The House of Commons in 1874

Chapter III*

The House of Commons in *1874

At 19 years of age I saw the House of Commons for the first time, on the 30th June, 1874. I went to London from Newcastle-on-Tyyne (where I was a shorthand writer on the N.E. Railway) to hear Butt’s motion for an inquiry into the demand for Home Rule.

Gladstone had left office the previous January, being defeated at the general election, and he then broke with Ireland to attack “Vaticanism.‘1 An explanation of this was that, four years earlier, a General Council of the Catholic Church had declared its members bound in matters of faith and morals by decisions of the Pope. Gladstone waxed indignant at this. In 1873, Irish M.P.’s, on the second reading of his University Bill, voted against him. The Bill excluded history and philosophy from the curriculum of the new Body, which was to transform T.C.D. The Irish Whigs, instead of allowing debate in Committee to modify these proposals, threw the Bill out on the second reading. The “popular” Press, of course, plumed itself thereon, for priests and people swallowed the bolus administered daily via the *Freeman’s Journal. *No breath of independent feeling stirred Ireland’s shrunken electorate. Yet, had Trinity College been reformed, as Gladstone planned, the course of history would have been different. The parliamentary representation of the University would have ceased to be Tory, and its members would trend to the popular side. Had the Bill passed even as it stood, the damage to Catholic students from being left unacquainted with spurious philosophy and false history would not have been deplorable.

After Gladstone’s defeat, in 1873, Disraeli refused to take office, but he came into power the following February after a dissolution.

So angry was Gladstone with the purblind Irish Whigs that, on the last day he held office in 1874, he refused the request of his Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord Hartington, to fill a vacancy In the Court of Exchequer. The Chief Baron had just died, and the Attorney-General entitled to the appointment was Christopher Palles, a Catholic who had served the Government well in the case of the dispersal of the meeting in the Phoenix Park when the Prince of Wales was in residence in the Vice-Regal Lodge. Palles defeated several actions against the Crown by various plaintiffs. To the urgings of Hartington to confer the post on Palles, Gladstone said: “No, I shall leave the appointment to me successors.” Hartington was not an enthusiast and bore the rebuff with phlegm. On the day Gladstone left Paddington Station for Windsor to resign the Seals after Disraeli’s victory, Hartington appeared on the railway platform. “Sir,” said he to Gladstone, “I beg you to sign Palles’ appointment.” Moved by this persistency, Gladstone replied with a smile, “Well, so I should in deference to yourself, but I have neither pen nor ink.” Hartington answered, “I thought of that, and here they are.” So Gladstone laughingly yielded, and signed the appointment on Paddington platform. Palles was the greatest legal light in Ireland for forty years. Colonial judges when delivering opinions likely to be reconsidered by the Privy Council constantly quoted Palles to justify their conclusions.

The parliament of 1874 was a landlords’ parliament and a rich man’s parliament, while the Irish Cause had become a peasants’ cause and a poor man’s cause. Disraeli’s Ministry would listen to nothing except what his Irish supporters relished, although he himself had earlier favoured Irish reform and hinted at revolution.

In June, 1874, Butt’s party met for the first time at King Street, Westminster - a back lane, now demolished and thrown into Whitehall. There, on the morning of his motion for an inquiry into the demand for Home Rule, I went with John Barry to hear what were the chances of Butt getting support from the Radicals. Not a dozen of them were favourable. Ireland was taboo. The Commons debate was adjourned from Tuesday to Thursday, 2nd July, on an appeal from Butt to Disraeli to yield a second day. Old “Ben” was genial, and agreed to give up “Government time” for a further discussion on the Irish question. When Thursday came, merriment aroseowing to a Press error which confused the speeches of two Irish members named Power. Richard Power, member for Waterford, made his maiden speech on Tuesday, but the *Freeman *had been supplied by O’Connor Power, M.P. for Mayo, with a manuscript of what he then intended to say. O’Connor Power, however, was not “called” on Tuesday, for the Speaker “took” Richard Power, but the *Freeman *printed the undelivered oratory of O’Connor Power and punctuated it with “cheers” and “laughter.” In Thursday’s debate, The O’Donoghue, member for Tralee, a Liberal, tellingly availed of the blunder to turn Power into ridicule. He was a tall striking figure, who had spent a fortune in London and Paris on moneys derived from his Irish patrimony. His carriages in France view with those of Napoleon III, so he was requested to leave the country. Earlier he had challenged Sir Robert Peel, the Irish Secretary, to a duel for some slighting reference to Ireland, but his politics afterwards became as unstable as his finance.

O’Donoghue’s goadings galled O’Connor Power, and but for A. M. Sullivan, his career would have been blighted before it budded. Sullivan was acquainted with O’Donoghue’s zigzags, and darting out of the House, he came back with a pamphlet which he placed in Power’s hands. Speaker Brand now “espied” Power. Mocking cries of “Spoke! Spoke!” greeted him, but he opened with the phrase that the House had listened to a speech which had not been delivered, and he would quote one which had been made. The recital proved piquant, for he cited words of The O’Donoghue in 1861, which throw a flash-light on Irish representation before the franchise was broadened. That Chieftain had said 13 years earlier:

“It is melancholy to observe how a patriot falls. There are few to remind him of his duty, and the power of the seducer is great. It is easy to perceive that there is an interior struggle going on, for he has the look of a man who is trying to make himself think that he is doing right, but cannot succeed, and who is ashamed of himself. How the Whips first act upon him - whether they begin by sending him in the morning neatly printed invitations to come down in the evening to support the Government (which look confidential), or whether they begin by staring at him, I cannot tell. The first dangerous symptom is an evident anxiety on the part of the patriot to be alone in a corner with the Government Whips. If you happen to pass him he tries to assume an air of easy indifference, and utters a monosyllable in a loud voice. An evening or two afterwards, when the Ministry can scarcely scrape together a majority, the “patriot” votes with them, and remarks to his friend the Whip that it was a “close thing”! From bad he goes to worse, taking courage to himself from the idea that nobody knows him in that great wilderness of London. He gets up early and slips down a backway to the Treasury, and all is over.”

Power’s dexterity in thus extricating himself proclaimed him a coming man. The following year, on his motion for the release of the Fenian military prisoners, Lord Randolph Churchill sprang into the public eye. Power had argued that the action of Irish soldiers in joining the Fenians in 1867 was paralleled by the fact that the first Duke of Marlborough deserted James II, as he asserted the Duke then broke his oath. Thereupon, Churchill was stung into a speech which showed his mettle for the first time, although he afterwards sank into the background in that parliament.

The division on Butt’s motion showed ten English members in favour of Home Rule, viz. Thomas Burt, Joseph Cowen, C. Hammond, J. B. K. Cross, Sir Charles Dilke, P. E. Eyton, E. T. Gourley, E. Jenkins, Sir Wilfrid Lawson, and Serjeant Simon.

Most of these had been elected for the first time in 1874. Burt was the miners’ member for Morpeth - slow of speech bu weighty of word. He died a Privy Councillor, and was an effective and God-fearing representative of Labour. He was a friend so close to Joseph Cowen, M.P. for Newcastle-on-Tyne that I heard Cowen tell his constituents on the occasion of his first account of his stewardship when the session of 1874 ended, that he and Burt went to the House of Commons daily, as if it was their business office, and remained until the close. Cowen’s slouched hat (like that of John Martin, M.P. for Meath) offended decorum in those days. When he soared to eloquence - for he seldom spoke - emotion was universal. His Northumberland burr gave zest to his words. His father, Sir Joseph Cowen, M.P., talked in even a more pronounced dialect. I heard him say that when young his dinner was a “bit of dwy bweed and a reed ha’n.” (Dry bread and red herring.) Young Joe helped every forlorn hope, and no refugee who applied to him was denied, whether Pole, Russian, Hungarian, or Irishman.

It was he who discovered the genius of Garvin, and enlisted him on the *Newcastle Chronicle. *He came to dislike Gladstone, but remained friendly with Harcourt. Hence he was able to give us hints of the intentions of the Liberal Cabinet of 1880-5. His clash with Gladstone came over the San Stefano Treaty between Russia and Turkey in 1878.

The British Ambassador at Constantinople, Layard, telegraphed to London that the victorious Russians were inside the city. The Russian Ambassador to London denied this, and W. E. Forster was put up by the Liberals to raise a pro-Russian debate. Cowen won tumultuous applause from the Conservatives, and fame throughout Britain, by a single phrase - “Mr. Speaker, are we going to believe the Rooshians or wor ain (our own) countryman?”

Under this taunt Forster’s motion collapsed, and was withdrawn. Two days later it became known that the Russian Ambassador had spoken truth, and that Layard was mistaken. Exultant Liberals raised a fresh debate, and Cowen prepared a jewelled speech, which he delivered with intense power.

Gladstone, however, smarting under the effect of his previous intervention, affected to believe that Cowen had become wedded to Imperialism, and that his oratory was prepared for an earlier occasion. Availing himself of a quotation from Hamlet, he insinuated that when Cowen helped the Tories “the funeral baked meats do coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.” This rankled in the Radical’s heart.

In 1893, however, Cowen left a sick-room in response to Glad-stone’s request to speak for Home Rule.

Another supporter of Butt’s motion was Charles Hammond, Tory member for Newcastle-on-Tyne. He had faithfully kept his pledge to the Irish electorate. Breezy, progressive and hand-in-glove with every one, “Charley” was locally a “draw” when lecturing on scientific topics.

Others who voted with Butt included Gourley, a Sunderland shipowner, a Radical, influenced by Cowen, Jenkins, member for Dundee, who had written a skit called ” Ginx’s Baby,” widely read. He was an Australian Commissioner, and the House in 1878-9, which disqualified Sir Michael O’Loghlen (elected for Clare, while an Australian law-officer), held Jenkins’ election valid on the ground that he held office “from,” and not “under” the Crown.

Serjeant Simon, member for Dewsbury, who voted with Butt, was a benevolent Hebrew lawyer, mild and humanitarian, who seldom addressed the House, but wielded influence privately.

The careers of Sir Charles Dilke and Sir Wilfred Lawson are too well known to need recall. Of two others, Cross and Byton, I lack memory.

My impression of the debate is that Ireland did handsomely. The stately rhetoric of Butt, his venerable figure, the by-play of his fingers twirling his glasses, the dignified consideration shown him by a hostile audience, the courtly politeness of Disraeli in yielding an additional day for further discussion, the eloquence of A. M. Sullivan, and the fine reply of the Irish Attorney-General, J. T. Ball, made a lasting impression.

After his defeat the policy of Butt changed. Bills to promote minor reforms were brought in. These provided for the equalization of our Municipal and Parliamentary franchise to that of England, the amendment of the Land Act of 1870, the improvement of fisheries, the reclamation of sloblands, etc. Such Bills were invariably rejected, and in six years the Conservatives allowed Butt only to place to his credit three tiny measures. These were one empowering Irish Corporations to confer “freedom” on notables, a second enabling them to send up three names to the Lord-Lieutenant, from which City Sheriffs should be selected, and a third repealing the Convention Act which forbade assemblies having a representative character to meet in Ireland. Outside Parliament, Butt had the unwavering supports of two professors of T.C.D., men of great distinction: The Rev. Prof. Galbraith and Professor Jonathan Haughton. Despite College prejudice, they ardently advocated Home Rule. Both had won fame as mathematicians and astronomers, and their names worked magic with the people. They verified the “Annals of the Four Masters” as to the high tide in the Liffey during the Battle of Clontarf, which drowned many Danes in 1014, although the “Annals” had been rightly challenged as to chronology in other respects.

Haughton was also a humanitarian, and his experiments led to the adoption of the “long drop” in the hanging of murderers. There had been feeling in Ireland over the executions at Manchester of Allen, Larkin and O’Brien, in November, 1867. It was alleged that Calcraft, the hangman, swung out of the bodies to hasten death; and doubtless the short drop then used meant a long struggle for the condemned. Haughton, in 1870, when a tipsy soldier cut the throat of an “unfortunate,” suggested to the Government that agony could be shortened by the adoption of the “long drop.” Given permission to experiment at Richmond Jail on the day before the execution, Haughton tested the rope with a weighted sack which bore the strain Next day the soldier faced the trap-door and his life was duly taken, but his head was sheared off. Yet Haughton’s gear was accepted by the authorities, with some modifications, so that murderers are no longer strangled, but instantly killed.

Butt used to breakfast with Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, the Chief Secretary, and each gauged from these conversations how much the other could give or take. His party consisted mainly of the landed gentry, with a few Nationalists thrown in. Amongst the latter were John Martin, J. G. Biggar, P J Smyth (who had helped to rescue John Mitchel from Tasmania), O’Connor Power, B. Sheil, A. M. Sullivan, J. H. Kirk, J. P. Ronayne, W. H. O’Sullivan (a Fenian “suspect”), Colonel Nolan, Major O’Gorman, Richard Power, Delahunty, and Dr. O’Leary.

Of these Major O’Gorman came of a type not likely to be reproduced. Enormously fat (he probably weighed 25 stone), he whistled with a lilt that no linnet or blackbird could improve on. He seldom spoke, but when he did his humour recalled that of Sir Boyle Roche. Assured by a correspondent that “one word from him” would get the applicant a post office, O’Gorman replied, “I hereby appoint you postmaster of Ballymore’”

In a debate on a Sunday Closing Bill he narrated that he received a letter from a nephew telling him that if he became a teetotaller it wouldprolong his days, and that he replied, “I took your advice yesterday and found it the longest day of my life!”

O’Gorman, at a meeting in the Rotunda, Dublin; delivered himself on the depopulation of Ireland. Without a smile, he said: “At the Union of 1800 Ireland had six millions of people, and England 12. In 1841 Ireland had eight millions and England 20. To-day Ireland has less than five millions, while England has 40. This demonstrates on mathematical principles that we are now worse off than an uninhabited island.”

O’Gorman thought his nephew was unjustly passed over for promotion in his old regiment, so on the Army estimates he cried “Hear, hear!” at every word the Minister uttered. The Speaker protested. “I am only cheering,” said he, “as I thought every one was entitled to cheer Ministers.” Before the night was over his nephew got his captaincy.

Before he became acquainted with the after-midnight procedure of the House (when the Speaker postpones *pro forma *every Bill or Motion undisposed of to “this day”) he tickled members by inquiring, “Is this to-day or to-morrow?”

On 23rd April, 1875, in the division on the Tichborne case in which Dr. Kenealy and Mr. Whalley were tellers, O’Gorman was the only one who supported them. There were 433 on the other side. Being asked why he voted with the anti-Catholic champions, he replied, mopping his brow, “Because I knew the ‘aye’ lobby would be cooler!”

A different output of the 1874 Elections was Dr. O’Leary, who ousted Whitworth, a Manchester manufacturer, from the Borough of Drogheda. O’Leary, although a Nationalist, was a fervid supporter of Tory policy abroad. His practice as a physician in Dublin rarely enabled him to attend the House, but whenever Disraeli’s proceedings in Afghanistan, India, Cyprus or Turkey were challenged he was found in the Government lobby. The Tory Whips marvelled, for they then had only one Irish member in their pay, and knew that O’Leary never looked for compliment or title. In Disraeli’s last year in the Commons they told him of the little Dublin physician who used to rally to his support on foreign issues. “Dear me,” said the Prime Minister, “show him to me in the Division lobby to-night.” There they pointed out the tiny yet dignified figure of Dr. O’Leary writing in a recess. Disraeli approached, and throwing an arm familiarly round O’Leary, exclaimed: “My dear Doctor, will you allow me to intrude myself to tell you how much you remind me of my old friend, Tom Moore, your great poet.”

After that, O’Leary would have trodden on red-hot plough-shares to vote for Dizzy’s policy. These were the days when Dr. Dale (or the Bishop of Birmingham) said, “Disraeli’s romances are political; his politics are romantic, and he himself is a fiction founded upon fact.”

In Butt’s party were some “museum pieces.” A high franchise and the expense of elections bred freaks. Delahunty was returned for Co. Waterford at 80 years of age, in order to keep out a landlord’s nominee. He wore a wig, and inside it kept his notes, with a mirror, a brush and comb, and other articles for his toilet. His craze was that the evils of Ireland flowed from a one-pound note currency. Such notes then were only issued in Ireland and Scotland. During the war of 1914-18, England, where sovereigns had been universal, found paper as convenient as gold.

Delahunty, however, thought the £1 note concealed a British design against Ireland, and demanded a gold currency. He had been elected M.P. just before the late Joseph Chamberlain appeared in the House of Commons and had framed a petition for the abolition of £1 notes. This he tried to get signed by English M.P.’s. Some, out of politeness, obliged the old man, for he moaned that “the arrow which pierced Ireland’s heart was feathered with one-pound notes!” On the day Chamberlain was introduced (by Sir Charles Dilke and Joseph Cowen) he was approached by Delahunty, who produced the petition disinterred from his wig. The Birmingham Republican sniffed and declined to sign. Delahunty sighed, and subsequently complained to O’Connor Power. “Ah!” said he, “these young men are too sharp.”

That evening, however he came back to Power triumphant. Doffing his wig, he produced the petition signed “Joseph Chamberlain.” His friend asked, “How did you persuade him?” “Well,” chuckled the old gentleman “some are wake” (weak). The member for Birmingham had learnt something even from his first hours in the lobbies!

When J. P. Ronayne, member for Cork, died, Butt’s party lost for ever an overflowing source of humour. Ronayne’s leg had to be amputated and he woke up to make the dying joke, “I can never again stand for the City, but I shall stump the County!”

It was he who coached Biggar to obstruct, being himself too shy to speak. “The Belfast Pork Butcher” (as Biggar was called) was in bodily frame defective, yet his mien stamped him as a personage - a back hunched, legs small eyes penetrating but kindly, his words sprayed forth in a harsh Belfast rasp. In courage or honesty no surpass him. Not merely would he not tell a lie, but the apparatus of his mind could not frame a falsehood.

He was first elected for Cavan in 1874, and his earliest feat was to talk for four hours against the Second Reading of Beach’s Peace Preservation Bill on 22nd April, 1875. About the third hour Disraeli stole in to “view” him. The story is that he said to David Plunket (afterwards Lord Rathmore): “Mr. Solicitor-General, is that a leprecaun?” The quip gained currency, and London Society chuckled at hearing that the Prime Minister was “up” in Celtic fairy lore. Attacks only gave Biggar zest for fresh feats, and five days later his “espial of strangers” evicted the Prince of Wales from the House. This came about because it was then a burning question whether the public should be excluded from the galleries of the Commons at the caprice of a member rising to “espy strangers.” The tradition was that debates were private, lest the Sovereign should intimidate members, as in the reign of Charles I.

Joseph Cowen raised objection without effect. So he stirred up Biggar, who had his own way of working. On 27th April, 1875, a motion on horse-breeding set down by Henry Chaplin drew a fashionable audience, including the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII). Hardly was the Prince seated when a weird Belfast voice broke out,” Mr. Speaker, I espy strangers! “Speaker Brand had no option save to declare “Strangers must withdraw!” and the Heir Apparent retired, with the rest.

The attacks on Biggar which followed delighted him, but the rule was modified, and “strangers” cannot since be ejected unless a majority of the House so decides. The Ladies’ Gallery was not then “cleared,” owing to the screen (lately abolished), as it was not regarded as being within the precincts of the House.

Whether this view will prevail in future, can only be settled when next strangers are bidden to withdraw. The point was not raised when a Labour member cleared the House in December, 1925.

A Convention of the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain was held at Leeds in 1875, and Biggar was asked to preside. He consented and I heard him begin, “Gentlemen, I can’t speak a damn bit!”

His favourite mentor was John Rea, a Belfast solicitor, who used to describe himself as the “Orange Fenian attorney of the North.” Rea was sometimes taken by force from the Committee rooms of the House of Commons when a Belfast private Bill came under discussion, When Biggar talked on the Judicature Bill of 1875, which fused the Exchequer, Commons Pleas, and Queen’s Bench Courts, Rea in the Stranger’s Gallery declared that he enjoyed the “feelings of an archangel.”

Biggar said that Rea laid down the view that the “opinion” of Counsel is “the guess of one man as to what another man will guess.”

These two brought about the election of the first M.P. for Belfast, William Johnston of Ballykilbeg. Gladstone had imprisoned Johnston for defying the Party Processions Act, so Orangemen and Nationalists combined to do him honour. The Belfast Tory managers opposed Johnston, and nominated Corry. Yet Biggar and Rea organized Catholic votes to defeat the machine. It was the first time that “Rome” fraternized with “Sandy Row.” Rea had been a practitioner as a solicitor in the Belfast Police Courts with Charles Russell, afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England. He then was regarded as the abler man.

When a Recorder of Belfast - Otway - a pompous person, ordered solicitors to wear gowns, Russell complied, but Rea brought to Court in his bag a “winsey” petticoat of his friend, Maggie Hanna, and donned it publicly. This killed the new sumptuary law!

The “Orange Fenian attorney,” when the Land League was started in Connaught in 1879 was engaged to defend Davitt and Daly. The prosecution was abandoned owing to the ridicule he threw upon the magistrates.

As solicitor to the Belfast Water Board, Rea defied every onslaught, but his end was sad. At a public inquiry into the affairs of that body he suddenly shot himself. A man of mark thus perished miserably.

To return to his parliamentary ally.

At the Speaker’s levee in 1874, Biggar, according to O’Connor Power, attended attired in Court dress and sword and went home in this uniform on the top of a bus!

In 1875 he joined the Catholic Church. A news-cutting of the announcement pasted on a sheet of paper was sent him by his father.

Underwritten was, “Dear Joseph, - Is this true? ” The son scrawled thereunder: “Dear Father, it is.”

So the correspondence ended and father and son never met again.

I asked Biggar why, as he was not theologically-minded, he joined the Catholic Church “Well, Mister,” he mused, ” I was invited to be ‘sidesman’ (collector) at the opening of Armagh Cathedral. The great Dominican, Father Tom Burke, preached and laid down that the Catholic religion was the national religion of Ireland. As I was a good Nationalists, I thought I should like to belong to the national religion of Ireland.”

He was anxious as to the school to which he should send his son. I recommended a college, saying that the boy would good classical education there. “What’s the use of a classical education?” he flung out. “Well,” I answered, “it gives one better command of the English language.” He retorted, “I got a good command of the English language selling pork on commission in Belfast.”

Biggar had an uncle in the Gateshead Corporation (Co. Durham), a Tory, who was a severe magistrate. Joe spoke of him to me as “me Uncle Ben.” In November, 1877, Ben’s term of office expired. To capture Irish votes for his re-election the uncle induced Biggar to come from Westminster to support him. I met Biggar at the Central ‘Station, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and there lamented the unpopularity of his uncle. “Ben” had sent Irishmen to jail after a St Patrick’s Day procession at Jarrow-on-Tyne, so Joe asked me to get our friends together that evening in order that he might talk to them. I yielded, but the gathering was a “frost.” Joe, however, grimly earnest, went on the platform at the Gateshead Town Hall to face the opponents of “me Uncle Ben.”

He said he had not come to dictate to Irishmen, or appeal to them because of his position in Parliament. He admitted “me Uncle Ben” was an honest Conservative, but “while I can’t ask you to vote for him I propose to offer arguments to explain why you might be as well to support him.”

Gradually, he slipped out his trump card as to why they “might be as well to do so.” The audience was mainly Catholic, and nearly all hated his uncle, but Biggar seductively told them that “Tory and all as my Uncle is, he was the only member of my family, except my sister, who did not disown me when I joined the Catholic Church.” Loud applause.

“Me Uncle Ben” was elected, and a London paper controlled by Sir Henry Lucy inquired how many more uncles Biggar held in reserve?

About 1884, a Miss Hyland, of Paris, took action against Biggar for breach of promise of marriage. Lord Coleridge, who tried the case, would have ruled in his favour, in the absence of corroboration, but Biggar insisted, against the advice of Sir Charles Russell, on going into the witness-box.

The jury thought his evidence afforded corroboration of the lady’s story, but gave small damages. Lord Coleridge told Russell that Biggar was the most frank and truthful witness he had ever known. He therefore charged for a small verdict. Joe went back to the Commons that evening as if nothing had happened.

At the adjournment I walked home with him, as was my custom. T. P. O’Connor joined us, avid for “copy,” and inquired whether the costs would be large. “Well, misther,” said Joe. “we’ll talk about that another time.”

Like all loser-litigants who refuse to take their lawyer’s advice, Biggar protested “Russell betrayed me.” This ejaculation was the outburst of a man unlearned in procedure, for Russell objected to his going into the box. Still, Biggar could never be persuaded that Russell was not false to him. Pat Egan, the Treasurer of the Land League (exiled in Paris), who had egged on the lady to proceed against him, was not blamed.

Biggar’s turns of phrase were treasureable. I spent three summers with him at his Castle, Butlerstown, Co. Waterford A gardener, whom he dismissed, came to me complaining of a “character” he gave. It ran:

“John Doyle can grow a good crop of vegetables; also a good crop of weeds.”

J. G. Biggar.”

I reproached Joe, but not a word would he change.

He was reputed niggardly, but no one could be more bountiful, though he examined his farthings rigorously.

Justin MacCarthy, in the smoke-room of the Commons, asked him for a sovereign towards the law costs of Miss Helen Taylor (stepdaughter of John Stuart Mill), who had been cast in damages for libel. “I’ll not give it, misther,” he blurted out. MacCarthy’s face fell until Biggar added, “I’ll give £5.”

Biggar declared of dancing that he had “no substantial propensity” for it. Music he hated. A harper used to play in the Ship Hotel, Abbey Street, Dublin, while lunch was served. Coming there to eat a snack with a friend, Biggar said while the most exquisite Gaelic airs were being discoursed, “Misther, let’s away out of this noise!

Once, at a party given by an admirer in his honour, the daughter of the house played Beethoven, but Joe broke in, “Stop that, miss, please, I’d like to talk to your father!

His constant advice to comrades in the House of Commons was, “Never talk unless in Government time.”

If a letter reached him on a Sunday he would not open it, even after he became a Catholic. “My father,” he said, “never read letters on the Sabbath.” He was the bravest soul I ever knew. A grandson of his was killed on the British side in the Great War.

His immortal saying, “Never resign anything, get expelled,” was spoken to O’Connor Power in 1876. Both were members of the Supreme Council of the Fenian Brotherhood. Charles Doran, architect of the Queenstown Cathedral, was chairman of that Council, and to him J. F. X. O’Brien (who had been sentenced to death for high treason in 1867, but escaped hanging) protested that Power, Biggar and all “oath-takers” should be expelled.

A Dublin tailor named Leavey supported O’Brien, and the expulsion of Biggar and Power was carried by Doran’s casting vote. John Barry and Pat Egan thereupon withdrew from the organization. Afterwards, J. F. X. O’Brien became a member of Parliament, and took the oath of allegiance, while Leavey turned informer and became a witness for *The Times *at the Commission of 1888-9. Leavey there revealed the names of the members of the “Council” in his day, which included John Barry. After his evidence was published, Barry called to do business with the famous house of Maple in Tottenham Court Road. Its venerable head greeted him with, “John, what’s this ‘Supreme Council’ of which you were a member?” Barry, never at a loss, broke in: “Oh, you mean the Irish Branch of the Ancient Order of Buffaloes?” Mr. Maple, kindliest of souls, was content.

In the 1874 Parliament, common sense was fabled to be centred in the Conservative member for Oxfordshire, Mr. Henley. On any proposition which he thought untenable, he declared: “If my arguments cannot prevail, I will lie on my back and cry ‘Fudge.’”

Small questions then loomed large. Lord Redesdale, Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords, would not allow narrow-gauge railways to be laid in Ireland. He was a stickier for precedent, and rebuked his clerks if they erred, with “Remember John Archbishop of Tuam!

The explanation was that after Lord John Russell’s Ecclesiastical Titles Act (which forbade Catholic prelates to use territorial designations) became law, Dr. McHale’s name and title were scheduled in a private Railway Bill, as” John Archbishop of Tuam.” The officers of the House of Lords allowed it to pass, despite the prohibition in the public statute of the use of Archbishop’s style and dignity.

In 1875 John Mitchel, ex-convict, returned from exile - having been elected M.P. for Tipperary. Beloved of all Nationalists, he to their grief had only a few weeks to live. In 1848 a Treason Felony Act for his condemnation, because of writings in his newspaper, the United Irishman. That organ was a flaming torch of sedition, and earned the attentions of Clarendon, the Lord Lieutenant.

Mitchel had fallen out .with Gavan Duffy and left the Nation to found a more extreme journal.

A Unitarian, born in Dungiven, Co. Derry, and a solicitor, Mitchel reminded the Northern farmers that “the Pope serves no writs in Ulster.” His wrath, because of the famine, culminated in the appeal, “Let every man who has no gun sell his coat and buy one.” Denouncing secret societies, he told the Viceroy that he would not object to the Government settling a detective permanently in his office, “provided the man be sober and honest!”

His first number printed a letter from Father Kenyon of Templederry, who complained that it had been excluded from the *Nation *through poltroonery. Duffy met this charge in a pamphlet which gave a history of his relations with Mitchel, and showed that he was absent from Ireland when the letter came, and that the editor then was Mitchel himself. Later on Father Kenyon refused to help the insurgents, when Smith O’Brien, M.P., son of Lord Inchiquin, “rose out.”

Mitchel’s thunderous articles soon led to his being sent to penal servitude. After conviction he was deported, first to Bermuda, and than to Tasmania, whence he escaped to San Francisco.

Of the backwoods of California, he used to tell that he once came upon a party of lumberers felling trees. The men asked who and what he was. Mitchel replied that he had been driven from Ireland by the British Government. One of them, muttered, pausing in his stroke, “British Government! British Government! You don’t mean to tell us that that damn thing is going on still!

Mitchel’s *Jail Journal, *and his preface to the poems of Clarence Magan, and to the *Life of Thomas Davis, *will live as long as Anglo-Irish literature survives. Of Mangan he sighed: “There two Mangans, one well known to the Muses, the other to the police.”

Harsh as this was to the genius he loved, Mitchel atoned for it by assigning the poet’s lapse to a “fair and false Frances,” who, “exercising her undoubted prerogative, whistled him down the wind… As a beautiful dream she entered into his existence once for all; as a tone of celestial music she pitched the keynote of his song and sweeping over all the chords of his melodious desolation you may see that white hand.”

In the *Jail Journal *Mitchel stormed and crooned over the dead O’Connell:

“Poor old Dan! - wonderful, mighty, jovial, and mean old man, with silver tongue and smile of witchery, and head of melting ruth - lying tongue, smile of treachery, heart of unfathomable fraud. What a royal, yet vulgar soul! with the keen eye, and potent swoop of a generous eagle of Carn Tual - with the base servility of a hound, and the cold cruelty of a spider. Think of his speech for John Magee, the most powerful forensic achievement since before Demosthenes - and then think of the “gorgeous and gossamer” theory of moral and peaceful agitation, the most astounding *organum *of public swindling since first man bethought him of obtaining money under false pretences. And after one has thought of all this, and more, what then can a man say? - what but pray that Irish earth may lie light on O’Connell’s breast - and that the good God, who knew how to create so wondrous a creature, may have mercy upon his soul.”

Mitchel’s fugitive writings sparkle with genius, and deserve better than forgetfulness. He sympathized with every lost cause. Two of his sons were killed as Confederates in the Civil War of 1862-5. Napoleon III expelled him from France.

A reply he made to the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, of New York, in February, 1854, is steeped in the imagery of the Book of Job, flavoured with a tinge of Thomas Carlyle.

Apostrophizing the great preacher, he wrote: *“I *also could find comparison in the various kingdoms of Nature for you, Mr. Beecher. I have a mind even to try your own style, to show that I have taken a lesson from you-as thus: I am a ‘rolling and resounding iceberg of the Polar Seas.’ Very well; you are a geyser, or boiling spring, copious enough to keep the world in hot water. I may be like ‘a dead tree’; but what if your Reverence is very like a whale, a whale of the blowing and spouting species - blowing and spouting as if you meant to quench the stars? Rather indeed are you like the great Sea Serpent, that dubious and mythical fish, who disporteth himself before the eye of wondering mariners, now to starboard, again to port, and no man knoweth where to have him. He esteemeth iron as straw, and the arrow cannot make him flee. He lasheth the sea with his tail, and all the morning papers of the universe resound with the splash thereof. No fisher of woman born shall put a hook between his jaws; no mortal cook shall cut him up for ever; on his crest sits Humbug plumed; from his mane shaketh boundless Bunkum; and in his convoluted spires there lurketh Capital.

“I can take my leave of you now, but what *can *I say to the pathetic adjuration with which you conclude your letter - ‘Come back to us, John Mitchel; it is not yet too late!’ Ah, your Reverence will excuse me, it is not too late, but too early You belong to a sect and school of social reformers that I have always kept at arms length. By your tongue I know you. You are of the men who talk about ‘the rude ages 4,000 years ago,’ as if the thing that was virtue then was crime today. It is you who cry out for the abolition of ‘the gallows and the barbarous rattling guillotine’ - two instruments without which the planet would be uninhabitable. You are the apostle of Homan Progress and Benevolism, and all sorts of moral, physical and intellectual perfectabilities, ending in loud cheers, subscriptions, toasts, tabernacles and trash. ‘Come *back *to you’? Why, when was I ever amongst you? What eye has ever seen me moving in the ranks of Human Progress? Who has heard me blowing trumpets at the corners of the streets, or talking the blarney of Benevolence? No! Cant indeed is strong, and the Star of Humbug is high and culminant, but at any rate a man is not obliged to make himself at home with Humbug, to fling himself into the arms of Humbug, to take up his house contentedly with Humbug.

“I will never say to Barnum, ‘Thou art my brother,’ and unto Bunkum, ‘Thou art my sister and mother.’ Neither will I say to Beecher, ‘Thou art my Pastor and Master.’”

On the Italians entering Rome in 1870, Mitchel, the Unitarian, applauded in the *New York Citizen, *the *non possumus *of Pio Nono. The Pontiff had protested against the seizure of his territory, saying, *“Non voglio, non posso, non debbio,” *and Mitchel commented: “These are noble words, and what His Holiness means is that he would see them damned first.”

At Pee Loyson, the eloquent preacher of Notre-Dame, who startled Paris in 1870 by abjuring Catholicity, Mitchel mocked: “It is not the decree of Infallibility that troubles him. We have seen his photograph. He wants a wife. In fact, he wants two!”

Loyson soon married. Mitchel thus anticipated a jest of Father Healy to a Protestant bishop - “Whenever you get a priest of ours under your wing, watch him, for he is afflicted by one or other of two maladies - Punch or Judy!”

Mitchel had opposed the attempt of his comrade, Thomas Francis Meagher, to get elected for Waterford in 1848. On his own election for Tipperary, in 1875, he announced that he would never enter the House of Commons. The House expelled him, but Tipperary returned him again. The Courts however declared the second election invalid, and decided that his Tory opponent (Moore of Barne) was entitled to the seat. Mitchel died a month after coming to Ireland, and was laid to rest in Newry He once soliloquized: “I have been expelled from the territories of three Powers, France, U.S.A and Britain Is it possible that these Great Powers were wrong and that I (J.M.) alone am right?” His grandson half a century later became Mayor of New York.

The “silent system” applied to political prisoners by Sir Edward Du Cane cost Britain sorely. O’Donovan Rossa. when released, conspired to bring about dynamite explosions. As in Russia harsh jail “discipline”, implants in the mind of convicts the spirit of revolt.

Rossa’s treatment was made the subject of a Government inquiry, and was condemned in the House of Commons by Conservatives. On being set free, he was refused permission to live in Ireland - where he could do no harm - and was shipped to New York, where he became a force. On the 4th March, 1875, he wrote an appeal for the creation of a “Skirmishing Fund,” and £40,000 was amassed.

Most of it went to enable a man called Holland to construct the first submarine. That craft sank in the Hudson River, but the conception was due to Rossa’s scheme of vengeance. Improvements in submarines, of course, came later, although England was slow to take up the invention. I heard Goschen, First Lord of the Admiralty, announce that the British Navyhad little use for them. Yet a French submarine in Toulon had then, in mimic warfare, dived under a battleship, which the umpire “considered sunk.” The inventor, Holland, came to London afterwards to press his plans on the Admiralty. Arnold Forster, stepson of the late Chief Secretary for Ireland, was then Under-Secretary to the Navy, and Holland applied to me for an introduction to him. Forster, with great broad-mindedness, knowing his record, consented to receive him. What the result was I never inquired.

A sad sequel to Du Cane’s prison policy became manifest in the case of Captain John McCafferty. He was a “Confederate rebel,” and never saw Ireland until he landed near Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, on a Fenian foray, in 1867. Sentenced to penal servitude, he was released by the Gladstone Government in 1870.

Of him, John Devoy wrote (8th May, 1926): “McCafferty was one of the most desperate and successful of Morgan’s guerrillas in the Civil War. One of his feats was getting through the Federal lines, capturing a large stock of ammunition, loading it on a Mississippi steamboat, and getting it safely down the river under fire of the Federal batteries.”

When turned loose from Portland, McCafferty went down on his knees outside the prison gates, cursed the Governor, the prison system, the British Government, and vowed revenge on all.

The Governor forced him back to his cell, and wired the Home Office for instruction. McCafferty, in consequence, had to spend many more years in Portland. Ultimately he was set free, and when he arrived in America, so secretly did he work, that his name does not appear in the list of “Parnell’s American Auxiliaries,” prepared for *The Times *by its experts at the Forgery Commission of 1888.

He was not even mentioned by the spy, Le Cron, in his evidence at the Commission. McCafferty never attended a public meeting in America, or identified himself with the Irish movement. Whispers, however, reached us that he was thought to be an inspirer of the “Invincible” Society, which brought about the murder of the Chief Secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish; and the Under-Secretary Burke in the Phoenix Park on the 6th May, 1882. *

The Times *in 1887-8 aimed at saddling Parnell with these murders.

The brief of Attorney-General Webster, endorsed by “Soames, Edwards and Jones, solicitors, 58 Lincoln’s Inn Fields,” mentions as “Parnell’s American Auxiliaries” all released prisoners active in America, viz., T. F. Bourke, E. O’M. Condon, John Devoy, T. C. Luby, Mackey-Lomasney, O’Donovan Rossa, and Stephen J. Meany. (The last-named in the Crimean War wrote “The Red, White and Blue,” once a popular chant in England.)

No one thought of McCafferty, the silent Confederate soldier. His name is unspoken and unknown. Yet, like the Persian cobbler who, with his awl, brought down the Shah’s Ministers, he may have been the chief pursuer of revenge.

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