hostile. One does not now hear, either in public or in private, one word of disunion in Ireland … since Parliament opened Mr. Healy has carefully abstained from saying or doing anything of a hostile character.
The General Election Fund is going well – I am sure we will meet the needs of the Party for the current year. But this is not enough; it is not safe for the Party to be living merely from hand to mouth ...
Regarding the Party in the House, the new men are a great improvement on the old. We now have no drinking brigade. The Party is made up of steady, sober, thoroughly decent and capable men. We have no galaxy of genius, no men likely to turn out as brilliant as [Thomas] Sexton and a few others did in Parnell’s time, but I believe we have a better average of talent in the Party than ever we had. There is not a trace, as far as I can observe, of bitterness or ill-feeling arising out of the old Parnellite and anti-Parnellite split. Nothing could be better, or, indeed, more generous than the manner in which I have been treated by the entire Party – just as much by those who were anti-Parnellites as by those who were Parnellites. This includes every man in the Party, from Mr. Dillon downwards.
The Government is in a sorry plight. The prolongation of the [Boer] war is costing £1.5 million a week, and their own party is restive … the Liberals themselves are quite demoralized and helpless – they would be afraid to defeat the Government even if they could, and they shrink from the responsibility of the reins of office. Thus the only Opposition in the House of Commons is the Irish Opposition …
I enclose an article of mine from the current issue of the New Liberal Review.18
TO WILLIAM O’BRIEN MP
House of Commons, 17 May 1901:
I was exceedingly glad to receive your letter firstly because it contained the good news that your health is improving …
I showed your letter to Dillon. We are all, I need not say, of one mind that under no circumstances should you dream of resigning your seat and all hope that by keeping worry of all sorts at arms length you will be yourself again …
I intend at Whitsuntide to lie low for a week or ten days. Twelve hours a day here takes it out of me.19
FROM P.A. MCHUGH, MP NORTH LEITRIM, EDITOR OF SLIGO CHAMPION
Kilmainham Jail, 18 May 1901:
… It would be quite impossible to make me more comfortable than I am. Like Diogenes in his tent I want for nothing. It is a great satisfaction to see how splendidly you are all going on in Parliament, and have never known the country to be in better heart than it is at present …20
TO WILLIAM O’BRIEN MP
Aughavanagh, 28 August 1901:
… I won’t write at any length as we can discuss everything when we meet.
I am sorry to say I cannot go [to Westport] by the 9 train on Saturday – I will go by the 4:30. My wife regrets extremely she cannot have the pleasure of accepting your kind invitation. She is doing the housekeeping here for a party of shooters and cannot stir …21
TO WILLIAM O’BRIEN MP
Aughavanagh, 4 October 1901:
I am uneasy about [the by-election in] Galway. I think our friends ought to try to make up their minds as to a candidate …
Two other possible candidates occur to me:
1. Douglas Hyde – he wd. be a strong candidate. He is no doubt a crank, but is a good fellow and his election might neutralize any dangerous tendencies of the Gaelic movement.
2. Patrick Boland – brother to the member for Kerry. He wd. make an admirable member of the Party …22
TO WILLIAM O’BRIEN MP
Gresham Hotel, Dublin, 17 October 1901:
I am greatly concerned at the news that you find it necessary to go away. I had hoped you were nearly all right again, though I confess I feared the … increasing political worries … It is very unfortunate that we both will be away at the same time …23
***
Redmond was conferred with the Freedom of the City of Dublin on 3 April 1902, and with the Freedom of the City of Cork on 4 April. In March, the new Hibernophile Chief Secretary, George Wyndham, introduced a Land Bill. Redmond and his colleagues rejected it, judging its purchase provisions to be wholly inadequate. In June, in an atmosphere of mounting agitation and repression, and pro-Boer utterances from Party members, Wyndham withdrew the Bill.
FROM T.C. HARRINGTON MP, LORD MAYOR
Mansion House, Dublin, 9 March 1902:
Would Thursday in Easter Week suit you to receive the Freedom of the City? ... I think we could secure a good crowd on Thursday of that week …24
FROM JOHN DILLON MP
Dublin, 30 March 1902:
… I was so stultified by the influenza that it was only on Friday that I read anything about the Land Bill [George Wyndham’s first Land Purchase Bill]. But what you say expresses exactly my view on the Bill and the situation created by its introduction. I think it is mainly a landlord’s Bill, intended … to raise the price and give [?] to the landlords to sell …25
FROM MICHAEL DAVITT
Dalkey, 24 July 1902:
I cannot help dropping you a line of congratulation upon your fine speech last night [in the House of Commons, indicting Chief Secretary Wyndham]. It is, I think, the very best you ever made inside or outside the House … and I think it would be doing a capital piece of useful propaganda to have the speech printed and circulated in Great Britain …26
***
O’Brien had returned to political activity in April. In July he spelt out the details of a new ‘fighting policy’ manifesto from the UIL Directory that urged an escalation of boycotting. Redmond, Dillon and T.P. O’Connor took fright at the implications of O’Brien’s action and sought to restrain him.
FROM WILLIAM O’BRIEN MP
Mallow Cottage, 20 August 1902:
I must trouble you to read over enclosed letters from T.P. I would not have been surprised at the view that he and others take … But it would be of course quite a different matter if his views were shared by you, as from the first letter I rather inferred … I shall be glad to hear from you frankly as to whether you agree with him that I have gone too far, or that it would be better for the movement if I abstained from any further attempt to create serious difficulties for the Government in the country …27
TO JOHN DILLON MP
Aughavanagh, 22 August 1902:
… I would like very much to have a talk with you about … a three-cornered correspondence between T.P., O’Brien and myself. Would it be possible for you to come down to us here? If you don’t mind roughing it a bit we can put you up, or if you wanted to do so you could easily return the same night. I intend to remain here until we go to America as my house in Dublin is let until 1 October. Of course I would go to Dublin to meet you if you preferred it …28
TO
