340 



GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



had definitely declined to act with him longer, 

 the majority of the party demanded his resigna- 

 tion, and after the belief that facts were kept in 

 reserve that would yet clear his reputation was 

 abandoned, the Catholic priesthood denounced 

 him, and scarcely more than a score of the Par- 

 liamentary party adhered to him. Mr. Parnell 

 declared that he was willing to retire from the 

 leadership if he received adequate assurances 

 that Mr. Gladstone would offer to Ireland a sat- 

 isfactory scheme of home rule, one, above all, 

 that would give to the Irish people entire^control 

 of the police and of the settlement of the land 

 Parnell and his friends met John Dillon and 

 William O'Brien, who undertook to negotiate a 

 truce, in Boulogne. The meetings were as fruit- 

 less as the previous ones in the committee room 

 in Westminster Palace. : Brien and Dillon had 

 evaded a sentence of imprisonment by escaping 

 on a sail boat, to Prance, and afterward visited 

 the United States, as they had intended to do 

 before they were suddenly brought to trial on 

 the charge of having long before incited the ten- 

 ants on the Smith-Barry estate to refuse to pay 

 rent. A few weeks after the conference at Bou- 

 logne they returned to England and gave them- 

 selves up to the authorities, and on Feb. 12 were 

 taken to Clonmel jail to serve out their term of 

 six months. Mr. Gladstone wrote out his views, 

 to the effect that the land question should be 

 settled concurrently within home rule or within a 

 short time after its establishment ; otherwise it 

 should be left to the action of the Irish Parlia- 

 ment, which should also have control of the con- 

 stabulary when, after five years, the military po- 

 lice should have given place to a purely civil 

 force. These pledges were rejected by Mr. Par- 

 nell as altogether unsatisfactory. 



The truce being at an end, Parnell began a 

 campaign in Ireland against the Gladstonian 

 leaders, the anti-Parnellite members of Parlia- 

 ment, and the priests, which was carried on with 

 such vindictive and savage bitterness on both 

 sides as to remove all hope of reconciliation. 

 The rupture had caused the stoppage of money 

 supplies from America. The large invested fund 

 remaining in Paris it was proposed to use for 

 the sustenance of the evicted tenants ; but this 

 could not be done because Charles S. Parnell and 

 Justin McCarthy were joint trustees, and Parnell 

 rejected McCarthy's proposal to confide the dis- 

 bursement to the Tenants' Defense Association, 

 in accordance with a resolution passed by the 

 anti-Parnellites. Assistance from the National 

 League having ceased, most of the tenants on 

 Lord Clanricarde's Portumna estate, and those 

 on the Glensharrold and other estates, abandoned 

 the ' ; plan of campaign " and made what terms 

 they could with landlords. -Since the National 

 League remained under Mr. Parnell's direction, 

 his antagonists inaugurated on March 10, in 

 Dublin, a new society that they called the Na- 

 tional Federation, of which Mr. McCarthy was 

 elected president, and in which nearly the whole 

 of the Irish hierarchy took an active interest. 

 In the first parliamentary election that took 

 place after the disruption of the party at Kil- 

 kenny the Parnellites had been badly beaten: 

 In sending a delegation to solicit financial aid, 

 Mr. Parnell, on March 13, issued a manifesto to 

 Irish-Americans, in which he ascribed the troubles 



that had come upon the party at the instant 

 when victory seemed near to " meddlesome in- 

 terferences of English politicians," aided by a 

 "panic among some young and raw recruits," 

 and " eagerly seconded by a few malcontents, 

 office-seekers, and envious persons who had crept 

 into our ranks," and which he concluded with 

 an appeal to the friends of the Irish cause in 

 America to assist him in "quelling this mutiny 

 and disloyalty to Ireland." In Ireland Parnell 

 appealed to the revolutionary elements, and also 

 to the sentiment of industrial discontent. In 

 the election held on April 2 at North Sligo, where 

 Fenianism is strong, his candidate was defeated 

 by only 768 votes, polling 2,493 to 3,261 cast for 

 Alderman Collery, the anti-Parnellite and cleri- 

 cal candidate. The marriage of Mr. Parnell to 

 Mrs. O'Shea on June 25 was denounced by the 

 priests as a graver breach of the moral law than 

 his past conduct had been. In the House of 

 Commons the aim of the small band of Parnell- 

 ites was to thwart and nullify the influence of 

 the main Irish party, of which Justin McCarthy 

 was nominally the leader. The Ministerial party 

 was willing in every way to magnify the follow- 

 ers of Parnell at the expense of the rest, and the 

 old leader gave a new proof of his political sa- 

 gacity by accepting the land-purchase bill, while 

 the anti-Parnellites, constrained by party tactics 

 to harass the Government, still offered a cap- 

 tious opposition. In Ireland the priests entered 

 actively into the campaign, and, inflaming party 

 passions by their scathing denunciations of the 

 deposed leader, did their share to convert every 

 parish into a battle-ground. In the riotous af- 

 frays that took place at Thurles and many other 

 places the priests bore a part as inciters or actual 

 leaders of the anti-Parnellite combatants. The 

 Parnellites. while losing ground daily, were 

 vigorous and active, and the conflict against 

 four fifths of the Irish party and the united 

 Catholic Church was not given up, even when 

 O'Brien and Dillon, who had kept up the char- 

 acter of neutrals and mediators by not declaring 

 for either side when they went to prison, joined 

 the anti-Parnellites on their release in July, and 

 were followed by E. Dwyer Gray, editor of the 

 "Freeman's Journal," which was converted in- 

 to an anti-Parnellite organ in the beginning of 

 September. Even before these defections, the 

 inferiority in numerical strength of the Parnell 

 faction was shown in the Carlow election early in 

 July. This was considered a doubtful district, 

 and both sides put forth all their strength and 

 made it a test election. The result was the do- 

 feat of the Parnellite candidate, who received 

 1,539 votes to his opponent's 3,755. Mr. Parnell 

 still continued the controversy with his un- 

 rivaled powers of invective, taunting Mr. Dillon 

 with subordinating the aspirations of Ireland to 

 radical tactics at the bidding of English news- 

 papers and with accepting ecclesiastical dicta- 

 tion, when he had fought the whole Church 

 and climbed to power with the aid of the ex- 

 treme Nationalists, the " young men of Ireland," 

 whom he now sacrificed in order to join the cleri- 

 cals in "crushing and destroying the national 

 sentiment of Ireland." He denied his respon- 

 sibility for Mr. O'Brien's " plan of campaign," 

 saying that he and Mr. Gladstone had con- 

 demned it in the beginning, and he refused to 



