Eecieii: of Reviews, IjOjOij. 



Character Sketch. 



^55 



propound ill its pages the policy and tlie pro- 

 gramme which are now eniliodied in the Labour 

 Party at Westminster. 



The adverse fates which forge the destinies of 

 mortals had done their worst. Michael Davitt, a 

 stranger in a strange land, with no other inheritance 

 than the memory of inexpiable wrongs, mutilated 

 for life as the price of his apprenticeship to Labour, 

 was among all the human items in busy Lancashire 

 in the fifties apjiarently the most insignificant. A 

 penniless Irish boy who had lost his right arm 

 seemed to count but little in the swirling current of 

 turbid life in which mill-owners and peers, million- 

 aires and mayors, M's.P. and editors, countr)' squires 

 and burly publicans seemed much more important 

 than he. But to the Eye that could see the future 

 there was none among them all who was destined to 

 exercise so great an influence as the black-haired lad 

 in whose heart dwelt the Flame. 



But his apprenticeship was still incomplete. 

 Famine and pestilence, exile and beggary, the cruel 

 torture of physical mutilation — was it not enough ? 

 For most men, yes. But the immortal gods having 

 need for the most finely-tempered instrument with 

 which to work their will upon those whose time had 

 come, were still not content. The steel w-hich had 

 been smelted in the furnace of life must now be an- 

 nealed and tempered in the discipline of the gaol. 

 Davitt in after life once promised to write for me 

 a paper on " Prison as the Revolutionary Univer- 

 sity." The design was never carried out. But no 

 graduate of Oxford or Camliridge owed more to his 

 Alma Mater than Davitt did to the stern college in 

 which he matriculated. His method of qualifving 

 for his university career was characteristic. He had 

 grown up to manhood in Lancashire. He trudged 

 the streets as an assistant postman, he set type in 

 a printing office, he taught — and learned — in a 

 Wesleva.n school. But these externals did not affect 

 the inner soul of Davitt, in which blazed unquench- 

 able the fire of passionate love for his native land. 

 Hence, when in tlie middle sixties the smouldering 

 ashes of Irish discontent l>egan to smoke and flame 

 into Fenianism. the soul of D'avitt res|)onded in- 

 stantly. He was one of the desperate men told off 

 to seize Chester Castle. His Odyssey of adventure 

 began wlien that enterpri.se failed, and he betook 

 himself to organising armed rebellion in Ireland. 

 Long ye.irs afterwards I narrowly e.scaped judicial 

 censure for loudly applauding Michael Davitt, when 

 before the Pigott Commission he asserted in the 

 witness-box the sacred right of insurrection, which 

 is the foundation of every political privilege that 

 men have ever possessed. The doctrine is sound, 

 but everything depends upon its application. And 

 the application made of it by Davitt in 1866-1870 

 wa-s not very practical, excepting in a sense which 

 he little anticipated. For its immediate result was 

 not the liberation of Ireland, but his own incarcera- 

 tion in a' British dungeon. " Fifteen years' penal 



servitude," that was the first attempt made by the 

 British Government to solve the problem presented 

 to it by the apparition of Michael Davitt. So the 

 extinguisher was applied, and during the period 

 when Mr. Gladstone was attempting to carry out his 

 remedial policy in Ireland, Michael Davitt was in- 

 terned in Portland, shut out from all knowledge of 

 the doings of the outside world. He was put into 

 a secret place apart in order that he might nurture 

 his soul and discover wherein his strength lay. The 

 convict gang is not exactly a school for saints ; but 

 the world's greatest have emerged from the prison 

 and the galleys purified and strengthened by the 

 stern discipline of the gaol. Michael Davitt was not 

 embittered by his imprisonment. It mellowed him 

 rather, completing and intensifying his character. 

 He had time to think in Portland. He was more 

 often " alone with God " there than is possible to 

 dwellers in the world of railways, newspapers and 

 telephones. The convict prison is for the Irish poli- 

 tician what the monastic retreat is for the pious 

 Catholic, It introduces him into a brotherhood of 

 the faithful, and gives him a realising sense of hav- 

 ing touched Ixvttom. 



Last month I spent at Cambridge the last days 

 of May week. In the midst of the collegiate palaces 

 which the piety and the munificence of bygon,e gene- 

 rations have reared on the bosky banks of the Cam 

 our English youth have ex'erything tO' encourage the 

 comfortable belief that everything is for the best in 

 the best of all possible worlds. At the most im 

 pressionable period of their lives they are immersed 

 in a world of fairy-like leauty, where the day opens 

 and closes with the sound of angels' voices, and 

 where all life is irradiated with the glory and the 

 splendour that streams through the "storied win- 

 dows richly dight "' of King's College Chapel, Cen- 

 turies of civilisation and of culture have dowered 

 these ancient seats of learning with a soothing 

 charm and a subtle fascination which imperceptibly 

 permeate the minds of all who come within their 

 influence. There is an atmosphere of leisured ease, 

 an air of luxurious content in these abodes of learn- 

 ing, in which men read of the Eumenides to pre- 

 pare for examination, far away from the busy world 

 where others are meeting the P'uries among the 

 flread realities of every day. 



It would be difficult to conceive a greater contrast 

 than the L'ni\ersity of Portland Prison where Davitt 

 giaduatei.l, and the University of Caml/ridge where 

 the sons rif the wealthy go u|) to complete their edu- 

 cation. The son of the evicted Irish peasant, who 

 saw in the luxury and stately life of the landed 

 clas.=es " his cot's transmuted plunder," and the sons 

 of the landlords could not be expected to see life 

 from the sam<' standpoint. The Comfortable and 

 the I'ncomfortable never do. And Michael Davitt, 

 from his birth uji, was destined to be one of the 

 most Uncomfortable of the Uncomfortable. 



So f;ir, that is, as his outward circumstances were 



