Ireland Since Parnell | Page 9

as he was great in all that he had undertaken, suffered and
achieved for his country. It was a hushed and heart-broken Ireland that
heard of his death. It was as if a pall had fallen over the land on that
grey October morning in 1891 when the news of his passing was
flashed across from the England that he scorned to the Ireland that he
loved. It may be that those who had reviled him and cast the wounding
word against him had then their moment of regret and the wish that
what had been heatedly spoken might be unsaid, but those who loved
him and who were loyal to the end found no consolation beyond this,
that they had stood, with leal hearts and true, beside the man who had
found Ireland broken, maimed and dispirited and who had lifted her to
the proud position of conscious strength and self-reliant nationhood.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: This is not exact. What Dillon proposed was that Parnell,
McCarthy and Dillon himself should be the trustees, the majority to be
sufficient to sign cheques. When Parnell objected to a third being added,
Dillon made the observation which ruined everything: "Yes, indeed,
and the first time I was in trouble to leave me without a pound to pay
the men" (O'Brien's _An Olive Branch in Ireland_).]

CHAPTER IV

AN APPRECIATION OF PARNELL
With the death of Parnell a cloud of despair seemed to settle upon the
land. Chaos had come again; indeed, it had come before, ever since the
war of faction was set on foot and men devoted themselves to the
satisfaction of savage passions rather than constructive endeavour for
national ideals. We could have no greater tribute to Parnell's power
than this--that when he disappeared the Party he had created was rent
into at least three warring sections, intent for the most part on their own
miserable rivalries, wasting their energies on small intrigues and
wretched personalities and by their futilities bringing shame and
disaster upon the Irish Cause. There followed what Mr William O'Brien
describes in his Evening Memories as "eight years of unredeemed
blackness and horror, upon which no Irishman of any of the three
contending factions can look back without shame and few English
Liberals without remorse."
And thus Ireland parted with "the greatest of her Captains" and reaped
a full crop of failures as her reward. Too late there were flashing
testimonials to his greatness. Too late it became a commonplace
observation in Ireland, when the impotence of the sordid sections was
apparent: "How different it would all be if Parnell were alive." Too late
did we have tributes to Parnell's capacity from friend and foe which
magnified his gifts of leadership beyond reach of the envious. Even the
man who was more than any other responsible for his fall said of
Parnell (Mr Barry O'Brien's _Life of Parnell_):
"Parnell was the most remarkable man I ever met. I do not say the
ablest man; I say the most remarkable and the most interesting. He was
an intellectual phenomenon. He was unlike anyone I had ever met. He
did things and said things unlike other men. His ascendancy over his
Party was extraordinary. There has never been anything like it in my
experience in the House of Commons. He succeeded in surrounding
himself with very clever men, with men exactly suited for his purpose.
They have changed since--I don't know why. Everything seems to have
changed. But in his time he had a most efficient party, an extraordinary
party. I do not say extraordinary as an opposition but extraordinary as a

Government. The absolute obedience, the strict discipline, the military
discipline in which he held them was unlike anything I have ever seen.
They were always there, they were always ready, they were always
united, they never shirked the combat and Parnell was supreme all the
time."
"Parnell was supreme all the time." This is the complete answer to
those--and some of them are alive still--who said in the days of "the
Split" that it was his Party which made him and not he who made the
Party. In this connection I might quote also the following brief extract
from a letter written by Mr William O'Brien to Archbishop Croke
during the Boulogne negotiations:
"We have a dozen excellent front bench men in our Party but there is
no other Parnell. They all mean well but it is not the same thing. The
stuff talked of Parnell's being a sham leader, sucking the brains of his
chief men, is the most pitiful rubbish."
Time proved, only too tragically, the correctness of Mr O'Brien's
judgment. When the guiding and governing hand of Parnell was
withdrawn the Party went to pieces. In the words of Gladstone: "they
had changed since