There was no misunderstanding all this. No Irish Protestant, patriotically inclined, could any longer be scared by the bugbear of “Catholic intolerance.” The time at last had come for the step they meditated. The moment had arrived also for some attempt to answer the aspirations of Ireland. And “the Hour had brought the Man.”
On the night of Thursday, the 19th of May, 1870, there were quietly assembled in the Bilton Hotel, Upper Sackville Street, Dublin—the most exclusive and aristocratic of the quasi-private hotels in that city—a strange gathering. Such men had never met to confer or act together before. It was a “private conference of Irish gentlemen to consider the state of Ireland.” But looking around the room, one might think the millennium at hand, when the wolf would lie down with the lamb and the lion slumber with the fawn. Men who were Tories, nay, Orangemen; men who were “ultra-montanes,” men who had been Repealers, men who were Whigs, men who had been rebels; Protestants, Catholics, Presbyterians, Quakers, Fenians, anti-Fenians, knights, high sheriffs, aristocrats, democrats—a strange array, about fifty in all.[143] Soberly and earnestly
and long they discussed and debated and deliberated. The men seemed thoroughly to realize the gravity of what they were about.
They did not claim any representative character whatever; they spoke each man for himself. The questions they had proposed to discuss dealt merely with “absenteeism and the consequent loss of trade and national prosperity,” and “the advantages of a royal residence in Ireland in a political and financial point of view.” But in the very first moments of discussion even the new converts to nationality took up bolder ground. Lord Mayor Purdon, a Protestant Conservative, a man universally respected in Dublin; Sir William Wilde (husband of the Young Ireland poetess “Speranza”), an archæologist of European fame; the Hon. Capt. King-Harman; and the Rev. J. E. Galbraith, fellow of Trinity College, one of the most distinguished mathematicians of the age, were amongst the men of conservative politics who came especially to the front. The nationalists, both “extreme” and “moderate,” interfered but little in the discussions, looking on greatly astonished at all they heard and saw; but their part of the case was well handled by the man who was really the guiding spirit of the scene, and who eventually rose and in a brief speech of thrilling power proposed:
“That it is the opinion of this meeting that the true remedy for the evils of Ireland is the establishment of an Irish parliament with full control over our domestic affairs.”
A dozen men rose to second this resolution of Mr. Butt, which was carried in the meeting not only without a dissentient voice, but with enthusiasm. Considering the composition of the assemblage, this was one of the most startling incidents in Irish politics for half a century. Having appointed a committee to report resolutions to a future meeting, the assembly adjourned.
This was the birth of the Home-Rule movement.
The course of procedure adopted, following upon the above events, was one quite unique in Irish politics. Usually the promoters in such cases would hold a meeting as “we the people of Ireland” and begin to act and speak in the name of the country. Not only was this line of conduct eschewed, it was expressty repudiated, by the semi-private society or association which at first grew out of the Bilton Hotel meeting. It was only four months afterwards (1st of Sept., 1870) that they ventured to assume public form or shape as a political organization. During all this interval they announced themselves simply as a number of Irishmen associated together in an endeavor to ascertain the feeling of the country upon the subject of national autonomy. They had themselves arrived at certain general conclusions or resolutions (hereafter to be noticed), but they declared they could not arrogate to themselves any right or authority to speak for the nation at large. When at length they broke ground and took the field publicly as the “Irish Home Government Association,” they still disclaimed the
right to assume the authoritative functions or tone of a great national organization.[144] That would come at the right time, if the country thought well of calling forth such a body; but this was at best a sort of “precursor society” projecting certain views, and submitting them to public examination by the people, with the avowed intention on the part of these “precursors” of some day, if they found encouragement for their course, calling on the country to pass its deliberate and decisive verdict upon those views, so that Ireland, the nation, might speak, and, speaking, command obedience from all loyal and faithful sons.
This was all Butt’s sagacity. Festina lente was the motto that befitted work so grave and momentous as an effort to lift Ireland up and bid her hope and strive once more. There was need of this deliberation and caution. The experiment of bringing together such elements as he gathered around this new venture was a hazardous one. There were prejudices to be allayed, objections to be removed, antipathies to be conquered. Notoriously there were men who wanted not to go very far on a road so new to them, and whom a very little bit indeed of self-government would satisfy. Just as notoriously were there men who wanted to go a great deal further than they could get the rest of their countrymen to join them in attempting. These two sections—the Protestant loyalists and the Fenian secessionists—were