University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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THE REDWOOD. curred all over the country, but they accomplished little of practical value. One thing, how ever, they did do. We know, says McCarthy, that while many public instructors lost themselves in vain shriekings over Fenianism, and the incurable perver- sity of the Irish people, one statesman was already convinced that the very shock of the Fenian agitation would arouse public attention to the recog- nition of substantial grievances, and to the admission that, the business of statesmanship was to seek out the remedy and provide redress. The statesman to whom McCarthy alludes and who devoted the closing decades of a great career to a fruitless endeav- or to secure for Ireland the benefits of self-government was William Ewart Gladstone. Upon no name in the his- tory of the Irish Home Rule move- ment does greater lustre shine than on the name of that eminent states- man. Gladstone was a man of splendid intellectual power and sterling moral- ity, an adept at parliamentary man- agement, a shrewd financier and, in fact, possessed of all the talents which a man, who was to cham- pion the cause of Irish automony. a lost cause, so to speak, must needs have. Firmly convinced that the Irish were suffering an injustice, he resolv- ed to do all in his power to rectify their grievances ; accordingly, and with all the energy that marked his similar undertakings he threw himself into the work of making Home Rule a possibility. No sooner had Gladstone come into office in 1866 than he con- centrated his efforts upon this project. In April, in one of the greatest speech- es of his career, remarkable alike for its eloquent delivery and solidity of thought, Gladstone introduced into the House of Commons his first Home Rule Bill, An act to make better pro- vision for the government of Ireland. It proposed to establish at Dublin a parliament of Peers with a lord-lieu- tenant at the head, appointed by the crown, and an independent privy coun- cil. It was to have control of local finances except custom duties, and it was excluded from interference with army and navy, foreign or colonial af- fairs or with religious endowments. An essential provision was, that after the re-establishment of the Dublin Parliament, Ireland should no longer be represented in the Imperial Parlia- ment at Westminster. This bill created quite a furor and split the Liberal party, but notwith- standing, the bill narrowly missed passing a second reading. In July the Gladstonian administration abandoned the fight, but it was skillfully taken up by Parnell, with a view of forcing an issue. His plan was to embarrass legis- lation and obstruct the ordinary functions of government. Of this man, one of the most eminent Irishmen of the Nineteenth Century, a word of praise must be spoken. Born in Coun- ty Wicklow, he was educated at Cam- bridge. From his introduction to Par- liament in 1875 till his retirement, his

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THE REDWOOD. ton and Peel, the Catholic Emanci- pation bill was carried. This measure by which Catholics were admitted to Parliament, the Eng- lish administration thought would quiet the Irish nation, but instead of removing the Irish question from poli- tics it paved the way for a more stren- uous presentation of it in a new guise. O ' Connell did not intend to let well enough alone, or to let affairs take their own course. In 1829 he was re- turned to Parliament at the head of some fifty Catholic members to agi- tate for Irish independence, and imme- diately he led a fresh movement for the repeal of the Act of Union, which had destroyed the Dublin Par- liament. All that monster meetings, soul-moving oratory, secret associa- tions, and printer ' s ink could do to in- fluence the government by Parlia- mentary manoeuver, demonstration of popular feeling, intimidation, and threats of insurrection, was done. O ' Connell ' s oratory which, in its power over vast multitudes of his emotional countrymen has never been surpassed, made him the idol of his party. To boisterous assemblies of tens of thousands he declaimed on Sax- on injustice to Celt, and he exerted a considerable political power, so long as parties were somewhat evenly divided. But when the Tories came back in 1841, his influence materially declined. He was arrested for trea- sonable utterances, but was eventual- ly vindicated after serving fourteen weeks in jail. This imprisonment brought on a serious malady resulting in an early death. But with his decease, great as his influence might be, the hopes Ireland entertained for Home Rule, were not to perish. A society called Young Ireland was formed about 1840, and it took up the agitation for Irish na- tionality, and carried it to greater lengths than O ' Connell dared, be- cause, being a most religious man, he stopped when it came to doing any- thing which his opponents might call unscrupulous. The fiery leaders of Young Ireland, Smith-O ' Brien, Meagher and Mitchell, preached sedi- tion from the platform and through the press, and in 1848 only by the vig- orous exertion of physical force, was open rebellion averted. The principal advocates of this agitation were seized and condemned to death, though they ultimately escaped with transportation to Australia, whence most of them eventually found their way to Amer- ica. It was in this country that the next alarm was sounded after two unquiet decades. During the famine year 1846, thousands of Ireland ' s suffering people had emigrated to the United States and a widely organized secret society, The Fenian Brotherhood, sprang up among these Irish exiles and emigrants. Their reign, if one may call it such, was similar to the Reign of Terror in the French Rev- olution, with the exception that they did not go quite as far as the frenzied mob of Paris. Fenian uprisings oc-

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THE REDWOOD. name was always before the public, advocating this measure and denounc- ing that, but whatever his principals were, his eloque nt voice was never heard supporting any movement which the most skeptical eye could consider unpatriotic. But to resume. During his third administration Gladstone pressed the Home Rule bill again, but with no bet- ter result than in 1890. In the grand old man ' s fourth term, he was now in his 84th year, he made a final endeavor to bring order into Ireland ' s political chaos, by enabling her to regulate her own affairs. The Home Rule bill of 1893 differed from its predecessor in respect to the Irish representation at Westminster. The old man ' s elo- quence, backed by an overwhelming majority, now carried the bill tri- umphantly through the lower house, only to meet defeat by a majority of ten to one in the House of Lords, the stronghold of conservatism, where every progressive measure has to en- counter resistance at the outset. After this humiliating defeat Glad- stone did not bring in the bill again. In March, 1894, he withdrew from po- litical life, and in his last interview with the leaders of the Irish party, he assured them of his belief in the ulti- mate triumph of their cause, a cause which he promised them would be al- ways mentioned in his prayers. Parnell preceded Gladstone to the tomb in 1891, and with the demise of these two eminent statesmen the Home Rule bill was left destitute of an able defender. In this deplorable condition it remained until 1902, when John E. Redmond assumed the respon- sibility of being its advocate. He de- livered several stirring orations in its support, both in and out of the House of Commons, but the time was not ripe for a re-introduction of the bill, the movement not meeting with the approval of many of the parliament- arians upon whom it would have to rely for support. Thus Redmond, too, in utter disgust, dropped the matter because of the failure of his colleagues to co-operate with him in the further- ance of his project. Mr. Redmond ' s futile effort was fol- lowed by another short era of decad- ence, though it can hardly be called decadence as rfome Rule has been a favorite theme of Irish orators, and in one form or other has always been before the eyes of the public. As far, however, as its agitation in Parlia- ment goes. Home Rule has been a dead letter there imtil very recently. On April the eleventh, 1912, As- quith, the present Prime Minister, presented to the House of Commons a new bill providing for Irish Autono- my. Though it differs from the Glad- stonian bill in detail, it is essentially the same. It calls for the establish- ment, or rather re-establishment, of an Irish Parliament in Dublin, to cor- respond with the Imperial Parliament in London. It might be well to men- tion here the main clauses of the fourth Home Rule bill. The Irish Parliament is to consist (1) of a Senate compris-