Lady Aberdeen
From the earliest days of her husband's viceroyalty Lady Aberdeen worked actively in connection with numerous philanthropic societies. A champion of women, with a record dating back to the seventies, her specialities are the eradicating of consumption and the improvement of the lot of female workers. Her enthusiasm has led her into conflict with the old order, but Lady Aberdeen has ever been inspired with the best of motives, and she has done a great deal of good.
Lady Aberdeen founded the Women's National Health Association of Ireland in 1907, and the fact that this society has united representatives of every creed and party in the cause of public health and the stamping out of consumption has in itself wrought much indirect good in all parts of Ireland, in addition to the direct result of reducing the death-rate from consumption by one-seventh in three years. There are now over one hundred and fifty branches of this organization, composed of men and women representing all sections of the community, in all parts of Ireland, working devotedly together for the welfare and the happiness of the people as a whole; and these workers have shown a power of initiative in meeting local needs by providing meals for school-children; forming Babies' Clubs, where mothers and their elder daughters are taught how to care for the babies, and how to make small resources go a long way in selecting nourishing food and suitable garments; turning derelict spaces into garden playgrounds; organizing health lectures, health exhibitions, travelling health caravans, besides supporting sanatoria, hospitals, convalescent homes, and maintaining nurses for the care of tuberculosis patients in their own homes.
The success of other notable undertakings might be quoted as an evidence of the support which the present occupants of the Viceregal Lodge can count upon when they identify themselves with any special enterprise.
The Irish Lace Ball of 1907 at the Castle, the Pageant of Irish Industries of 1909, the great Ui Breasail Exhibition and Fête of Irish Industries and Health in 1911, visited by over 176,000 persons in fourteen days, of every shade of opinion and of every class of the community, are events which will be long remembered in the Irish capital in connection with Lord Aberdeen's lengthy reign.
There was a 'storm in a teacup' during the General Election of December, 1910, when Lord Aberdeen aroused the wrath of the Conservatives and Unionists by telegraphing to the Liberal candidate in West Aberdeenshire expressing his own belief that the apprehension that under Home Rule the Protestant minority would suffer was unfounded. A Committee of Privileges composed of members of both Houses of Parliament inquired into the matter, and reported that they found that the viceroy's action had not contravened any Standing Order or regulation. This was accepted, and nothing more was heard of the matter.
Further criticism fell his way when Ireland was in the grip of a railway strike, and he was spending a holiday in Scotland. There was a clamour for the viceroy's presence in Ireland. He was already on his way thither, but though he had been successful in settling the Carriers' Strike some years previously, the present occasion did not offer an opportunity for personal mediation.
The place-hunters
When his term of office ends, Lord Aberdeen can look back upon several years of success in Ireland. He may not be a racing man, and Punchestown may not be a favourite haunt of his, but sterner qualities than a fondness for horse-racing are necessary to succeed as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In the most favourable times it requires a vast amount of tact, a keen sense of humour, and a sense of proportion. Place-hunters abound and office-seekers are innumerable. Dublin Castle is regarded as the haven of hope for all younger sons without talent and briefless barristers hungering for a regular income. They are all suppliants of the Lord-Lieutenant, and several hundreds of years of ascendancy have given them a sense of right in receiving favours, and one of indignation and injustice in the case of refusal. But when all is said and done, the outcry over jobbery in Ireland is absurd, for it is a fact that there is more jobbery in London in a month than in the whole of Ireland in a year.
There have been some attempts to abolish the viceroyalty, but if ornamental it is also useful, because the Irish instinctively respect royalty, and a country populated by the descendants of kings could not be expected to have an instinctive respect for any form of government savouring of Republicanism, or one that left wholly to the imagination the majesty of the Sovereign ruler.