Bibliographical details: The History of the Irish Parliamentary Party, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green & Co 1910) - of which Vol. I - Butt and Parnell: Nationhood and Anarchy; The Curse of the American Money, / by F. Hugh O’Donnell, M.A., Q.U.I. Formerly M.P. for Galway and Dungarvan Ex-Member Of Council of Home Rule League of Ireland Ex-Vice-President of Home Rule Confederation in Great Britain Ex-President of Glasgow Home Rule Association / with portraits and other illustrations (London: Longmans & Green 1910), 508pp.

Vol. I - Ills.: F. Hugh O'Donnell [photogravure]; The Irish Parliament House in the Eighteenth Century; Mr. Isaac Butt, Q.C., M.P., (The Founder of Home Rule); the Irish Custom House in the Eighteenth Century; Right Hon Colonel King Harman, M.P. (Hon. Sec. of the First Home Rule Conference; photo by Wm. Lawrence; Mr. J. G. Biggar (photo by Lawrence); Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell (photo by Lawrence); Members of the First Land League Convention (21 Oct. 1879).

Vol. II - Ills: A Continental O'Donell - Carlos O'Donnell, Duque de Tetuan (front. photo); Kilmainham Jail (photo); Mr. Patrick Egan (Treas. of the Land League; photo by Lawrence); Rioght Hon. Thomas Henry Burke, of Knockague, Co. Galway (murdered along with Lord Frederick Cavendish; photo by Lawrence); Edmund Dwyer Gray, M.P. (proprietor of the Freeman's Journal; photo by Lawrence); Vanity Fair portrait of Parnell; Parnellite Caricature of Mr. Davitt, the Former Fenian, Swearing Allegiance; A famous Irish caricature of the Gladstone Home Rule Bill of 1893; Mr. Gladstone moving "that Mr. O'Donnell be no longer heard' (Moonshire caricature).

CAUSES AND ORIGINS OF THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT

CHAPTER I: THE CAUSES OF THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT. The Causes of the Home Rule Movement — From the Fenian Conspiracy to the Act of Union — From the Act of Union to the Fenian Conspiracy [5]

CHAPTER II: THE ORIGINS OF THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT. Career of Isaac Butt — Federalism better than Repeal — Ireland’s Share of Empire — No Single Chamber — -Irish Gentry’ ruined by the Union — Irish Opinion ignored by England [47]

CHAPTER III: PRINCIPLES OF THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT. Main Principles of the Home Rule Constitution of 1873 — No Interference with the Settlement of Land — Sectarian Legislation to be unlawful — Members of Parliament to be Representatives and not Delegates — The Act of Union in the Imperial Parliament — Nonclerical but not Anti-clerical [65]

HOME RULE PARTY AT WESTMINSTER : BEFORE THE ACTIVE POLICY

CHAPTER IV: THE SESSION OF 1874. From the Platform of the Conference to the Floor of the House — The Conservatism of the First Home Rule Party — The Disraelian Flippancy towards Ireland — Butt’s Great Speech on the Address — Inauguration of the New Policy on an Indian Famine Question in 1874 [87]

CHAPTER V: THE SESSION OF 1875 The Second Session of the Home Rule Parliamentary Party — Mr. Gladstone’s Polemics — ’ Vaticanism,’ Mr. James Lowther, and IMaynooth — Mr. John Mitchell and Mr. John Martin — The Foundation of Irish Obstruction — Mr. A. M. Sullivan, M.P., is the Founder — Coercion and Obstruction — Isaac Butt in the Fray — Isaac Butt and the Marquis of Hartington — The O’Connell Centenary and an AntiButt Intrigue — Enemies of Home Rule in Ireland — Peter Paul Puppet MacSweeney — The Fall of Mr. P. J. Smythe, M.P., and some others [106]

CHAPTER VI: THE SESSION OF 1876. Great Activity of the Butt Party — General Indignation in England— The Indignation of the Times — Mr. Parnell a Routine Member — Land, Education, and Home Rule Debates — Progress of Amnesty — John Bright’s Defence of the Manchester Martyrs — The Constitution of the Confederation [140]

THE HOME RULE PARTY AT WESTMINSTER : THE ADVENT AND ORIGIN OF THE ACTIVE POLICY

CHAPTER VII: SECRET HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN, METHOD, AND OBJECTS OF THE NEW POLICY THE COUNCIL OF THREE AT THE MORNING POST - The Session of 1877— The Advent of Obstruction — My Return to Parliament — Suggestive Summaries in the British Press upon the Year — The Secret History of the Origin, Method, and Objects of the New Supplement to the Irish Procedure at Westminster — The End of the Fairy Tales— The Morning Post as Council Chamber of Irish Retaliation — The Origin of the Active Policy — To promote or avenge Home Rule — A Policy of Universal Intervention — A Policy of Popular Reform and Interracial Alliance — The Indispensable Service of Mr. Adam Kernahan — How Mr. Kernahan popularised the New Policy — Not Westminster but Dublin defeated the Active Policy — A Lion’s Mouth at Westminster — How I saved Arabi Pasha — England’s Alternative [171]

CHAPTER VIII: THE SESSION OF 1877 — MY RETURN TO PARLIAMENT — THE TWENTY-SIX HOURS’ SITTING MY TREATY WITH PRESIDENT KRUGER. Why £500 to Biggar and Parnell? — Mr. Sheridan Knowles coaches Parnell — Dungarvan — Ridiculous Necessity of Obstruction —South Africa Bill — My Talks with President Kruger — Mr. Biggar and Mr. Chaplin — Encouraging Mr. Courtney [202]

THE HOME RULE PARTY AT WESTMINSTER: PARNELL ATTACKS BUTT — THE COMING OF DAVITT — PARNELL, DAVITT, AND DEVOY SUBSTITUTE AGRARIAN REVOLUTION FOR HOME RULE

CHAPTER IX: THE SESSION OF 1877: PARNELL UNDERMINING BUTT. The Failing Lion — Parnell’s Gallery Play — The Obstructionist Craze — Parnell evicts Butt [237]

CHAPTER X: SECOND HOME RULE — CONFERENCE FENIAN CONSULTATION — AMERICAN FENIANISM ON THE SCENE The Session of 1878 — Butt and Parnell — Butt accepts Activity but condemns Obstruction — The Home Rule Conference in January — The Jacobins want a County Gintleman — They think they have got Him — The Alliance of Rome and London — The Irish Prelates hostile to Home Rule — Lord Leitrim’s Murder — Famine Memories in America — The Beginning of the American-Irish Intervention — The Irish Mission to America in 1876 — No British Ambassador — Then no Washington Government — Parnell admires the Constitution of the State of New York — The Clann-na-Gael Mission to Ireland — The Joint Conference of the Fenian Brotherhood and the Active Party — My Programme — Parnell’s Ambiguity — The New Departure — Parnell surrenders Home Rule — The Prelude of the Land League [254]

CHAPTER XI: THE SESSION OF 1878 : MR. BUTT’S BREAKING HEALTH AND HEART — PARNELL CONTINUES DISSENSION — THE TORIES AND THE CLERGY. The Session of 1878 — The Situation at Westminster — Mr. Parnell’s Renewed Attacks upon the Home Rule Leader — -Mr. Butt’s Breaking Health and Heart — Russian Policy in the East and the Parnellites — Progress of anti-Home Rule Agitation in Ireland— The Tory Government and the Catholic Clergy — The Education Control Concession — The Ruin of Education — Two Calamitous Acts — The Intermediate Education Act of 1878 and the Queen’s-University- Abolition and Examining-Board-University Act of 1879 — An Education to produce Failures [286]

CHAPTER XII: THE SESSION OF 1 879: THE DEATH OF ISAAC BUTT — MR. SHAW, M.P., AS CHAIRMAN — THE SKIRMISHING FUND STARTS — THE FARMERS’ ALLIANCE. The Session of 1879 — Social Revolution and High Politics — The Widening of Divergences — The Death of Isaac Butt — Mr. Shaw as Leader — Mr. Parnell throws off the Mask — Increasing Incompetence of the Beaconsfield Government towards Ireland — The Skirmishing Fund founds the Land League — Mr. Davitt proclaims the Socialist State— Mr. Parnell follows and explains — Preparing the General Election in England — The Last Army Flogging Act — The Farmers’ Alliance . [311]

BETWEEN THE ACTS: FROM THE PARLIAMENT OF BEACONSFIELD TO THE PARLIAMENT OF GLADSTONE

CHAPTER XIII: MY POLICY OF INTERVENTION IN BRITISH POLITICS THE FARMERS’ ALLIANCE. The Policy of Intervention applied to British Agricultural Politics — Operation of the Farmers’ Alliance — To drive a Wedge between the English Landlords and the English Tenants — How we emptied sixty Tory Seats at the General Election of 1880 [345]

CHAPTER XIV: THE LAND LEAGUE IN 1879 — THE AMERICAN FARMERS KILLED IRISH AGRICULTURE — THE AMERICAN FENIANS BLAMED THE IRISH LANDLORDS — THE WORK OF THE DOLLARS. The Land League in 1879 — An English-bred Factory-hand as Reformer of Ireland — Mr. Lowther’s Unconventional Reply — Mr. Davitt on the Parnellite Coalition [365]

CHAPTER XV: THE ACT OF UNION THE KNELL OF IRISH LANDED ESTATE — THE FOLLY AND THE FALL OF THE IRISH GENTRY. The Land League and the Landowners — The Fall of the Irish Gentry — Four Periods in their Fall — The Disfranchisement in 1829 fatal to Ireland — How the Potato Blight was made Famine — Encumbered Estates and Church Disendowment Acts [395]

CHAPTER XVI: WITH £100,000 CONTRIBUTED BY IRISH AMERICA PARNELL ATTACKS HIS HOME RULE COLLEAGUES AND DISRUPTS THE HOME RULE PARTY — THE HISTORICAL HOME RULERS OF GRATTAN AND BUTT THE AGRARIAN PROLETARIANS OF THE LAND LEAGUE AND THE IRISH WORLD FUND. The Session of 1880 — The Parliamentary Development of the Land League- — The Collections and the Constituencies — The IrishAmerican Dollar and the British Electoral Law — Practical Impossibility of Free Elections — The General Election in Britain — The Home Rule Confederation and the Beaconsfield Manifesto — The Farmers’ Alliance — Parnell attacks the Home Rule Party — Avowed Revolution and Intended Compromise — Undeception of the Fenians — The Favourite Lieutenants — Parnell makes Russell an M.P. [424]

CHAPTER XVII: THE SESSION OF 1880 — FAILURE OF CROPS IN IRELAND THE OPPORTUNITY OF DAVITT AND PARNELL. Land League Sympathisers in I,iberal Party and Cabinet — National Fenians detest Land League — Mr. H. J. Gladstone and Frank Byrne — Compensation for Disturbance— National Fenians oppose Parnell — Parnellites and Bradlaughites — The Fourth Party — Tipperary and Northampton [467]

HOW THE LAND LEAGUE PLAYED WITH IRELAND

CHAPTER XVIII: THE SESSION OF 1881 — PARNELL FEARS THE LEAGUE — FROM WEXFORD TO KILMAINHAM. Foreign Opinion on Irish Crisis — Ford’s Cheques — National and Ribbon Fenians — Parnell and Crime — Coercion before Reform plays Parnell’s game — Crude Obstruction brings the Dollars — Gladstone’s unsettling Land Bill — Parnell’s Provocation — ’ The Old Methods ’ to the Front — United Ireland founded — Safe in Kilmainham ! — The Land League suppressed — Stafford Election [3]

CHAPTER XIX: THE SESSION OF 1882 — MR. EGAN’s YEAR — MR. PARNELL LIES LOW IN KILMAINHAM AND EGAN PAYS THE LOCUM TENENS — THE LIBERAL PROTECTORS — THE LADIES’ LAND LEAGUE — CLOSURE IN PARLIAMENT — THE ACT AND THE GENTRY. Lying Low in Kilmainham — Captain Moonlight as Locum Tenens — An Invitation to visit Parnell — Kilmainham as Headquarters— Co. Derry Election — ‘Vote for Porter and Fair Rents’ — Messrs. T. P. O’Connor and P. Ford — Madam Moonlight — Coercion pour rire — The Allies in the Cabinet — ‘The Rollers of the Ball’  — Undercultivation and Depopulation under the Land Act — Six Points of Injury — ' The Rule of Funk ' — Shrinkages of Employment and Trade — Why did the Government protect the Foreign Moonlighter Fund? [41]

CHAPTER XX: THE SESSION OF 1882 — THE COERCION FIASCO — THE LAND ACT FIASCO — THE TIMES INVITES ME TO EXPLAIN THE CORE OF THE IRISH DIFFICULTY — GLADSTONE, CHAMBERLAIN, THE O’SHEAS, AND PARNELL — FROM KILMAINHAM TO PHCENIX PARK. The Locum Tenens did the rest — Why I applied to the Times — The Arrears were the Core of the Difficulty and the Opportunity of the Locum Tenens — The Times backs my Disclosures — Kilmainham baffled if Arrears settled — Origin and Remedy of the Difficulty — Gladstone’s Treaty with Parnell revived the League — Through Mr. H. Gladstone I plead for Arrears and Amnesty — Mr. Gladstone prefers a Compact with Parnell — The Locum Tenens refuses to resign [84]

CHAPTER XXI: THE SESSION OF 1882 — THE BLOOD ON THE TREATY — PARNELL DENOUNCES MURDER AT LAST — GLADSTONE SUPPORTS PARNELL. The Session of 1882 — The Invincibles break the Bargain — Parnell, Davitt, Dillon and McCarthy in Council — Parnell’s Despair — Gladstone’s Magnanimity or Calculation — Mrs. O’Shea persuades Gladstone to save Parnell — Gladstone credits Parnell with the Arrears Settlement — Another Coercion Bill gives Parnell another Opportunity — The Obstruction of Coercion effaces the Surrender in Kilmainham — Pat Ford sends Dollars and Charles Russell manages Ministerialists — ' All the Bridges were cut ' — Old Mr. Brady was unconvinced — Gladstone’s Mistake about Parnell’s ' Restraining Influence ' — The Great Activity of Mr. Charles Russell, Q.C., M.P. — A Grave Condition of the British Press [121]

CHAPTER XXII: THE SESSIONS OF 1883, 1884, AND 1885 — MRS. O’SHEA SUPPORTS GLADSTONE — GLADSTONE’s RISING INFLUENCE AND PARNELL’s SINKING HEALTH AND POWER — THE END OF ELECTORAL FREEDOM. Land Act checks neither Emigration nor Crime — Undercultivation and Dismissal of Labour — Eltham supports Gladstone — Mrs. O’Shea and Parnellites — Trial of Invincibles — Forster attacks and enriches Parnell — Conciliating Gladstone and Ford — Secretary of State Bill — Parnell’s Party getting Gladstonised — Migration Sham — Secondary Education Destruction — Ruinous Effects of Electoral Laws of 1884-5 — Parnell eclipsed by the Lieutenants — The Galway Election Mutiny — Parnell’s Failing Health — His Contempt for his Followers [142]

FANCY HOME RULE AND FALSE HOME RULERS — DETECTION AND DECEIT— DIVORCE, DESERTION, DEATH

CHAPTER XXIII: THE FIRST BILL FOR GLADSTONIAN HOME RULE — MR. GLADSTONE SUPPLANTS PARNELL. The Sessions of 1885 and 1886— Mr. Gladstone wants to exclude the Irish— Parnell’s Last Effort for a Grattan Parliament — The Mutual Accusations of Party Government — Lord Salisbury and Home Rule — Lord Randolph Churchill and Parnellism — The Reform Act of 1885 and its Consequences in Ireland — TheTall of the Gladstone Ministry in 1885 as Preliminary to the Conversion of the Liberal Party — The First Gladstonian Home Rule Bill — An Impossible Fancy Scheme — Mr. Chamberlain avenges the Empire and himself — Mr. Gladstone leads the Converted Liberals and the Disappointed Parnellites into Opposition — Parnell more retiring and ill than ever — Mr. Gladstone champions the Plan of Campaign and out-Parnells Parnell — The Union of Hearts and the Attacks of the Times — Parnellism and Crime? [181]

CHAPTER XXIV: THE SESSIONS OF 1888 AND 1889 — BEHIND THE SCENES OF PARNELLISM AND CRIME — SIR CHARLES RUSSELL’s MANAGEMENT— WHAT THE PUBLIC SAW AND WHAT THE PUBLIC DID NOT SEE — FOUNDING THE INVINCIBLES — THE CONCLUSIONS? A Letter from Sir Charles Russell — The Beginnings of the Trouble — O’Donnell v. Walter — What the Public saw and what the Public did not see — The Special Commission — The Invincibles founded by the Land League — The Conclusions? [224]

CHAPTER XXV: THE SESSIONS OF 1890 AND 1891 — BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE DIVORCE COURT — THE CASE OF PARNELL AND MRS. O’SHEA — SENILE AMBITION AND VINDICTIVENESS — THE HIRED MEN’s REVOLT — TREACHERY AND TRAGEDY THE CHURCHMEN’s CHANCE — MORE FANCY HOME RULE. Behind the Scenes of the Divorce Drama — The Tragedy of the Woman — The Wrath of the Man — Mr. Gladstone admires Vaticanism at last — The Desertion of the Lieutenants — An Abyss of Meanness and Dirt — From Glasnevin to the Second Bill for Gladstonian Home Rule [286]

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER XXVI: IRISH PARLIAMENTARIANISM AND NATIONALISM FROM THE FALL OF PARNELL TO THE PRESENT DAY.

I. THE MISERABLE SPLIT — Violent Scenes and Recriminations — Mr. Gladstone’s Second Experiment in Home Rule — The In-and-Out Bill — Mr. Redmond’s Criticisms— From Gladstone to Balfour via Rosebery — The Tweedmouth Cheque and the End of the Split— Mr. Balfour’s Attitude — The Congestion Policy — The Continuous Decline of the Gentry. [331]

II. ‘RES AD TRIARIOS’ — The Education Chaos — Lord MacDonnell’s Council Bill — Maynooth and Home Rule — the Sound Loyalty of the Church — The Gaelic League — Sinn Féin — Electoral and Financial Organisation of the Parliamentary Party — The Patrons of Ribbonism. [350]

THE IRISH IN AMERICA — The Irish who are ex-Irish? — Irish Americans and American Imperialism — The Parliamentarians and Militant Nationalism. [391]

CHAPTER XXVII: INTERVENTION IN GENERAL AND IMPERIAL AFFAIRS. RECAPITULATION — Annotation to Debates against Flogging — Objections to an Ambassador — Foundation of Constitutional Union of India — Indian Press and Leaders accept my Proposals — Inauguration of the Constitutional Society of India — The National Democratic League — Election Expenses the Bulwark of the Dublin Tammany — The Clergy and the League — The Fraud on the Electorate — Gombeen-man and League Press — Conclusion — A Lesson from Ancient Rome. [409]

POSTSCRIPT

IRELAND AFTER THE LAST ELECTION: No Practical Alteration whatever — Private Purse against Collecting Hat — Level of Representation unchanged — The Holders of the Balance of Power [474]

INDEX [479]

‘But for the English, Ireland would be a nation.’ I may fairly class this statement as familiar to all who have heard of Irish politics. ‘Ireland would be a nation, but for the Irish.’ This truth, as fundamental as the former, is at any rate less popular west of the Irish Sea. Yet at no epoch of Irish history since first the Normans and Welshmen of the Plantagenet landed on the shores of Leinster has it ceased for a moment to dominate the situation. The princes of the McCarthys and O’Briens who rushed to fling themselves on their knees before Henry II of England and Anjou, the Irish bishops and abbots who met in council to ratify the Pope’s concession of His Holiness’s Irish island to His Hohness’s Filius Dilectus at Westminster, have had an unbroken succession of similar spirits. Our generation has added a variation or amplification to the eternal verities of the past. ‘But for the Irish Americans, Ireland would be a nation.’ The part which the dollars of the comfortable multitudes, oratorically known to Dublin audiences as Our Exiled Brethern, have played in the demoralisation and denationalisation of Irish Ireland — much more than in disaffection anywhere — is apparently unsuspected by the profoundest critics of Irish events who hail from any country outside of Ireland. In Ireland itself the operation of the American dollars has naturally not tended to invite independent criticism, which would mean personal exposures. Yet nothing is more certain than the fact that it has been the American money which destroyed the Home Rule of Isaac Butt, just as it has filled, or partially filled, the collecting carpet-bags of [v] every emissary of the mechanical majorities that have misrepresented Ireland since a quarter of a century.

The chapters descriptive of the origins of the Home Rule movement had to summarise causes and the working of causes far before the times of the actual supporters of Mr. Butt’s programme of policy. Remembering that this book is addressed to English readers at least as much as to Irish ones, the careful study of these historical preludes of the modern history of the Irish Parliamentary party will assist in facilitating correct judgments on subsequent persons and events. The Disfranchisement Act of 1829 which stopped the grant of leases to tenants was the source of the worst of later evils in the rural districts. Men of to-day, bred in the belief that Irish landowners were a cross between fools and demons, will hardly understand O’Connell’s testimony, that ’on the whole, the Irish landowners did their duty by their country-men during the famine,’ unless it be realised that the famine evictions were not the work of the Irish land-lords, but of the Quarter-Acre Clause of the Parliament at Westminster.

The connexion of Mr. Butt’s Home Rule with the independent parliamentarianism of Grattan and the patriots before the Act of Union, and the absolute dissimilarity of both Grattan’s and Butt’s policies from what is called Gladstonian Home Rule, may be a recommendation for the latter, but forms a fundamental consideration in any case. Gladstonian Home Rule, which began in the tame submission of Parnell to Mr. Gladstone’s ascendancy over Mr. Parnell’s party, subsequently involved the piteous destruction of the superseded figure-head, but earned no promise of vitality from that repulsive tragedy of feebleness and baseness. The history of the Parliamentary party from Ireland since the extinction of Parnell was contained in germ in the acceptance of Mr. Gladstone’s ultimatum by the majority in Committee-room No. 15.

The true origins of the Active Policy, which sank to [vi] Obstruction, but which was founded as Intervention and something more, will be as new as they are incontrovertible. The revelations in the pages concerned with the narrative of what occurred behind the scenes of Parnellism and Crime should provoke serious inquiries and the rejection of some astute falsehoods.

From the very first intimately associated with, or advantageously placed to observe, all the most important leaders and leading adherents of the parties and movements between 1870 and 1895 in particular ; long resident in the great capitals of Europe and acquainted with their poHticians and diplomatists; I had opportunities of exact information, which have never been enjoyed by any previous writer on recent Irish affairs. Unaccustomed to disguise my convictions and incapable of disrespecting the honest opinions of others, I write as a Nationalist who maintains the whole of the rights of my country; but who equally recognises that Englishmen are patriots, and that, through causes that can hardly be called Irish, freedom of speech and opinion is more frequently found outside of Ireland than within it.

With regard to much of this history, as I am addressing a new generation, it may be well to remind or inform the public that in the height of my political influence and popularity in Ireland, I deliberately rejected that position rather than accept the programme of the Land League and the dishonour of the American money. I abandoned the double distinction to advisers and allies of Ministers of the Crown. (pp.[v]-vii*)