Had Mr. Maguire lived a few years longer it is probable that the Home-Rule movement would have taken a somewhat different shape, and possibly might have been brought to a successful realization. When I first met him he was engrossed in developing and shaping his ideas on the subject; and I spent a whole night with him in explaining, in all its minutiæ, our own system of duplex government, State and federal, and showing how State rights and federal sovereignty were both preserved. He was the real father of the Home-Rule movement, and to his untimely death must be ascribed, in a great measure, the present apparent collapse of the party. No member of the House of Commons was more generally respected and esteemed than he; Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli alike regarded him with admiration. Uncompromising in principle, he knew how to be firm without being offensive; and he did not commit the too common error of insisting upon impossibilities. Even Mr. Newdegate cherished a sneaking liking for the man; and Mr. Maguire once happened to let me into the secret of that strange affection. “I can turn the laugh on him any day,” said he, “and if it comes to serious work he gets the worst of it; but often it is best to let him have his fling. Occasionally I give him a lift over a stile, knowing quite well that if he goes on a little farther he will tumble into the ditch and scramble out all covered with mud.”

Respecting Home Rule, Mr. Maguire’s favorite idea was a confederation of the three kingdoms, England, Ireland, and Scotland, upon such a basis as that of our Union, with a written constitution defining with exactness the limits of provincial autonomy and of imperial sovereignty. It was to perfect this plan that he made me expound to him, in the most minute detail, the workings of our own duplex system of government; and among his papers should have been found an elaborate scheme for the British Confederation, the joint result of our deliberations. I was summoned to these momentous conferences by such notes as these—and I select with a sad heart the last I received from him, a few months before his death:

“I shall be at home this evening altogether, and would be glad to see you, and we could spend an hour or two over wine or whiskey-punch. Or I shall be at home to-morrow after seven o’clock. Send me a line quick to say when you will come.”

“Wine” and “whiskey-punch” had an esoteric meaning as well as their ordinary significance; for “wine” meant mere gossip, while “whiskey-punch” was understood to be the accompaniment of very serious political discussions.

THE CREATED WISDOM.[[163]]
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
III.

My flowers are flowers of gladness: mine

The boughs of honor and of grace:

Pure as the first bud of the vine

My fragrance freshens all the place.

The mother of fair Love am I: