or popular intruders being thus established. On this occasion the new Earl of Kenmare nominated as his successor in the family seat his first cousin, Mr. James A. Dease, an estimable Catholic gentleman acceptable to the people in every way but one: he was not a Home-Ruler. Although the Catholic bishop, Right Rev. Dr. Moriarty, joined the county landlords in nominating Mr. Dease, the bulk of the Catholic clergy, and the people almost unanimously, revolted, and, amidst a shout of derision at such a “hopeless” attempt, hoisted the flag of Home Rule. They, Catholics almost to a man, chose out as their candidate a young Protestant Kerryman barely home from Oxford University—Roland Blennerhassett, of Kells. He was a Home-Ruler, and much loved even as a boy by the Celtic peasantry of that wild Iveragh that breaks the first roll of the Atlantic billows on the stormy Kerry coast. Ireland and England held breath and watched the struggle as a tacitly-admitted test combat.
“Who spills the foremost foeman’s life,
His party conquers in the strife.”
Such an election-struggle probably had not stirred Ireland since that of Clare in 1829. It resulted in an overwhelming victory for Home Rule. Deserted by every influence of power that should have aided and befriended them (save their ever-faithful priests, who, in nearly every parish, marched to the poll at the head of their people)—the frieze-coats of “O’Connell’s county,” rising in their might, tore down the territorial domination that had ruled them for thirty years, and struck a blow that decided the fortunes of the Home-Rule movement.
Barely less important (and only less important because of some peculiar features in the Kerry struggle) was another election being fought out in Galway County at the same moment. That county, about a year previously, had elected unopposed, on Home-Rule principles, a man the value of whose accession to the national ranks it would be almost impossible to overestimate. This was Mitchell Henry, of Kylemore Castle, near relative by descent of that Patrick Henry illustrious in American annals. Not because of his large wealth—he is said to have succeeded on his father’s death to a fortune of over a million pounds sterling—but for his high character, his great ability and thoroughly Irish spirit, he was a man of great influence, and his espousal of Home Rule was quite an event. Now, however, another election, this time contested, fiercely contested, had arisen; the candidates being Colonel Trench, son of Lord Clancarthy, Whig and Tory landlord nominee, and Captain John Philip Nolan, Home-Rule candidate, under the auspices of the great “Prelate of the West,” the world-famed Archbishop of Tuam. For years the grand old man had not interfered in an election or emerged from the sorrowful reticence into which he retired after the ruin of the Tenant League. But Ireland was up for the old cause, and “John of Tuam,” O’Connell’s stoutest ally in the campaign for Repeal, was out under the old flag. Not to let his name and his influence be discredited in his old age was as much the point of battle, certainly the point of honor, on the part of the people, as to return the Home-Ruler. The struggle was one of those desperate and merciless encounters between landlord tyranny
on the one side and conscience in the poor man’s breast on the other, which used to make Irish elections as deadly and disastrous as armed conflicts in the field. Happily, it was the last of its class ever to be seen in Ireland; for the Ballot Act, passed a year after, closed for ever the era of vote-coercion. Captain Nolan was triumphantly returned. The famous “Galway Election Petition,” in which Judge Keogh so distinguished himself, unseated him (for a time) soon after; but Kerry and Galway struck and won together that week in February, 1872; and the one blaze of bonfires on the hill-tops of all the western counties, the following Saturday night, celebrated the double victory for the national cause.
In the course of the next succeeding year every election vacancy in Ireland but one resulted in the return of a Home-Ruler, Mr. Butt himself being among the number. There was now no longer any question as to the magnitude of the dimensions to which the movement had attained. “Home Rule” had become a watchword throughout the land; a salutation of good-will
on the road-sides; a signal-shout on the hills. To this had grown the work begun almost in fear and trembling that night at the Bilton Hotel in 1870. The hour could be no longer delayed for convening the whole Irish nation in solemn council to make formal and authoritative pronouncement upon the movement, its principles, and its programme. In the end of the summer of 1873 it was accordingly decided that in the following November an Aggregate Conference of Delegates from every county in Ireland should be convened in the historic Round Room of the Rotunda, memorable as the meeting-place of the Irish Volunteer Convention more than three-quarters of a century before.
But the history of that important event fitly belongs to another chapter of such a record as this. The point now arrived at closes the first stage of the Home-Rule movement—from 1870 to 1873. The second three years—from 1873 to 1876—will exhibit it in a new light, with the mandate of a nation as its authority, and a powerful parliamentary party as its army of operation.
[139] The above article is from the pen of Mr. A. M. Sullivan, M.P. for Louth, editor of the Dublin Nation, and one of the leaders in the national movement for Home Rule in Ireland. The movement is one of great importance and significance. It has many enemies. It has been and continues to be much misrepresented. For these reasons we open our pages to one of its ablest and most eloquent exponents to give its history to our readers. Mr. Sullivan will resume and close the subject in the next number of The Catholic World.—Ed. C. W.