Enigma

by Paul Bew

  But this sort of gesture remained very much in the background.

  In Ireland the expected electoral triumph was achieved. Parnell won every seat outside eastern Ulster and the University of Dublin. He now had 86 MPs at his back ‘pledged’ to ‘sit, act and vote’ with the party and to resign if a majority of the party felt that obligations had not been fulfilled. In terms of actual votes cast, for Home Rule and against, the result was perhaps less stunning. Nevertheless, the electoral map of Ireland now seemed to show an almost complete Parnellite dominance.

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  For the first time the majority of the Irish electors had clearly declared for Home Rule. Parnell was in an exceptionally strong moral position. But what was the reaction of the leadership of the two main British parties? To put it briefly, the Conservatives turned against the Irish, while the Liberals moved towards them.

  The overall result of the election could hardly have suited the Irish purpose better. Outside Ireland the Liberals won 86 seats more than the Conservatives, but since 86 was also the number of Parnellite MPs, the Nationalists now appeared to hold the balance of power. Gladstone’s fervently expressed hope that he would be able to deal with the Irish question while remaining independent of Parnellite support was dashed. The consequences were soon apparent. The Conservatives realised that Parnell’s delivery of the Irish vote in England—which Chamberlain estimated as giving them twenty-five seats—had not given them a majority. They were quick to end the flirtation with Parnell. Lord Salisbury’s government announced to the new parliament in January 1886 that a return to coercion in Ireland was in prospect. Combining with the Liberals, Parnell immediately threw them out of office.

  Meanwhile Gladstone’s son, Herbert, had in December 1885 (after the election was over but before parliament had met) flown the famous ‘Hawarden kite’: a press declaration by Herbert that his father was moving towards Home Rule. But beyond this, Gladstone’s precise strategy was shrouded in mystery. By 28 January 1886 Lord Salisbury’s government had resigned; on 1 February Gladstone saw the Queen, accepted prime ministerial office for the third time and explained his intention of introducing a Home Rule measure. On 4 February he made a public statement which was perceived to be a commitment to some form of autonomy for Ireland. A Liberal government, depending on the votes of Parnell’s parliamentary party, and generally believed to be intending a measure of Home Rule, was now in office.

  The more conjunctural reasons for Gladstone’s ‘conversion’ to Home Rule were clear. During the agrarian crisis of 1879–82 he had persistently overestimated the potential of the ‘Liberal centre’ in Ireland. (In this respect he was more naïve than his cabinet colleagues, notably W. E. Forster.) By 1882 Gladstone had realised that his hopes were misplaced and his disappointment was consequently all the greater. Even before the Nationalist landslide of 1885, he dismissed Irish Liberalism.25 It is clear, too, that he was influenced, perhaps over-influenced, by official reports stressing that Ireland was on the verge of massive social disorder.26 By implication, Parnell was clearly the man to talk to about the social and political condition of Ireland. By January 1886 Gladstone was openly discussing the need to open up lines of communication to Parnell. It was at this propitious moment for the Irish leader that a remarkable episode occurred which threatened to impair fatally the unity of his party both in parliament and in the country. For Parnell announced his intention to support Captain O’Shea as an ‘unpledged’ parliamentary candidate for the vacant seat of Galway City. It was a strange episode: it seemed to push Parnell back to his ‘roots’, with the inevitable consequence that he dismayed some of his colleagues. T. P. O’Connor wryly noted: ‘When we were travelling to Galway on the mission of forcing upon the constituency a hated candidate, Captain O’Shea, in order to close his mouth as to the relations between Parnell and his wife—not a very appropriate occasion for the discussion of religious views—Parnell said to me emphatically: “I will die in the religion in which I was brought up”, which was that of the Church of Ireland, kindred in faith to the Anglican Church. I was rather surprised, for on previous occasions he had expressed strong agnostic views—adultery has some strange results.’27 In this case, adultery had made Parnell rather more Protestant. For the first time Parnell’s liaison with Mrs O’Shea appeared to have forced its way on to the political stage. Why did Parnell act as he did? The implication must be that O’Shea was again blackmailing Parnell and that the threat of exposure was responsible for Parnell’s dictatorial action. As Joseph Biggar said at the time: ‘The candidate’s wife is Parnell’s mistress and there is nothing more to be said.’ But while the nationalist political class talked like this, the bulk of the nationalist electorate was allowed to remain in happy ignorance.

  But there was a price to be paid. In the course of riding roughshod over opposition, he publicly put down one of his lieutenants, Tim Healy, and disoriented the two most significant ones, John Dillon and William O’Brien. Michael Morris, the Catholic Irish Lord Chief Justice, told W. H. Hurlbert:

  Parnell comes of the conquering race in Ireland, and he never forgets it, or lets his subordinates forget it. I was in Galway when he came over there suddenly quelling the revolt organised by Healy. The rebels were at white heat before he came. But he strode on among them like a huntsman among the hounds—marched Healy off into a little room, and brought him out again in ten minutes, cowed and submissive, but filled, as anybody can see ever since, with a dull smouldering hate which will break out one of these days, if a good and safe opportunity rises.28

  In short, Galway was a harbinger of the fatal crisis to come. Such a price was only justifiable on the assumption that Parnell’s leadership was an absolute necessity. This indeed seems to have been accepted by Parnell and his party, with only Biggar in opposition. Just as Parnell’s greatest contribution to Irish nationalism had been to bring unity to previously divided forces, so that unity, once established, became the greatest reason for keeping him in the leadership.

  Having survived the Galway crisis, Parnell was able to return to London to study the unfolding of Gladstone’s hand. It was a supreme test: Parnell was now unchallenged as party leader, but how would he stand up as a statesman? Gladstone’s guiding concept was to link his planned Home Rule Bill with a land bill and thus to deal with both the political and social questions simultaneously. The sheer magnitude and complexity of his project has rarely been grasped. There were an enormous number of considerations to be taken into account. The premier had to bear in mind the difficulties of setting up a subordinate legislature. In this area alone there was a difficult question: how to preserve the sovereignty of Westminster and yet make Irish autonomy a worthwhile proposition? (This presented particular difficulties in the fiscal sphere.) But he also had to think about the future social order and peace of Ireland. He had, in particular, to think of ways of reconciling the substantial Protestant and Unionist minority in Ireland to the new arrangements. This in itself divided into two parts. In the south the Protestants were a privileged minority with heavy representation in the landlord class; in the north-east they were a majority and well represented in all the social classes, including the tenantry. It was probably beyond the wit of any man to produce a legislative proposal that could embrace satisfactorily all these problem areas. It is certain that it is impossible for him to do so when he is hindered by the spirit of financial caution which was the hallmark of Gladstone’s party.

  Gladstone found himself the recipient of all manner of proposals on these topics. For example, Sir Charles Russell, the prominent Ulster Catholic attorney, suggested that the premier ought to link a generous land bill to the Home Rule scheme specifically to weaken the unity of the newly emergent force of Ulster Unionism, a force which was an obvious obstacle to a Home Rule settlement. Russell’s idea (which was echoed in other pro-Gladstonian Ulster circles) was that the naturally Unionist Protestant tenants of the north would suppress their political objections to a Dublin parliament if offered the bribe of a generous l
and bill.

  It is unlikely that Gladstone took this idea very seriously. It seems more likely that he saw (as did Parnell) the nub of the difficulty as lying in the plight of the southern landlords. J. L. Hammond has acknowledged: ‘Gladstone believed that a Land Bill enabling landlords to sell was essential to his scheme. . . . The Ulster difficulty and the Ulster protests he took less seriously.’29 In this perspective, the priority of any land bill must be to rescue the pillars of Irish respectability and social order. Indeed, one side-effect of the obsessive concern shown by Gladstone and Parnell for the fate of the landlords was an increase in the dissatisfaction felt by Ulster Unionists, many of whom were businessmen who feared that Parnell’s personal espousal of trade protection might eventually lead to the loss of their imperial markets for goods and raw materials. Their indignation was forcefully expressed in a series of cogent questions posed by one of their number, J. J. Shaw:

  Can anyone conceive of a greater outrage than that we should be told that the men who are good enough to govern us cannot be trusted to deal in common fairness with the Irish landlords? Is this significant hint as to the character of our future governors intended to conciliate the Irish peasant who is the backbone of Irish discontent? Or is it intended to conciliate the manufacturing and commercial classes by telling them that a government which is not fit to be trusted with the interests of the landlords is good enough to be trusted with theirs?30

  But such considerations do not appear to have crossed Gladstone’s mind. As J. P. Loughlin points out, he publicly argued that once the national question was solved, Irish politics would fall into the British mould of respect for property and wealth and ‘the Members returned to the Parliament in Dublin will be very different in all respects to those who represent Ireland now’.31 However, Gladstone’s objective demanded a decent land-purchase proposal to settle the agrarian difficulty. This, in turn, required plenty of taxpayer’s cash to support it. The premier approached the cabinet on 27 March 1886 with the suggestion that the government should use its credit up to £120 million to this end. Immediately Chamberlain and G. O. Trevelyan took the opportunity to resign. Such an early split in the cabinet boded ill for the future of the bill. Perhaps as significant, a new and important theme was added to the anti-Home Rule litany—the theme of the proposal’s vast associated expenses. Gladstone pressed on, however, and on 29 March he made his first public move for leave to bring in a Home Rule Bill. Very shortly afterwards, on 5 April, Gladstone and Parnell met privately for the first time; their conversation was confined mainly to the financial, and especially the fiscal, aspects of Home Rule.

  There was substantial conflict over Ireland’s contribution to the imperial fund, with Parnell persistently maintaining that the fair proportion was not a fourteenth or a fifteenth but a twentieth or a twenty-first part. ‘I fear I must go,’ said the exhausted Gladstone at last, and as Morley led him into the passage, he was heard to mutter: ‘Very clever, very clever.’ In the end, though, Parnell, while threatening the possibility of a last-minute revolt on the issue, agreed to give up the control of the customs.

  But despite these disputes over financial matters, the thought of Parnell and Gladstone was converging on one fundamental matter: the future of the land question. Both wanted to find a way out for the Irish landlords. Speaking in Wicklow in October 1885, Parnell had warned:

  The new Democratic Parliament [elected under the Third Reform Act, which extended the franchise] won’t be at all so tender of the right of landlords as the last one was. . . . Would it not be a very wise thing for the Irish landlords to recognise the situation in time—to see that if they won’t be reasonable they will be chucked overboard altogether?32

  There is no doubt of Parnell’s interest in conciliating the Irish landlords at this juncture. He ascertained their views, tried to meet them and, indeed, tried to get Gladstone to meet them. In a document concerning a land-purchase proposal, which Mrs O’Shea passed on to Gladstone, he wrote:

  A communication, the substance of which I append, has been forwarded to me by the representatives of one of the chief landlord political associations in Ireland. It is thought that if this arrangement were carried out there would remain no large body of opinion amongst the landowning class against the concession of a large measure of autonomy for Ireland, as the Protestants, other than the owners of land, are not really opposed to such concession.33

  This document clearly reveals that Parnell was in contact with Irish landlord leaders. It reveals also, of course, a rather foolish reduction of the problem of the Protestant minority to that of the problem of the landlord minority. But the main thing to note is Parnell’s determination to reach some workable compromise with the Irish landowners. He wanted to get them out of their difficulties on the best possible terms.

  There seems to be little doubt that Gladstone shared Parnell’s vision of the new Ireland. He was certainly well acquainted with Parnell’s hope that landlords ‘as individuals’ and people in Ireland were about to enter an era of conciliation. As the premier expressed it:

  Yes, I believe it may be possible that even the Irish Nationalists may perceive that those marked out by leisure, wealth and station, for attention to public duties, and for the exercise of influence, may become, in no small degree, the natural and effective and safe leaders of the people.34

  Towards this end, the premier was prepared to break with a lifetime of financial caution. As he wrote to the Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt:

  I am the last to desire any unnecessary extension of demands on our financial strength. I am morally certain that it is only by straining to the uttermost our financial strength (not necessarily by expenditure but as credit) on behalf of Ireland, that we can hope to sustain the burden of an adequate land measure, while without an adequate land measure we cannot either establish social order or face the question of an Irish government.35

  In fact it was not possible to be as generous as Gladstone at first wanted to be. The government, which had originally discussed Gladstone’s scheme for utilising its credit up to £120 million, eventually settled for half that sum. Nevertheless, the land bill which was announced in mid-April was undoubtedly a landlord’s bill, as Gladstone explicitly stated. It laid out the basis for a transfer of land from the landlords to the tenants, but the terms of purchase undoubtedly favoured the landlord as against the tenant side. It was, moreover, entirely optional. When Gladstone revealed these facts, he was greeted with Nationalist murmurs of disapproval. When Chamberlain, speaking in opposition, asked Parnell’s party to signify assent to the terms of the bill, he was greeted with silence. The Belfast Northern Whig commented:

  The terms offered to the landlords under the circumstances are generous and even more than generous. But they are not likely to be accepted by the tenants generally and certainly not by the Irish National League for whom Mr Gladstone and his colleagues are professedly legislating.36

  However, Parnell’s reaction was rather different from that of his parliamentary colleagues. While they adopted a sullen attitude to the bill and paid heed to Davitt’s bitter criticisms from the wings, he was much more conciliatory. He had, of course, to tread carefully at this moment. He had to conceal the fact—as best he could—that he and Gladstone were in collusion to achieve an agreed end. He therefore criticised certain subordinate features of the land bill and even acknowledged the idea that the price might be too high. But there is no doubt that, whatever the superficial appearances, his support for Gladstone was firm. Consider his comments carefully: firstly, he insisted that if the Irish MPs accepted the price, albeit reluctantly, they were bound by their decision. Parnell went on:

  Then another principle should be borne in mind. I do not think either the landlords on the one side, or the tenants on the other, should be too exacting. They should try to meet each other, and it is evident that a fair solution of this question on the lines laid down will materially assist to settle the question of Irish autonomy (hear, hear). I doubt very much i
f the Irish landlords as a rule will appreciate the attitude taken up by the Conservative Party on this question or will think very much of their chosen champions for flying in the face of the largest offer yet made to Irish landlords to enable them to extract themselves from their position. . . .

  Our view is that we should not make a party question of this bill, that we should approach it with a give-and-take line of action by giving up so much as we can, provided we do not unduly overload the tenants (hear, hear). We think that by giving up as much as we can to the landlords, we shall clear the way for the settlement of the difficult and complicated question of Irish autonomy (hear).37

  The support from the Nationalist side for Parnell’s ‘we think’ propositions was more than a little reluctant. But Parnell knew his party had no choice. For Gladstone’s decision to link the Home Rule Bill with the land bill meant that they had to accept both parts of the package or neither. Nothing illustrates more clearly the increasing subordination of the agrarian question to the national question. The prospect of Home Rule enabled Parnell to hold the line on the Nationalist side for his own very unpopular views on land reform. He was able to imply the need for tenant sacrifices—‘giving up as much as we can to the landlords’—as part of the settlement of the national question.

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  But by the end of April 1886 the fluidity in the political situation which only a few weeks earlier had seemed to promise so much for the Irish had ebbed away. This was not due to problems arising out of the attempt to couple land reform with a Home Rule settlement, but to the failure of the Home Rule proposal itself to mobilise enough support in prominent British political circles.

  Even so, when Gladstone introduced the second reading of the Home Rule Bill on 10 May 1886, it was a remarkable triumph for Parnell. The apparently hopeless cause of 1880 had made clear progress. T. P. O’Connor noted: