purchase. Tentative beginnings were made with it under the Government which was in power from 1886 to 1892; but the main characteristic of this period was a fierce revival of the land war. It was virulent in Wexford, and in 1888 Redmond shared the experience which few Irish members escaped or desired to escape; he was sentenced to imprisonment on a charge of intimidation for a speech condemning some evictions. He and his brother met in Wexford jail, and both used to describe with glee their mutual salutation: "Good heavens, what a ruffian you look!" Cropped hair and convict clothes were part of Mr. Balfour's resolute government.
Yet in those days Ireland was winning, and winning fast. Mr. Gladstone's personal ascendancy, never stronger than in the wonderful effort of his old age, asserted itself more and more. Public sympathy in Great Britain was turning against the wholesale evictions, the knocking down of peasants' houses by police and military with battering-rams. The Tory party sought for a new political weapon, and one day The Times came out with the facsimile of what purported to be a letter in Parnell's hand. This document implied at least condonation of the Phoenix Park murders.
Other letters equally incriminating were published. Parnell denied the authorship, his denial was not accepted; fierce controversy ended in the establishment of one of the strangest Commissions of Enquiry ever set up—a semi-judicial tribunal of judges. Its proceedings created the acutest public interest, drawn out over long months, up to the day when Sir Charles Russell had before him in the witness-box the original vendor of the letters—one Pigott. Pigott's collapse, confession of forgery, flight and suicide, followed with appalling swiftness: and the result was to generate through England a very strong sympathy for the man against whom, and against whose followers, such desperate calumnies had been uttered and exploited. Parnell's prestige was no longer confined to his own countrymen: and the sense of all Home Rulers was that they fought a winning battle, under two allied leaders of extraordinary personal gifts.
Then, as soon as it was clear that the attack of the Pigott letters had recoiled on those who launched it, came the indication of a fresh menace. Proceedings for divorce were taken with Parnell as the co-respondent: the case was undefended. Mr. Gladstone and probably most Englishmen expected that Parnell would retire, at all events temporarily, from public life, as, in Lord Morley's words, "any English politician of his rank" would have been obliged to do. Parnell refused to retire; and Gladstone made it publicly known that if Parnell continued to lead the Irish party, his own leadership of the Liberal party, "based, as it had been, mainly on the prosecution of the Irish cause," would be rendered "almost a nullity." The choice—for it was a choice—was left to the Irish. To retain Parnell as leader in Gladstone's judgment made Gladstone's task impossible, and therefore indicated Gladstone's withdrawal from public life. To part with Parnell meant parting with the ablest leader that Nationalist Ireland had ever found.
A more heartrending alternative has never been imposed on any body of politicians, and John Redmond, unlike his younger brother, was not of those to whom decision came by an instinctive act of allegiance. His nature forced him to see both sides, but when he decided it was with his whole nature. The issue was debated by the Irish party in Committee Room 15 of the House of Commons, with the Press in attendance. In this encounter Redmond for the first time stepped to the front. He had hitherto been outside the first flight of Irish parliamentarians. Now, he was the first to state the case for maintaining Parnell's leadership, and throughout the discussions he led on that side. When Parnell's death came a few months after the "split" declared itself, there was no hesitation as to which of the Parnellites should assume the leadership of their party. Redmond resigned his seat in North Wexford and contested Cork city, where Parnell had long been member. He was badly beaten, and for some three months the new leader of the Parnellites was without a seat in the House—though not during a session. Another death made a new opening, and in December 1891 his fight at Waterford against no less a man than Michael Davitt turned for a moment the electoral tide which was setting heavily against the smaller group. It was a notable win, and the hero of that triumph retained his hold on the loyalty of those with whom he won it when the rest of Ireland had turned away from him. The tie lasted to his death—and after it, for Waterford then chose as its representative the dead leader's son, and renewed that choice in the general election of 1918, when other allegiances to the old party were like leaves on the wind.
Other ties were formed in these years, which lasted through Redmond's life. I have deliberately abstained from entering into either the merits or the details of the "split." But certain of its aspects must be recognized. In the division into Parnellites and Anti-Parnellites, Parnellites were a small but fierce minority. It needed resolution for a man to be a Parnellite, all the more because the whole force of the Catholic Church was thrown against them, and in some instances disgraceful methods were used. One of Redmond's best friends was the owner of a local newspaper; it was declared to be a mortal sin to buy, sell, or read his journal. The business was reduced to the verge of ruin but the man went on, till a new bishop came and gradually things mended. He, like Redmond, was a staunch practising Catholic, and later on was the friend and trusted associate of many priests; but he stood for an element in Ireland which refused to allow the least usurpation by ecclesiastical authority in the sphere of citizenship.
Willie Redmond won East Clare, as his brother won Waterford city, after a turbulent election with the priests against him. He gave in that contest, as always, at least as good as he got; but his collision with individuals never affected his devotion or his brother's to their Church.
But in social life the estrangements of these days were far-reaching, and, at least negatively, so far as Redmond was concerned, they were lasting. His existence had been saddened and altered shortly before the break up by the death of his first wife, which left him a young widower with three children. After the "split" the whole circle of friends among whom he had lived in Dublin and in London was shattered and divided; and in later life none, I think, of those broken intimacies was renewed.
In Redmond's nature there was a total lack of rancour. Clear-sighted as he was, he realized how desperately difficult a choice was imposed on Nationalists by Parnell's situation, and he knew how honestly men had differed. He could command completely his intellectual judgment of their action, and there were many whom in later stages of the movement he trusted none the less for their divergence from him at this crisis. But he was more than commonly a creature of instinct; and the associations of his intimate life were all decided in these years. His affection was given to those who were comrades in this pass of danger. The only two exceptions to be made are, first and chiefly, Mr. Devlin, who was too young to be actively concerned with politics at the time of Parnell's overthrow; and, to speak truth, it is not possible to be so closely associated as Redmond was with this lieutenant of his, or to be so long and loyally served by him, and not to undergo his personal attraction. The other exception is Mr. J.J. Mooney, who entered Parliament and politics later than the "split," but whose personal allegiance to Mr. Redmond was always declared. He acted for long as Redmond's secretary and always as his counsellor—for in all the detail of parliamentary business, especially on the side of private bill legislation, the House had few more capable members. He was perhaps more completely than Mr. Devlin one of the little group of intimates with whom Redmond loved to surround himself in the country. All the rest were old champions of the fight over Parnell's body; but by far the closest friend of all was his brother Willie. Their marriages to kinswomen had redoubled the tie of blood.
It should be noted here that Redmond married for the second time in 1899, after ten years of widowerhood. His wife was, by his wish and her own, never at all in the public eye. All that should be said here is that his friends found friendship with him easier and not more difficult than before this marriage, and were grateful for the devoted care which was bestowed upon their leader. She accompanied him on all his political journeyings, whatever their duration, and gave him in the fullest measure the companionship which he desired.
FOOTNOTES:
This speech is included in "Home
