Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (1 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)Hurlbert, William Henry
History
Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (1 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)
Hurlbert, William Henry
Ireland -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
Upon receiving the instructions of the Propaganda in August 1882,
Cardinal M'Closkey sent for Dr. M'Glynn, and set the matter plainly
before him. Dr. M'Glynn professed regret for his errors, promised to
abstain in future from political meetings, and begged the Cardinal to
inform the authorities at Home of his intention to walk more
circumspectly. The submission of Dr. M'Glynn was approved at Rome, but
it was gently intimated to him that it needed to be crowned by public
reparation for the scandal he had caused. He disregarded this pastoral
hint, and when the Archbishop Coadjutor of New York, Dr. Corrigan, went
to Rome in 1883 to represent the Cardinal, who was unequal to the
journey, he found the Propaganda by no means satisfied with the attitude
of Dr. M'Glynn. Two years after this, in October 1885, Cardinal
M'Closkey died, and Dr. Corrigan succeeded him as Archbishop of New
York.
Between the first admonition given to the sacerdotal ally of Mr. George
in 1882 and this event much had come to pass in Ireland. The Land League
suppressed by Mr. Forster had been suffered to reappear as the National
League by Earl Spencer and Mr. Trevelyan. Sir William Harcourt's
stringent and sweeping "Coercion Act" of July 11th, 1882, passed under
the stress of the murders in the Phoenix Park, expiring by its own terms
in July 1885, Mr. Gladstone found himself forced either to alienate a
number of his Radical supporters by proposing a renewal of that Act, or
to invite a catastrophe in Ireland by attempting to rule that country
under "the ordinary law."
He elected to escape from the dilemma by inviting a defeat in Parliament
on a secondary question of the Budget. He went out of power on the 9th
of June 1885, leaving Lord Salisbury to send the Earl of Carnarvon as
Viceroy to Ireland, and the Irish party in Parliament to darken the air
on both sides of the Atlantic with portentous intimations of a
mysterious compact, under which they were to secure Home Rule for
Ireland by establishing the Conservatives in their places at the general
election in November.[7]
What came of all this I may briefly rehearse. Going out to America in
November 1885, and returning to England in January 1886, I remained in
London long enough to assure myself, and to publish in America my
conviction of the utter hopelessness of Mr. Gladstone's "Home Rule"
measure, the success of which would have made his government the ally
and the instrument of Mr. Parnell in carrying out the plans of Mr.
Davitt, Mr. Henry George, and the active Irish organisations of the
United States. All this is matter of history.
The effect of Mr. Gladstone's speech of April 8, 1886, introducing his
Home Rule Bill, upon the Irish in America was simply intoxicating. They
saw him, as in a vision, repeating for the benefit of Ireland at Dublin,
on a grander scale, the impressive scene of his surrender in 1858 at
Corfu of the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands to Greece.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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