It is certainly a most remarkable thing how John Redmond has lost the old Parnellite grip upon the younger life of the country, and it seems hardly credible that such an attitude should be due entirely to the perversity of youth and in no way to the natural consequence of tradition-loving age; but in any case the broad fact remains, and a tone of persistent criticism seems to have taken the place of the meek obedience of other days; and newspapers, dramas, novels, criticism, and movements on all sides bear witness to it. The same, too, applies to Sir Edward Carson, whose party has to recruit in England, witness Sir F. E. Smith.
According to Mr. T. M. Healy, the whole movement was due almost entirely to the "bankruptcy of Redmondism." No doubt the justice of the accusation may be questioned, though I hold no brief for any relative, but there can be no doubt that it was the Sinn Fein attitude, and we want to see the Sinn Feiners as they saw themselves and as they saw Redmond.
The Government trusted to Redmond almost entirely, but, as Mr. Healy continues, they forgot that—
"New crystallizations were taking place. The jobbery of the official party disgusted all earnest and unselfish minds amongst the youth of Ireland. The forces of Larkinism were embittered; and the acceptance of salaries by Irish members, after their formal declaration that they would not accept them, sank deeply into the hearts of extremists.
"The Insurance Act, the killing of land purchase, and the founding of the A.O.H., sapped the foundations of belief, and it became known that 'a high official achieved his ambitions on the judicial bench only by becoming a professing Catholic and accepting initiation under the rites of Mr. Devlin's brotherhood. The staff of the Freeman's Journal, the official patriot organ, got endless jobs. At the same time Mr. Redmond excluded from his party, without trial or grounds, a dozen leading members opposed to this policy.'
"All that was sober, unselfish, self-respecting, and self-reliant quitted his ranks and joined the Sinn Fein movement without thought of rebellion or pro-Germanism.
"The courage of the Sinn Feiners atoned for much of their folly in the mind of those who realized that their spirit was not pro-German, but, in the main, a revolt against the conversion of Dublin Castle into a Redmondite Tammany Hall. Their uprising was the answer to the corruption, jobbery, and judge-mongering of the Molly Maguires masquerading in the vestments of religion. Hence the wholesale arrests of men not in rebellion have evoked no protest from Mr. Redmond, 'who watches calmly the dispersal of his critics,' hoping to find a new lease of life under a new jobbing nominee."
The Larkinists were, if anything, still more out of sympathy with the official party because, in the words of Connolly, they looked upon them as no better than the English conqueror, since they took the side of the social conqueror in the economic struggles of life in the city.
This seems certainly to have a touch of truth, for if ever any body of men resembled the unfortunate victims of rural landlords it was these wretched victims of the tenement slums, the denunciation of which seemed to have no part in the official Parliamentary programme, so much so as to compel Labour to create its own party and evolve its own leader, which it had accordingly done in the person of Jim Larkin.
Now, if anyone wishes to judge James Connolly they should not look at the soldier for a week; they must examine the life-long student of economics and read his "History of Labour in Irish History" and his "Reconquest of Ireland," for it is here we have the revolution in its cause, which was just as much economic as political.