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seems to come near the attainment of her desire, some calamity for which she is not responsible strikes in between her and her hope." I have thought of that saying since then.

Mr. Parnell soon rallied from the cruel effects of the murders in Phoenix Park. He became composed again and hopeful again. The General Election of 1885 made him the leader of eighty-six followers-the large majority of the whole Irish representation. He kept up that majority after the elections of 1886 consequent on the defeat of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule measure. He was perfectly consistent in his political conduct up to this time. He was quite willing to accept Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule measure-he would have been willing, before that, to accept a Home Rule measure from the party to which the late Lord Carnarvon belonged. How near we were to getting a measure of Home Rule from the Tory Government at that time, history will find it hard to settle until the day comes when all the political correspondence of 1885 may be safely made public. Mr. Parnell certainly did not seek out Lord Carnarvon. On the contrary, it was found difficult to induce him to meet Lord Carnarvon. But when he had seen Lord Carnarvon he would have been willing, of course, as we all should have been, to accept Home Rule from Lord Carnarvon or any one else who could give it to us. Mr. Parnell, how ever, expressed grave doubts as to whether Lord Carnarvon was strong enough to carry his party with him. Mr. Parnell, in fact, attached but little importance to the whole negotiation.

Mr. Parnell's great triumph came on the memorable night when, after the breakdown of the Pigott plot, he arose in the House of Commons and was greeted by the uprising of every Liberal member on the benches of the Opposition. A greater triumph no man ever had in the House of Commons. "If 'twere now to die, 'twere now to be most happy." He had been cruelly wronged. He had been basely calumniated. An indictment had been drawn up against a nation-against the nation of which he was the chosen representative. The calumnies had been disproved-had been atoned for in money, in shame, and in blood. The indictment against the nation had utterly failed. The Liberals of England, Scotland, and Wales

were eager to mark their sympathy with the calumniated leader of a calumniated nation. The demonstration was all the more splendid because it was spontaneous. In our generation no such scene is ever again likely to be looked upon in the House of Commons.

The Special Commission and the whole of the anxiety connected with it must have tried Mr. Parnell more than he ever admitted-more than he knew at the time. He certainly maintained nearly all through the ordeal the most absolute and serene composure. But there was one day when, at the close of his cross-examination, I and others who were near me in the court, felt only too well convinced that his nervous power had given way, and with it for the moment his understanding. IIe was evidently outworn, and he answered at random and without even looking at the report of some reputed statement of his own which he was expected to explain. I felt convinced then, and I feel convinced now, that he was not quite responsible for the words he was uttering. I had a theory then, and I have it still, about Mr. Parnell's occasional disappearances from public life. I have always thought that he knew at certain times that the wear and tear of nervous power was becoming too much for him— that he felt he must withdraw himself from active life for a short time; and that he believed the risk of any misconception or misconstruction was less than the risk of carrying on his public duties at a time when his nerves were positively not equal to the work. I give this but as a theory to others; for myself it has always been an explanation of much that otherwise would have been a mystery.

I have often been asked whether Mr. Parnell was an intellectual man. "Distinguo." He was unquestionably a man of commanding intellect. What he accomplished proves that much more clearly than any panegyric or any argument could do. His work proves his intellect. But I suppose we can all see a distinct, although perhaps a subtle, difference between a man of intellect and an intellectual man. An intellectual man, in the literary or artistic sense, Mr. Parnell was not. He cared nothing about literature ; he cared nothing about music; he cared little about painting or sculpture; he had no feeling whatever for poetry or for the

beauty of a landscape, or for any of the unnumbered subjects and questions connected with all these. He had not the slightest interest in what are called "problems of life." I never heard from him a word that appertained to anything metaphysical or psychological, or to any form of self-analysis-that morbid pastime of the age-or analysis of any life-problem. whatever. He had but a slight and general knowledge of history. There are men who must be described as famous among the living in our day in art or letters, and whose names would have conveyed to Mr. Parnell's mind no manner of idea. I do not think I say a word too much when I say that the whole of the literary and artistic side of life was darkness to Mr. Parnell. It was not so much that he turned away from it as that he passed it without looking at it. But one could not talk with Mr. Parnell for long without gaining the impression that he was talking with a man of cominanding intellect. Mr. Parnell never talked mere commonplaces. He took in new ideas slowly, but when once they had got into his mind they spread and germinated and became fertile there. He had a very quick and keen observation, and a remark able judgment as to character and nature. He could look across a whole field of politics, and take in the complete situation at a glance. He had above all things the instinct and the genius of the commander in-chief. In the council-room he was often slow, uncertain, undecided; sat silently listening to the opinions of others, put off his own judgment to the last, sometimes gave no opinion of his own, but suddenly adopted the opinion of another man. In whatever course he decided on taking he was almost sure to prove himself right in the result. But it was not in council that he showed himself at his best. It was in a crisis that his genius came suddenly out. A great unexpected political crisis arises in the House of Commons. Perhaps a vote of censure is brought forward and pressed against the Ministry. The subject is one which does not involve any principle, so far as Irish opinion is concerned, and the decision of which either way would not directly affect any Irish interest. The Irish members are free to abstain altogether from voting, and, according to the traditions and the unwritten law of all independent parties

in Parliament, they are free to vote for one side or the other, as either might be made indirectly or even remotely a means of advancing the interests of the Irish cause. Nothing has been decided by the Irish party; they are waiting for the development of the debate and of events. Events have changed, there is a collapse here, a breakdown there; an admission made on the one side, a promise exacted on the other. The whole situation is new, and there is no time to consider it. The division bell will ring in a moment, and on the vote of the Irish party depends the fate of a Ministry. Parnell sits for a moment silent, and his men all look to him. Suddenly he says, in the quietest and most unmoved tone: "I think we had better vote with the Government this time;' or, "I think we shall do well by voting with the Opposition." I never knew Mr. Parnell to make a mistake in strategy or in tactics when he was thus suddenly thrown back upon his own instinct and his own inspiration as commander-in-chief. Most of those who have had anything to do with journalism must have known the Special Correspondent who is good for little or nothing if he is set down to write an account of some peaceful civil ceremonial, but who becomes a brilliant and powerful writer when he is wrapped in the smoke of a battle-field, and has to scratch down his "copy" on horseback, and with the shells screaming about him. The excitement gives him instant possession and command of all his finest faculties. Mr. Parnell sometimes reminded me of this order of Special Correspondent. The more exciting the crisis, the more severe the responsibility, the brighter and calmer became the intellect of our commander-in-chief. We knew we could always trust to his judgment then.

on.

Mr. Parnell's policy grew upon him, and developed within him, as events went He could no more have intended at the beginning to do all that he did than Julius Cæsar could have started in life with the determination to become the greatest man in the world. In his University days he had no care about politics whatever; he hardly knew that there was any Irish national question. He himself told me some years ago of the accident, as it might almost be called, which first sent him into political life. Of course he must have come into politics sooner or

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country. Therefore the new national movement under the new name of Home Rule had not taken much hold of the heart of the Irish population. To this very day-to this very hour-the memory of Sadleir and Keogh is appealed to in Ireland as a warning against any manner of Parliamentary agitation which does not have as its first principle hatred and hostility to the English Liberal party. It is forgotten that Keogh's most impassioned appeals were made to the men of the hillside, that he appealed shrilly to the unconstitutional forces, and professed a noble scorn of anything merely Parliamentary -until his scorn of Parliamentary methods had found him so firm in his Parliamentary seat as to enable him to use Farliamentary methods for his own personal advantage. It was Parnell's skill, foresight, and good fortune which enabled him to turn the very hatred of the English Parliament into a means of bringing Ireland back to the ways of Parliamentary agitation. Does this seem a paradox? I shall show very easily that it was a sound and statesmanlike policy.

Why not start in the House of Commons an Irish National party, which should express by its very action in Parliament the distrust and hatred felt by so many of the Irish people for any and every English Parliament ? Would not the vast majority of the Irish people soon begin to put faith in a party which employed its position in the House of Commons to worry and obstruct the House of Commons, and make it ridiculous in the eyes of foreign nations? What ardent Irish Nationalist could refuse to give his approval and his support to a party like that? Mr. Par nell came in at a fortunate time for such a policy. The Tories were engaged in passing a Coercion Act, and the prisons were yet full of Fenian captives. The country was getting tired of Butt's annual motions and the annual compliments paid to him by Ministers of the Crown. A new sensation ran through the veins of the people when it was found that a group of men had come up in the House of Commons who were determined to obstruct the Government and every Government in every way, and turn the rules of the House of Commons against the House itself.

Mr. Parnell very wisely did not confine himself to Irish questions. Very early in his career he signalized himself

by joining with a small and earnest set of English Radicals in obstructing the policy of the Tory Government in South Africa. He took the leading part in the obstructive movement which ended in the abolition of flogging in the army and navy. Probably it was his experience of the effect that could be produced upon English popular feeling by a bold and daring policy of this kind which first put into his mind the idea that Home Rule itself could be carried by such a policy. Only by degrees and slowly could there have come on him a clear appreciation of the tremendous strength of a policy of systematized obstruction. I have heard it told as an anecdote of Mr. Spurgeon--I do not know whether it is true or not-that when somebody asked him what he would have done in his early preaching career if he had failed to secure the attention of the congregation, he declared that if he could not have accomplished his object otherwise he would have mounted the pulpit in a red coat, and so compelled attention. Mr. Spurgeon had a just confidence in what he intended to say. Only get the congregation to listen at the first, and all the rest was safe. Something like that was the idea of Mr. Parnell and of his few associates in the early days of his obstruction. The immediate business was to obstruct coercion, and the Tory Government who were pressing it on. That was work enough in itself to win the approval of all Irish Nationalists. Besides that, there was the fact that, while Isaac Butt always showed the utmost deference to the rules and the usages and the conventionalities of the House of Commons, this new party proclaimed an absolute indifference to all public opinion and all judgment except the public opinion and the judgment of the people of Ireland. And then behind all that and this was the thought that came latest up in Mr. Parnell's mindwas the idea that if the Irish Nationalists could compel England, and especially the English democracy, to listen to what they had to say for Ireland, the English democracy would be converted to our cause. Mr. Parnell had at that time, and for years after, a great faith in the ultimate justice of English public opinion. He was patient, and quite willing to await results. I remember years after this, when the Parnell Commission was about to open, I told him one day that I thought

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THE 46 'INTERVIEWER" ABROAD.

some members of the Liberal Opposition
were a little afraid of the possibility of
unpleasant disclosures being made.
answered very composedly. "It is quite
natural that they should be afraid," he
He
said. "They do not know but that we
may at one time or other have been pre-
vailed upon to sanction, or at all events to
overlook, the doing of some wild things.
We are not alarmed, because we know
that we never did anything of the kind.
But they cannot know that as we do."
It was in that frame of mind that he
took all the odium heaped upon him and
his followers during the early chapters of
obstruction. "It will all come right in
the end," he used to say.
find that we have a real political purpose
in what we are doing, and they will do us
"They will
justice yet."
great deal about Mr. Parnell's ingrained
I have heard and read a
hatred for England and the English. I
never learned anything of the kind from
any words of his, until the days of Com-
mittee Room Number Fifteen.
He was a

cool and critical observer of national pe-
culiarities here, there, and everywhere,
and his criticisms were unusually keen
and just.
ways as he criticised Irish ways or French
He often criticised English
or American ways, but of ingrained ha-
tred to England 1 at least knew nothing.

of the kind.

Some of his followers owned to such a
feeling, and declared that they could not
help it.
I never heard him say anything
He appeared to me to have
had hardly any antipathies. He was pos-
sessed by one great idea-" possessed,
in the old sense the idea of carrying
Home Rule for Ireland. He always told

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me that when Home Rule was carries hoped very soon to be able to retire mind that he told me some years ago had been studying the famous old bailing private life. So practical was his tur purposes of a modern Irish Parliament in College Green, and that he feared: would be found wholly unsuited for the he said, "for the sake of the historic as "We must sit there for a session or two, haps to build a new place altogether. sociation; but I fear that we shall then have to find out some other place—per. from the accomplishment of our wishes: but his faith was firm that the wishes He knew well that we were years off then looking out for the practical arrangements must be accomplished, and he was already man. which must be made on their accomplishhad no interest in abstractions. The act was characteristic of the He was eminently practical; he national sentiments he regarded but as the last twelve months. It is a fine and a means to accomplish a practical result. I true saying that the forbearance which have no wish to speak about the events of seemed too much for the living seems too nell as I knew him during the little for the dead. when trying to sum up the character of I think of Mr. Parwe fought side by side. As Carlyle asks, years that

ment.

Mirabeau,

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the pius and the minus of him-give us
What formula is there, never
so comprehensive, that will express truly
the accurate net result of him?''

66

There

There is hitherto none

is hitherto none such," says Carlyle, speak-
such," I say, speaking of Parnell.-Con-
temporary Review.
ing of Mirabeau.

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