When the "United Irishman" was started, the offices of the Home Rule Confederation, which had previously been in Manchester, were for convenience removed to my place of business. As the executive meetings and the meetings of the newspaper directors were held there, I frequently had the pleasure of meeting under my own roof Irishmen who either then were or afterwards became prominent members of the Irish Parliamentary Party, including Isaac Butt, Charles Stewart Parnell, and Joseph Biggar.
Mr. Biggar and I were always great friends. He had the reputation of being close-fisted and penurious; but that this was not so I knew from many circumstances, though it is quite true he would not allow himself to be defrauded of a penny.
He became a Catholic in his later days. Though such of us as were of the household of the faith welcomed him into the fold, his conversion did not increase his value in our eyes—indeed, from a political point of view, he was of more service to the cause as an Irish Protestant, there being too few of them in our ranks. He had a fresh, pleasant, shrewd-looking face, and spoke with a decided northern accent, which had somewhat of a metallic ring. Some of his brother Members of Parliament thought his "obstruction" methods highly ungentlemanly, but he believed in fighting England with her own weapons. If good Irish measures were not allowed to pass, he would throw every obstacle in the way of English measures being carried. The tempest of rage that assailed him in the "House" only added to his popularity outside. Not only was he an immense favourite amongst Irishmen, but with democratic Englishmen also; and at great mass meetings of English miners and agricultural labourers he could always get resolutions carried by the honest, hard-handed sons of toil in favour of the restoration of Ireland's rights.
Biggar used to get many letters approving of the attitude he and Parnell had taken up in Parliament. One in particular, from a warm admirer, he used to show to his friends with great glee. It was a song in the old "Come-all-ye" style. A few lines I can remember sang in words of high commendation of—
—Joseph Biggar,
That man of rigour,
Whose form and figure
Do foes appal!
My place being the head-quarters of the Confederation at this time, the fact of my being known to be generally on the spot made me a kind of "man in the gap," to fill up engagements likely to fall through for want of a speaker. In this way I was often rushed off to distant parts of the country at the shortest notice.
The most important Irish event in 1875 was the celebration of the O'Connell Centenary in Dublin, on Friday, August 6th. Our Confederation was well represented in the processions, there being, as might be expected from its proximity, a large contingent from Liverpool. So great was the rush to cross the Channel for the celebration that we chartered several of the fine steamers of the City of Dublin Company, and kept them for several days fully employed in crossing and recrossing.
The pity of it was that there should be two processions—the magnificent display organised by the official Centenary Committee and the procession got up by the Amnesty Association.
The speeches of Messrs. Butt, Sullivan, and Power on the platform erected in what was then Sackville Street, when the outdoor display broke up, explained why the Amnesty Committee and their friends considered that a protest was necessary and justifiable—hence the second procession. The chief objections to the action of the official committee were that, while all honour was to be paid to the memory of O'Connell as the Liberator of his Catholic fellow-countrymen, his services as the champion of the political freedom of the Irish people were being kept in the background. Also—and that was why the Amnesty Association for the release of political prisoners took the initiative in the protest against the action of the Centenary Committee—because, on a great national occasion like this, the very existence of the martyrs for freedom, who were suffering in English prisons, appeared to be forgotten. Such forgetfulness was considered at the least highly inappropriate.
There was much indignation, too, that Lord O'Hagan should have been chosen to speak the panegyric on O'Connell, seeing that he had actually sentenced some of those very prisoners.