Parnell and the Land League (Notes)

Eleanor Hull
1926-1931
Parnell and the Land League (Notes) | start of chapter

[1] T. P. O’Connor, The Parnell Movement, pp. 224-225.

[2] See especially the case of John Martin, ibid., p. 226.

[3] Born in Belfast in 1828, and a merchant of that city, he was returned as Member for Cavan in 1874. In 1877 he became a Roman Catholic.

[4] R. Barry O’Brien, Life of Charles Stewart Parnell, 11, 28.

[5] Katherine O’Shea (Mrs. C. S. Parnell), Charles Stewart Parnell, i, 199.

[6] Ibid., ii., 240.

[7] Ibid., 243-244.

[8] R. Barry O’Brien, Life of Charles Stewart Parnell, ii, 29.

[9] Ibid., i, 335.

[10] Katherine O’Shea, Charles Stewart Parnell, i, 235-236.

[11] Morley, Life of Gladstone, iii, 70.

[12] The Elections sent 333 Liberals, 251 Tories, and 86 Parnellites to Parliament.

[13] Morley, Life of Gladstone, iii, 304-305.

[14] Ibid., iii, 337. For a summary of the Bill, see ibid., iii, 559, Appendix.

[15] Although the Special Commission which tried Parnell failed to convict him of complicity in crime or responsibility for overt illegal acts, the remarkable book published by Patrick P. Tynan, who was known as “Number One,” called The Irish National Invincibles and their Times (1894), shows that he considered such illegal organizations as a necessary part of the Land League policy, and was quite prepared to use them as occasion arose. “Number One” was the commanding officer of the military Invincibles in Dublin City. The organization sprang into existence immediately after the suppression of the Land League and was “the creation of the Parnellite Irish Government.” “It must be distinctly understood that the creation of this new and important Irish organization, or rather the transferring of the braver and more determined members of the Land League into the National Invincibles, was not the work of subordinates in the Parnellite ranks. It was the action of those who governed the movement … In a word, the Invincibles sprang into existence by order of the Parnellite Government of Ireland, elected by the Irish nation” (p. 428). Again (on p. 439) he says: “This history cannot be too emphatic in stating that the Parnellism of that epoch and the Invincibles were one and the same in actual fact, and the policy of this active movement, its authority, its armament (such as it was) sprang from the organised ranks of ‘legal agitation.’” Parnell himself, speaking in America in 1880, had asserted the necessity of having both a constitutional and an illegal arm in any revolutionary movement in Ireland; it should use the constitutional weapon for its own purposes, but take advantage of its secret organization when occasion offered (p. 137). It seems clear, therefore, that Parnell cannot be acquitted of having organized and permitted criminal acts when it suited the purpose of his policy.