From The United Irishman, July 21, 1900. Review of The Life of Charles Stewart Parnell, 1846-1891 by R. Barry O’Brien.
In giving to the world the account which he has compiled of the life and times of one of the greatest modern Irish leaders, Barry O’Brien has brought to bear a strong light on the doings of the great days of the eighties. A writer of Mr. O’Brien’s literary standing, possessed of an impartial perspicuity into the deeper elements of Irish politics, can be trusted to view the life-work of Parnell from a point of vantage far removed from present day political broils, and, therefore, commanding the respect and attention of students of Irish affairs. Parnell, as the agent in a great schism, really emerges as such only in the latter days of 1890. Parnellism, as at present understood and invoked, is connected with Parnell himself only on account of that terrible ten months’ struggle in ’91, which culminated in his tragic death in the October of that year. Parnellism in the old and wider sense, Parnellism as it shall be written of in history, is the Parnellism of the great obstruction days, the steely policy that, supplanting the velvety methods of Butt, forced an English Premier and a great English party to their knees after ten years of hard struggle. That is the Parnellism one chooses to think of: the famous partner-policy of the ‘Parnellism and Crime’ formula, foisted by the Times on a gullible, because bigoted English people. We, ourselves, can call to mind those dramatic days previous to the Times Commission, when ream after ream of murder-stained newspaper was turned out with the rapidity of lightning from the boasted ‘Thunderer;’ and Parnell and his party indicted with complicity in every agrarian crime, from the maiming of a Clare cow to the Phoenix Park murders. When the notorious Pigot quailed in the witness box before the searching questions of the Sir Charles Russell of those days, and when the word ‘Forger’ was scored across the blasted reputation of the Times, Parnellism was vindicated. That is to say, not that Parnellism might have suffered from its contiguity with the events labelled ‘Crime’ by Castle hacks and London scribes, but rather that Parnell had shewn his methods to be invulnerable to outside attack on constitutional grounds, whatever otherwise might have been their true nature.
In O’Brien’s book we get a dim glimpse of the real Parnell, as real anyhow as he appeared to the statesmen and politicians of those days. There have been educed, moreover, from many quarters opinions as to the character and qualifications of the Irish leader. We have learned that comparatively he was an ignorant man, ignorant of the history of his country, and unconscious of the deeper feelings of the Celtic mind, and of the native Irish tradition that told of a never-ending struggle against the English until they will be driven out. Be it as it may, Parnell hated the English and English ways as much, if not more so, than if he had been inoculated with the spirit of Hugh O’Neill, or with the fiery doctrines of Wolfe Tone. All English statesmen bear testimony to the fact. But some pass the verdict that he hated England more than he loved Ireland. However, any man, no matter his nationality, who bitterly hates England, and tries to work her undoing is well acceptable to Irishmen; and if, moreover, he happens to be an Irishman himself, even in birth only, his credentials to our admiration are full and complete, and deserving of our confidence.
Coming to regard Parnell in his character as a public man, an analysis naturally dissects it in two phases. First, we have the man battling for his country’s cause in the enemy’s country, master of Parliamentary tactics, and possessed of the knowledge of how to wield the mighty club of obstruction. Then there is the minister seated in his cabinet in an Irish government, thinking out the problems of the country, or drafting legislative measures to reform the law in conformity with the people’s wishes, or to develop the country’s resources; or perhaps he is in his place in Parliament in College Green, calmly expounding his schemes, and explaining their details, or else conciliating the various parties, and engaging their co-operation in building up the prosperity of their country. Here we have two characters, or perhaps let us say two phases of the same character. The question is, how far did Parnell shew himself possessed of the dual attributes. That he was a brilliant tactician, or rather that his fixed single purpose, backed by a stern, unbending will, inevitably ensued success to his strategy; is admitted by his greatest political enemies. But, had the great obstructionist of the angry times of the All-night Sittings, had he the qualifications of a Cabinet Minister, fully capable of working for the well-being of Ireland in a Parliament at Dublin? Leaving aside the baneful influence of that dark pall which overshadowed his later years, had the man, so reticent, so self-contained, so mysterious, so vague, the gifts indispensable to a statesman engaged in the government of his country, to one who was to be perhaps Prime Minister of the first Irish Cabinet which was to raise this nation from its present slough of misery? These questions form a theme that would engage serious thought. The career of Gladstone shews that the greatest Parliamentarian that ever England produced was also one of her greatest Cabinet Ministers. It might have been so with Parnell in Ireland but for the tragedy that swallowed up his life.
As Parnell was always careful never to define his policy, or rather never to draw a circumscribing line around its possible scope and progress, we cannot say what exactly were his ideas regarding the constitution of an Irish nation. At one epoch, certainly, when in America he said that neither he nor any man had a right to fix the limit of the ne plus ultra of the Irish nation. It goes without saying that he was an Opportunist of the true Parliamentary school. But, being such, he was never prepared to keep towing the line, which, in other days, he might have drawn for policy’s sake. Mr. Parnell’s acceptances on the ’86 Home Rule Bill were often invoked in the discussion on the ’93 measure. But, were he alive at the latter juncture, he would have laughed in his opponents’ face, and quoted the proverb, ‘Other times, other manners.’ He might have demanded Repeal, but that Repeal would only restore the status quo of a system which, capable of the betrayal of 1800, was rotten in its core. He might have demanded in ’86 a more complete measure, but it was unfeasible, when the Bill as it stood itself proved at that time unfeasible. In ’93 days, when Home Rule was stronger, his demand would naturally have become keener. And to pursue the same reasoning, which is just and moderate, he would not probably have been satisfied with the measure wrung from the English at Westminster, but from the floor of College Green he would probably have wrested even more powers for the Irish nation. He would have made use of a Fashoda crisis, or a Port Arthur question, or an African War to rap the English over the knuckles for another instalment of Irish rights. He would have, but it is useless to go on. Fate, looking prosperously on Parnell’s career for many years, wrapped him in her mystic web in the height of his career and left him to the world but an enigma.
CALMA.