Enigma

by Paul Bew

  It was one of the greatest hours of his life; yet, a vainer man or a weaker man might have given the House evidence of the inner triumph of his own breast that such an astonishing victory might well have created, but this was not Parnell. He normally sat in a somewhat conspicuous position on the third bench below the gangway on the Opposition side, but even there he did not ordinarily take the first seat—this was occupied usually by either Mr Sexton or Mr Healy. His usual place was on the third seat, but during these home rule debates—he sat close to the door of the House, among what I may call a ruck of members on the second bench of seats, a spot which he could occupy without being seen, at least, immediately by many members of the House.38

  From his new inconspicuous position, Parnell watched on as Gladstone failed to win the argument with a key section of his own party.

  Gladstone’s wisest Liberal Unionist critics did not charge Gladstone with any crude inconsistency on the matter, at least, of his conversion to Home Rule. R. H. Hutton, the editor of the Spectator, found ‘a perfect consistency with the general drift of his political convictions for the last thirty years’.39 Bernard Holland took the same view, arguing that Gladstone, originally an anti-imperialist Canningite Tory, had easily and fully adopted Liberal principles—the freedom of nations was his abiding passion. Liberals had for years denounced the rule of men of one race or religion over another—in Greece, Poland, Italy, Hungary and Turkey—without admitting that it applied to Ireland, until the 1885 election apparently gave them no choice.40 The problem, of course, lay with an added complexity, Holland pointed out: Ireland was not one race or religion. Arguments against the government of Ireland from London could also be used against the government of Ulster from Dublin, and with more deadly effect. But, as Holland also acknowledged, Gladstone was very reluctant to come to terms with this reality.

  In April–May 1886 Gladstone signalled vaguely a possible flexibility on the Ulster issue. In early June 1886 Gladstone returned to the same issue. His reference was cursory enough. Many Irish and English Unionists believed that, as the Home Rule Bill was heading for defeat, there was no need to compromise around some form of ‘exclusion’ for four or six north-eastern counties. Gladstone can be forgiven for replying: ‘The right hon. gentleman says that the question of Ulster is a question of principle. It may be a question of great importance; but whilst we in no respect recede from the statement that we made on the opening of these debates, yet I cannot say that any second plan for Ulster has been made, to my knowledge, any serious plan for effective progress.’41 However, in May 1893 Gladstone was apparently to concede the substantive case for the separate political treatment of the north-east corner of the island. Gladstone even suggested in parliament that Parnell had tacitly accepted this in private in 1886. There is, however, absolutely no evidence to support this assertion other than Gladstone’s own word.42

  The Spectator’s editor, R. H. Hutton, made a point of maintaining good personal relations with Gladstone after Gladstone’s espousal of Home Rule; Gladstone was pleased by this but added that he could not understand Hutton’s opposition to Home Rule because ‘it would be absurd to say that you are warped by the spirit of class’.43 Gladstone was convinced that the opponents of Home Rule in British politics were ‘warped by the spirit of class’. This reflection provoked a moment of introspection: ‘Am I warped by the spirit of anti-class? Perhaps—I cannot tell. My dislike of the class feeling gets slowly more and more accentuated, and my case is particularly hard and irksome, because I am thoroughly inequalitarian.’ But he adds suggestively: ‘For the fountainhead of my feelings and opinions on the matter I go back to the gospels.’44 Here is the essence of the Gladstonian conversion: a claim based on a kind of divine sanction, soon to be backed up by an enthusiastic course of Irish historical study. Why, he asked again and again, did the opponents of Home Rule think the Irish suffered from a double dose of original sin?

  The sharp contrast, of course, was with the Tory leadership’s opposition to the establishment of an Irish parliament. Commenting on the nationalist argument that ‘we are to have confidence in the Irish people’, Lord Salisbury said:

  Confidence depends upon the people in whom you are to confide. You would not confide free institutions to the Hottentots, for instance. Nor, going higher up the scale, would you confide them to the Oriental nations whom you are governing in India, although finer specimens of human character you will hardly find than some who belong to those nations, but who are simply not suited to that particular kind of confidence of which I am speaking. . . . This which is called self-government, but what is really government by the majority, works admirably well when it is confided to the people who are of Teutonic race, but it does not work so well when people of other races are called upon to join in it.45

  The Liberal Unionist intelligentsia hated this language; they rejected it as crude stereotyping. Chamberlain told Labouchere that ‘Salisbury’s speech is as bad as anything can be’.46 The Liberal Oxford don George C. Brodrick, in his Political Studies (published in 1879), hated the idea that ‘Ireland can only prosper by the eternal subjection of an Irishman to a superior race’.47 Well into the 1880s, Gladstone regarded Brodrick as an ally and trusted analyst of Irish agrarian issues. What did he think in 1886 when Lord Eustace Cecil wrote to him in support of their common opposition to Home Rule, and in the same letter observed ‘as if Galway peasants, Durham miners and Dorsetshire labourers were intellectually, morally and socially fit for the exercise of the franchise’?48 But despite these uncomfortable moments and the reversion of a number of Liberal Unionist MPs to Gladstonianism in the late 1880s, the core group of Liberal opponents of Gladstone remained true to their opposition. They insisted that somehow it was possible to oppose Home Rule without expressing contempt for a whole people.

  Even some Tories were unhappy with Salisbury’s language. Carnarvon recorded in his diary discussions with a senior politician and a senior journalist:

  A rather interesting conversation with W. H. Smith. He is evidently not carried by the general and popular tide of anti-Irish feeling and is aware that something better than a mere non possumus is necessary. A long conversation also with Frederick Greenwood on the same subject. He is much of the same mind though he does not see or know as much, and though he writes in his paper in a different sense. Salisbury’s speech, the ‘twenty years’ coercion’ and the comparison of Irishmen with Hottentots is, as far as anything reaches me, not very much approved.49

  Against this Tory rhetoric, the Liberals insisted on a very different version of reality. James Bryce’s pro-Home Rule speech in May was a very strong statement to the effect that a democracy ‘is profoundly unfitted for the appeal to force as the final reply to disruptive tendencies’.50 If Britain could not govern Ireland except by extra-legal non-consensual means, then Britain had to allow Ireland to govern herself. Nevertheless, Bryce was on the losing side: ‘Mr Gladstone’s position depends on the plea that the death-bed repentance of Irish agitators is to be trusted as death-bed repentances have never been trusted yet.’51 By mid-May the opposition of the Radical and ‘Whig’ wings of the Liberal Party, led by Chamberlain and Hartington respectively, was obviously sufficiently strong to prevent the Lower House accepting Home Rule. The House of Lords was resolutely opposed, as, of course, was Protestant Ulster. Gladstone’s conversion had an enormous impact on Irish opinion all over the world, but it cut relatively little ice in British politics. He kept the majority of the Liberal Party behind him, but that was the extent of his achievement. On 28 May Gladstone announced that the bill, even if passed, would be withdrawn and reintroduced with important amendments. These were understood to include some form of retention of Irish MPs at Westminster for the discussion of taxation. But even this concession was not enough for the majority in opposition.

  As a result, the Home Rule debate in June became largely a rhetorical exercise. The key secondary element of land reform was explicitly abandoned. This was in deference to many loyal Glads
tonian Liberals who felt it was too generous to the landlords. Speeches were made largely for the record. And indeed, this is their main value: as the historical documentation of the pro- and anti-Home Rule cases. The negative case was probably best expressed by the prominent Liberal Unionist G. J. Goschen.

  Goschen’s speech was a minor classic. He argued that the bill fatally impaired the sovereignty of the Westminster parliament. (A. V. Dicey had gone so far as to say that complete separation of Ireland from England was in this sense less of a threat to the constitution.) There would inevitably be constant and recurring demarcation disputes about the spheres of sovereignty possessed by the Dublin and London parliaments. Goschen then referred to the likely position of Protestants under Home Rule. He admitted that the Nationalist leaders would probably do their best to combat the natural tendency of churchmen to dominate their nations. He even suggested that the Catholic clergy were not more desirous of such influence than any other church. But the fact was that the position of Protestants in Austria and Bohemia was by no means comfortable. This struck home, as Liberals were fond of citing these cases as successful examples of devolution. Already he cited ugly examples of Catholic—Belfast Catholic in fact—threats of discrimination against Protestants.

  Finally, Goschen picked up the theme of agrarian violence. Unlike some speakers on his side, whose speeches were laden with profoundly racist sentiments, he acknowledged that the Irish were not more innately vicious than any other people. But he insisted: ‘No people with such antecedents as the Irish could be suddenly entrusted with the unexampled powers which we propose to confer on them.’ Referring to agrarian crime, he went on: ‘These murders are not isolated crimes committed on the spur of the moment or in the heat of passion. There must be large numbers of men who are implicated. We hear of whole bands, and no evidence can be produced against the criminals.’ The Nation noted, with some acumen: ‘The force of Mr Goschen’s opposition lies almost wholly, however, in his prophecies of the mischief the Irish will do if they get the government into their own hands. He puts the argument better than any other opponent of the bill, because he is not restrained, as many of them are, by any affectation of respect for “the people”.’52 Disavowal of explicit racism was therefore still perfectly compatible with exploitation of the issue of Irish agrarian criminality.

  Supporters of Goschen strongly rejected Gladstone’s contention that essentially their case also was based on an assumption that the Irish were unfit for self-government. The Spectator implied that it was impossible for any educated English person to believe this of a country which was white, Christian and free.53 Rather, it argued, their case was similar to the argument of those in France in 1789 who might have claimed that a popular government, while apparently an attractive concept, would, in the actual national circumstances of the time, lead to a reign of terror. Such a statement would have been simply a correct historical prediction, not a denigration of an entire people. Similarly, the case—or so it was argued—in Ireland came down to this: could the ‘active section of the Irish majority’, demoralised by a long and continued social war, be trusted to provide moderate, sensible government?

  Linked to this was, of course, the question of violent nationalism and its Irish-American wing. London, after all, had been rocked by their explosions in the mid-1880s. Parnell personally became more and more determined to keep this world at a distance—even to the extent of refusing to meet perfectly respectable Irish-American visitors. He openly lied on the subject in public. In reply to Lord Hartington, Parnell declared: ‘I know nothing whatever further than what can be gained by reading in newspapers of the Fenian organisations in either Ireland or America. I have never had any communications with either of these organisations or their leaders, nor have I accepted any alliance with them. I do not know even now who the leaders of these organisations are, nor have there been any means of communication either through the National League or through the Land League between me and them.’54

  Parnell spoke immediately after Goschen’s bitter and destructive attack on the bill. Many were struck by similarity in style: both Parnell and Goschen were cold in style and displayed an incapacity for all types of oratorical adornment. Roman Zubof has left us an account of the occasion:

  In contrast to his [Goschen’s] small figure, agitated action and hoarse voice, Mr Parnell’s tall form, calm manner and strong, almost sonorous voice, came in agreeable relief and made everybody present settle in more comfortable attitudes in order to listen to him. He ignored the reasonings and arguments of the previous speaker; he seemed to imply that he had nothing to do with syllogisms. He was glad, grateful that the English people should have come to recognise that right. Apart from its high policy, it was a salutary business policy; and he warned (he used his forefinger threateningly) those members who opposed the bringing to an end of an enmity which had outlasted parties, outlived politicians, and withstood the rigour of oppression, as well as the temptation of bribery. He was listened to in deep silence; he was applauded loudly, but not vehemently, and when he sat down everyone could have seen the impression he produced was strong and lasting, both on his followers and opponents.55

  No doubt Zubof catches something of the mood of the House. It is, however, misleading to imply that Parnell ignored Goschen’s arguments. Goschen’s piercing comments went right to the heart of the matter. They simply could not be swept aside. It would, in fact, be an injustice to Parnell to suggest that he had no answer. He took up first of all the question of crimes. Predictably he claimed they were related to a recent increase in eviction. More significantly, Parnell made it clear that a self-governing Ireland would deal firmly with rural terrorists. Then he addressed the problem of the supremacy of the imperial parliament. By accepting the bill, he said, the Nationalists were honour-bound to accept that body’s ultimate sovereignty. At any rate, in the event of Nationalist infringements of the agreement, London always had the ultimate resource of force. ‘You will have the real power of force in your hands, and you ought to have it.’ He accepted that Goschen’s reservations about the attitude of the Catholic clergy were genuine: he had spoken, Parnell said, ‘very fairly in reference to this part of the question’. As a debating point he noted that Chamberlain—now a vociferous anti-Home Ruler—had been prepared in his ‘central board’ scheme to give control of Irish education to a body sitting in Dublin without any special provision for Irish Protestants. More importantly, however, he held out the prospect within a united Ireland of liberal Catholics and Irish Protestants uniting to curb the power of the Catholic Church. Obviously this begged the most basic question (by what means should Ireland be united?), but it is difficult to see how Parnell could have approached the question any other way. In his words:

  But I do assure the right honourable gentleman that we shall settle the question of education very well amongst ourselves (Irish cheers) and there are very many liberal Nationalists—I call them liberal Nationalists because I take the phrase in reference to the question of education—there are many liberal Nationalists who do not share the views of the Roman Catholic Church on the question of control of education and who are very much influenced by their desire to see Ulster remain part of the Irish legislative body and sharing the responsible duties of governing Ireland by the feeling that they have with regard to this question of education; I am sure that with Ulster in the Irish legislature and with her representatives coming together there as they came here, there would not be the slightest risk, if there was agreed any such idea, on the part of the Catholic priesthood and hierarchy to use their power unfairly against the Protestants.56

  Parnell played down Goschen’s emphasis on the anti-Protestant rhetoric of northern Catholics. In his view, Goschen had misinterpreted these incidents. On the Ulster issue, he spoke in apparently statesmanlike terms of not wanting to lose a single Irishman. Yet at the same time he made the error of apparently refusing to accept the statistical basis of Ulster’s superior prosperity. In short, Parnell’s reaction
to nascent Ulster Unionist opposition was less than intelligent. Its numerical strength in the north-east corner of Ireland was already apparent. In general, it might be said that, if Parnell’s answers on sovereignty and law and order were adequate, his remarks on matters affecting the Protestant minority were anything but adequate.

  When he spoke in parliament, Parnell had a problem at the back of his mind. On 24 May 1886 the Pall Mall Gazette published a short article entitled ‘Mr Parnell’s Suburban Retreat’. W. T. Stead, the radical (but also prurient) nonconformist editor of the Gazette, had probably decided to fire a shot across Parnell’s bows. It was an account of an accident at 11.45 p.m. on 21 May, in which a coach (Katharine’s) with Parnell as its passenger had collided with a florist’s van. Nobody was injured, and there was no news value in the incident, except, of course, for Parnell’s involvement. The Gazette concluded its story with the suggestion that during the parliamentary session Parnell made his home in Eltham: ‘From here he can often be seen taking riding exercise around Chislehurst and Gidlings.’57

  While, as T. P. O’Connor recorded, W. T. Stead enjoyed the sense of power he had over the Irish Party, he may have intended to wound O’Shea also. Stead was morally certain that O’Shea was complicit in his wife’s relationship with Parnell. The story certainly had an effect on O’Shea. As J. L. Garvin, Chamberlain’s biographer, noted: ‘O’Shea never feigned civility towards him [Parnell] again. Next the member for Galway City defiantly abstained from the division of the Home Rule Bill. The day after, he resigned his seat; for he could no longer show his face as a candidate in any nationalist constituency. As a sanguine agent his lights were extinguished. As a sinister principal his part was beginning.’58 The problem with the Pall Mall Gazette story was not that Willie O’Shea was forced to contemplate his wife’s liaison for the first time. He was already aware of the facts. The problem is that he was now suffering an unacceptable loss of public face.