Ireland Since ParnellSheehan, D. D. (Daniel Desmond)
History
Ireland Since Parnell
Sheehan, D. D. (Daniel Desmond)
Ireland -- Politics and government; Irish question
moral and constitutional forces making for Nationalism, but the
revolutionary forces--who yearned for an Irish Republic--as well. He
was, therefore, not only the leader of a Party; he was much more--he
was the leader of a United Irish nation. His aim was eminently sane
and practical--to obtain the largest possible measure of national
autonomy, and he did not care very much what it was called. But he
made it clear that whatever he might accept in his time and generation
was not to be the last word on the Irish Question. He fought with the
weapons that came to his hand--and he used them with incomparable
skill and judgment--with popular agitation in Ireland, with "direct
action" of a most forcible and audacious kind in Parliament. A great
leader has always the capacity for attracting capable lieutenants to
his side. We need only refer to the example of Napoleon as
overwhelming proof of this. And so out of what would ordinarily seem
humble and unpromising material Parnell brought to his banner a band
of young colleagues who have since imperishably fixed their place in
Irish history. I am not writing the life-story of the members of
Parnell's Party, but if I were it would be easy to show that most of
the colleagues who have come to any measure of greatness since were
men of no antecedent notoriety (I use the word in its better
application), with possibly one exception, and it is somewhat
remarkable that the son of John Blake Dillon, who owed perhaps not a
little to the fact that he was his father's son, should have been the
one who first showed signs of recalcitrancy against Party rule and
discipline when he inveighed against the Land Act of 1881 and betook
himself abroad for three years during the time when the national
movement was locked in bitterest conflict with the Spencer Coercionist
regime. Let it be at once conceded that Parnell's lieutenants were men
whose gifts and talents would have in any circumstances carried them
to eminent heights, but it might be said also they lost nothing from
their early association with so great a personality and from the fact
that he brought them into the gladiatorial arena, where their mental
muscles were, so to speak, trained and tested and extended in combat
with some of the finest minds of the age.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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