[165] Since elected (1874) for the county of Cork, along with Mr. McCarthy Downing. He had been at one time a Protestant dissenting minister.
[166] There was one dissentient to one of the resolutions—a gentleman named Thomas Mooney, late of California and other places.
[167] It is impossible to treat of the Irish Home-Rule movement without a special reference to this reverend gentleman, who is one of the most prominent figures in the group of Home-Rule leaders. He is a man of European reputation in science, and of the most upright and noble character. He is greatly loved and universally respected. Scarcely has Mr. Butt himself been more instrumental in the success of the movement; and there are now few names in Ireland more popular than that of “Professor Galbraith.”
[168] The ballot-voting in Ireland under the act of 1873, unlike that in America, is strictly secret: there being no “ticket” to be seen by outsiders. Only on entering the booth, where the few persons necessarily present are sworn to secrecy, the voter receives a paper on which the names of the candidates are printed. In a secret compartment of the booth the voter marks a cross alongside the name of the man for whom he wishes to vote, folds up the paper so as to conceal the mark which he has made, brings it forward, and drops it through a slit into a sealed box. He then quits the booth, and no one, inside or outside (but himself), knows for whom he has voted.
[169] The defeat of his Irish cabinet minister and former chief secretary, the Right Hon Chichester Fortescue, in Louth County, was generally regarded as the crushing blow of the whole campaign, as Mr. Fortescue was Mr. Gladstone’s official representative in Ireland. He was deemed invulnerable in Louth, having sat for it twenty-seven years, and being brother of Lord Claremont, one of the largest and best landlords in the county. The government laughed to scorn the idea of disturbing him. The Home-Rulers selected for this critical fight Mr. A. M. Sullivan, editor of the Nation. It was a desperate struggle: but not only was the Home-Ruler returned at the head of the poll, but he polled two to one against the cabinet minister.
[170] One of them, in Leitrim, subsequently lost his return, though in a majority, by a stupid mistake of one of his agents.
[171] It may be doubted whether there is any man amongst the Home-Rule members better entitled than their senior “whip,” Captain J. P. Nolan, to be ranked as next to Mr. Butt himself in importance and in service. On him it rests to keep the party on the alert; to note and advise with his chief upon every move of the enemy; to have his own men always “on hand,” so that they may never be caught napping; to keep his colleagues informed by circular (or “whip”) of all forthcoming bills or motions of importance; and finally, to act as “teller” or counter on a division. In fact, if Mr. Butt is the head or brain of the Home-Rule party, Captain Nolan is its right hand. He belongs to an old Catholic family, the O’Nolans of Leix, who in 1645 were put upon allotments beyond the Shannon in return for their estates in fertile Leix, which were handed over to Cromwell’s troopers. Captain Nolan is a man of considerable literary ability. He is a captain in the Royal Artillery and as a scientific and practical artillerist stands in the highest repute. He is the inventor of “Nolan’s Range-finder,” adopted in the Russian, French, and Austrian armies.
THE VALLEY OF THE AUDE
The Aude is a rambling, capricious river of ancient Languedoc that rises on the confines of Spain, among the oriental Pyrenees, five thousand feet above the level of the sea. At first, imprisoned and half-stifled among the narrow gorges of the mountains, its waters, clear and sparkling, rush noisily and impetuously along, struggling for room; but as soon as they find space in the sunny valleys they slacken their speed as if to enjoy the very verdure they create; they grow turbid, sometimes the current dwindles away to a mere thread among poor barren hills, and again at the first storm spreads wide its course through the rich vine-bordered plain. At Carcassonne it becomes languid, and, turned eastward by the Montagne Noire, passes along beneath the sombre line of the oaks, beeches, and chestnuts that cover the mountains, and when, after being fed by thirty-six tributaries, it falls wearily into the sea a little above Narbonne, it is no longer the limpid, dashing stream we met in the mountains, but troubled in its waters and indolent in flow.