Evening Memories

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 36, 13 September 1923, Page 7

Evening Memories

(By William O’Brien.)

CHAPTER XXVl.—(Continued.) Here conies in an episode, which but for its vital bearing upon public affairs, I should gladly pass over lightly “of reverent shame to the mere frailty of man’s nature” (to borrow the expression of old Plutarch). Up to the outbreak of the Split in the winter of 1890, New Tipperary was the mainstay of the country’s cause, the despair of the’ ovictor and coercionist, the interlude of heroic suffering that must precede a victorious General Election. With the Split came a Hood of misfortunes, not in the smallest degree of Tipperary’s raising, but of which Tipperary, because the foremost in the battle front, became the first innocent victim. Even those most painfully alive to the meannesses of politics will find it difficult to credit that the first weapon found by partisan malice against myself was to attack and ridicule New Tipperary, which but a month before was “The pride of all the land.” When the dissension in the country encouraged the Evictors’ Syndicate and the Chief Secretary to rain blow after blow upon the devoted town while it was barely struggling into life, factious malice improved its opportunity by concentrating upon my head all the responsibilities for the misfortunes of Tipperary. That, nevertheless, was what happened. Parnell himself, to whom much injustice of language might have been, in the circumstances of the hour, forgiven, was, of course, of too fine a fibre to turn against mo a movement which he had agreed to be, at the moment, the salvation of the Irish Cause, much less to fasten upon me the particular plans for the foundation of New Tipperary to which he knew I was as ranch a stranger as himself. When that groat man was gone, however, John Redmond cannot be as truthfully acquitted of maintaining a not very creditable silence while his partisans heaped opprobrium upon me for the exodus, and even for the defects in building arrangements as to which he had been himself the people’s principal counsellor during the months while I was secluded from all communication with him or them. To myself the offence would have been a tolerable one enough could I have justly claimed the glory of a conception which —whatever its errors of detailhas few equals in the records of man’s self-immolation for man. The cruelty of weakening the arm, and giving new heart to the foes of a population, but the other day the darlings of their race, in the hope of getting a foul blow home to a political adversary, had, perhaps, better be passed over with the consolation, such as it is, of Wolfe Tone’s acute observation that “no political party will bear a too minute inspection,” and least of all when the common cry of curs that infest every political movement have the garbage of widespread national dissension to fatten upon. “For a" that an’ a’ that,” up to the last moment before the earthquake of the Split opened under the country’s feet, the Tipperary struggle continued its triumphant course. If Mr. Smith-Barry made the Ponsonby estate a desert, a desolation no less awful overspread his own superb town. If Mr. Balfour drafted in the most truculent of his police agents, until there was a policeman for every man, woman, and child in New Tipperary he developed terrorism to the pitch that a policeman was detached to “shadow” the footsteps of every Nationalist of note, night and day, even of the priest as he administered the last Sacraments to the dying— a solitary recreant could be found for terror or for money among the people, and the public halls of Britain were ringing with the cry of “Shame!” at sight of the snapshots depicting the “shadowing” and the savage deeds of vengeance of the baffled Coercionists. The new residential streets were running up, the new shops doing a roaring trade, and Mr. Dillon and myself were making ready for a tour of the United States

and Canada to amass funds against which even the exchequer of the Evictors’ Syndicate could not long hope to hold out. Mr. Balfour’s -last throw for victory was to institute a new prosecution for conspiracy against us before a court of his Removables, in order to make our visit to America impossible. As with the rest of his subtle calculations, the' trick only served to overwhelm its author with contempt and laughter. From ' the midst of a besieging army, who had even a special train with steam up in perpetual readiness to pursue our every movement, we found little difficulty in making mir way to Dublin and from Dublin in a sailing boat to Trance, and from France, amidst a storm of applause from the Deputies and newspapers of Paris, to the United States, where the story of New Tipperary instantly took possession of the imagination of that world of idealists, and we were gathering in subscriptions by tens of thousands a night in every great city on our route when —the proceedings in the London Divorce Court and in Committee Room 15 of a sudden darkened the heavens, and all the whips and torments of the black Eumenides descended upon unhappy Ireland. Even after the worst had happened, New Tipperary and the Plan of Campaign estates were still oases of high principle in a desert of burning sands. So long as the stump of a sword was left they fought on as they did in a united country, although their natural enemies were now joined by native imps of discord who made a mockery of the sacrifices they, a month or two previously, were hailing as the saving of a nation. When accounts came to be finally balanced, Tipperary came by its own again. Not a single tenant in town or country remained dispossessed. The abounding prosperity and population of the re-occupied old town, which stood crippled for elbow room, before the wars with landlordism, was able to flow over into the roomier avenues and terraces of New- Tipperary, the fee simple property in which, just as it was on the point of falling into the hands ,of the Syndicate, was purchased by one who looked not for her reward to human gratitude, and was made the property of the townspeople who had borne the burden of the heroic fight. A flourishing factory now raises its peaceful head above a square where Irish landlordism fought its last ferocious battle, and may perhaps be the most auspicious monument to all time of a struggle which will live to Tipperary's glory as long as the children of Holland will take pride in the tale of how her ocean dykes were pierced to sail Boisot’s Armada into the midst of the camp of the Spaniards. (To be continued.)