that could only be a raid is a serious matter for a country so close to England, blit I presume your friend has thought of all that, or you wouldn’t be here.” The sum was, he would find no difficulty in recommending „the project to his people, but it could only be on condition of Parnell giving him some guarantee—he suggested his signet-ring —that the 'design was a serious one, and would be resolutely pursued. Parnell, as it happened, possessed a family signetring, among the numerous precious stones he was wont at that time to Avear on his fingers. His comment on the proposal was characteristic: “None of our family ever had luck that lost a ring,” he observed, quite gravely.

“Besides, I am advised has no rights of extra-terri-toriality, and in case of war will never be allowed to leave England. He may escape hanging, but you and I won’t. No, he will have to think of something better than my signet-ring, if he is going to best England.” Before I could repeat my visit to Ebury Street, Komaroff’s troops were withdrawn from Penjdeh, there was an end of a war which probably Russia never had any notion of allowing to be precipitated, and with it there was an end of our castles in the air. The incident is only worth recalling as an illustrationof which the secret archives of the first Boer War will supply a companion picture still more realistic —of that mixture of daring in extremities with no less daring moderation in hours of victory which was the essence of Parnell’s character as a leader. And be not at all too contemptuous of the military inadequacy of the Irish-American expedition. It could not have sufficed to overrun Ireland, but it was Parnell's cal culation that taken in connection with gigantic dangers on the Indian frontier a descent on Ireland by dashing Phil Sheridan must quite surely startle Gladstone into some epoch-making proffer of Irish freedom, and few who knew Gladstone and knew Parnell could have much doubt that on such a Diqs irae the bargain would have been adventured and would have been perfected. But to return from this interlude of the outlaw side of Parnell’s strategy. The two heaviest calamities that befell the Irish cause in our time“the Split” of 1890 and the sacrifice of the unprecedented opportunity of an Irish settlement by consent in 1903 arose, the first of them from a tenderness for English Liberalism, approaching to a vice, and the second from a wholly vicious incapacity to collaborate with English Toryism in doing the work of Ireland. Parnell was weakened by no such foible of love or hate in his dealings with Englishmen. Within twelve months, an Irish leader who durst not raise his voice in Ireland a few months previously had the leaders of both English Parties flattering him with more or less shy approaches to Home Rule, and he encouraged the advances of both of them with consummate skill and without treachery to either, and of the successful competitor constituted a world-apostle of Irish independence. Be it always borne in mind that he had only a couple of dozen even of the Irish members at his back (the rest being palsied place-hunters of the “nominal Home Ruler” type), that the actual balance of power as between English Parties, save by some chance almost as long to be waited for as the blossom of a century plant, hardly entered into his dreams, and no individual worth counting on either Front Bench could yet be got to whisper “Home Rule” except in guilty secrecy. What might have been his ■achievements, if like his successors in the “Home Rule Parliament” which finally wrecked Home Rule he could command the Division Lobbies and make and unmake Prime Ministers as the interests of Ireland dictated —if in addition to all that he had the entire Liberal Partv and far the greater portion of the Tory Party hungering for a great historic agreement with Ireland! The Spencer regime was scarcely a fortnight fallen, when we had Chamberlain proposing his tour in Ireland with Sir Charles Dilke under our auspices to promulgate the proposal of an expansible “National Council,” touching which “I would not hesitate to transfer the consideration and solution of the Education Question and the Land question entirely to an Irish Board altogether independent of English government influence, which would, of course, be also invested with powers of taxation in Ireland for those strictly Irish purposes.” And we had the new Tory Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Carnarvon, making (and meaning) a speech in the House of Lords foreshadowing something very much more majestic in the shape of Irish liberty. The repulse of Chamberlain’s essay to enthrone himself as our National Patron Saint had, perhaps, its drawbacks; but in the state of irritability then prevailing between the Liberal leaders, it was for us perforce a choice between Gladstone and L/hamberlain, and it is easy enough now to understand that, had we elected differently, Ireland must have shambled along obscurely in the train of a Radical Jack Cade, and the Gladstonian Home Rule epos might never have been written. For any damage suffered from Chamberlain s ill-humor we were, at all events, consoled by a speech a week or two later in Leeds by Mr. Herbert Gladstone. ■ The speaker dismissed with contempt the taunt

of the party wirepullers that the Irish had sold themselves to the Tories. Ho recognised Parnell’s right and duty to extract the best terms he could for his own country from any and every combination with English parties. “He told the Tories it was no good half trusting the Irish people. The proper policy was to throw to the wind all coercive legislation and prove their trust in the Irish people by allowing them to manage their own affairs. . . His point was that for good or ill Mr. Parnell represented the Irish people, and tho Tories must settle with him a system of government based entirely upon the people’s wishes.” (To be continued.)