They made much of him—and were his ruin. In the whirl of parliamentary life, in the fascination of London society, he abandoned his professional business and fell into debt difficulty, and dissipation. Had he been less independent and less self-willed, he would no doubt have been richly placed by his ministerial friends. Somehow or another he and they drew apart as he went sullenly and recklessly downward. In 1864 he had almost dropped out of sight, having just previously ceased to sit in Parliament.
To the solicitation to undertake the defence of the Fenian prisoners he responded by giving them, it may be said, three whole years of his professional life. He flung himself into that fight for the men in the dock with the devotion, the enthusiasm, the desperate energy of a man striving for life itself. His genius and ability, conspicuous before, shone out more than ever. He was admittedly the first lawyer of his day; and now not only the crown counsel but the judges on the bench felt they were dealing with their master. Of money he took no thought. Indeed, in the best and worst days of his fortunes he gave it little heed. He has been known in the depth of his difficulties to hand back a special fee of a hundred guineas which he knew a poor client could not spare, and the same day pay his hotel bill with a check doomed never to be cashed. The incident is unfortunately only too typical of one phase of his nature.
Three or four years immersed in such labors—one protracted series of state trials—dealing in the most painfully realistic way with the problem of Ireland’s destiny, could not fail to have a profound effect on a
man like Butt. Meantime, he grew into immense popularity. His bold appeals for the prisoners, which soon came to be the sentiments of the man rather than the pleadings of the advocate, were read with avidity in every peasant’s cottage and workman’s home. The Fenians, broken and defeated as an organization, yet still ramifying throughout the country, looked to him with the utmost gratitude and confidence. Under his presidency and guidance a society called the Amnesty Association was established for the purpose of obtaining the royal clemency for at least some of the Fenian convicts. A series of mass-meetings under its auspices were held throughout the island, and were the largest assemblages seen in Ireland since the Repeal meetings of Tara and Mullaghmast. In fine, Mr. Butt found himself a popular leader, at the head of at all events the pro-Fenian section of Irish political elements, and daily becoming a power in the country.
The resentful Protestants, just now half-minded to hoist the national flag, were many of them Butt’s old comrades, college-chums, and political associates. He noted their critical position, and forthwith turned all his exertions, in private as well as in public, to lead them onward to the people, and to prevent them from relapsing into the character of an English garrison. In his public speeches he poured forth to them the most impassioned appeals. In private he sought out man by man of the most important and influential among them. “Banish hesitation and fear,” he cried. “Act boldly and promptly now, and you will save Ireland from revolutionary violence on the one side, and from alien misgovernment on the other. You, like myself, have been early
trained to mistrust the Catholic multitude, but when you come to know them you will admire them. They are not anarchists, nor would they be revolutionists if men like you would but do your duty and lead them—that is, honestly and faithfully and capably lead them—in the struggle for constitutional liberty.” The Protestants listened, almost persuaded; but some sinister whisper now and again of the terrors of a “Catholic ascendency” in an Irish parliament—a reminder that Irish Catholics would vote for a nominee of their clergy right or wrong, and consequently that if the Irish Protestant minority threw off the yoke of England, they should bear the yoke of Rome—seemed to drive them, scared, from the portals of nationality.
About this time, the beginning of 1870, Mr. Gladstone raised to the peerage Colonel Fulke Greville Nugent, M.P. for Longford County. He was a respectable and fairly popular “liberal” in politics, was a good landlord, and, though a Protestant, kindly and generous to the Catholic clergy and people around him. He had held his seat by and from the priests; for Longford County, from the days when it heroically won its independence a generation before, had been virtually in the gift of the Catholic clergy. This vacancy occurred in the very fever of the Amnesty excitement. A few months before Mr. Gladstone had rather harshly refused the appeal for Amnesty; and Tipperary made answer and commentary thereon by electing to Parliament one of the Fenian convicts, at the moment a prisoner in Chatham. It was proposed to imitate this course in Longford, but a more worthy resolve was
taken: John Martin of Rostrevor—“Honest John Martin”—one of the purest, most heroic, and lovable of Irish patriots, was put in nomination, although at the moment he was travelling in America and unaware of the proceedings. But the clergy had at a private conference committed themselves to the son of their late member—a brainless young officer in the army. Neither party would withdraw their man; and out of this arose a conflict as fierce, bitter, and relentless as if the parties to it had been ancient and implacable foes instead of lifelong and loving friends. Altar denunciations of the most terrible kind were hurled at the men who dared to “oppose their clergy” by advocating John Martin. Platform denunciations were hurled at the men who dared to go “against Ireland” by preferring to a stainless and devoted patriot a brainless little fop who had not a political idea in his head or a spark of Irish patriotism in his heart.
Ireland, and England too, looked on in intense amazement and curiosity. Here was a great problem brought to a critical test. The old story of the anti-Catholic English press, that Irish Catholics would slavishly “vote black white at the ordering of their priests,” was about to be proved true or put to shame. The Longford clergy defeated John Martin and carried their man, but he was subsequently unseated on petition. The experiment otherwise, however, was decisive. For John Martin, a Presbyterian Protestant, a Catholic people fought their own clergy as vehemently as they and those clergy had ever fought the Tory landlords. It was an exceptional and painful incident, but at the moment one of vast importance, which proudly vindicated
both priests and people from a damaging calumny.[142]