Part 588

"All through the Parliament which sat from 1880 till 1885, the Nationalists' party, led by Mr. Parnell, and including at first less than half, ultimately about half, of the Irish members, was in constant and generally bitter opposition to the Government of Mr. Gladstone. But during these five years a steady, although silent and often unconscious, process of change was passing in the minds of English and Scotch members, especially Liberal members, due to their growing sense of the mistakes which Parliament committed in handling Irish questions, and of the hopelessness of the efforts which the Executive was making to pacify the country on the old methods. First, they came to feel that the present system was indefensible. Then, while still disliking the notion of an Irish Legislature, they began to think it deserved consideration. Next they admitted, though usually in confidence to one another, that although Home Rule might be a bad solution, it was a probable one, toward which events pointed. Last of all, and not till 1884, they asked themselves whether, after all, it would be a bad solution, provided a workable scheme could be found. But as no workable scheme had been proposed, they still kept their views, perhaps unwisely, to themselves, and although the language held at the general election of 1885 showed a great advance in the direction of favoring Irish self-government, beyond the attitude of 1880, it was still vague and hesitating, and could the more easily remain so because the constituencies had not (strange as it may now seem) realized the supreme importance of the Irish question. Few questions were put to candidates on the subject, for both candidates and electors wished to avoid it. It was disagreeable; it was perplexing; so they agreed to leave it on one side. But when the result of the Irish elections showed, in December, 1885, an overwhelming majority in favor of the Home Rule party, and when they showed, also, that this party held the balance of power in Parliament, no one could longer ignore the urgency of the issue. There took place what chemists call a precipitation of substance held in solution. Public opinion on the Irish question had been in a fluid state. It now began to crystallize, and the advocates and opponents of Irish self-government fell asunder into two masses, which soon solidified. This process was hastened by the fact that Mr. Gladstone's view, the indications of which, given by himself some months before, had been largely overlooked, now became generally understood. … In the spring of 1886 the question could be no longer evaded or postponed. It was necessary to choose between … two courses: the refusal of the demand for self-government, coupled with the introduction of a severe Coercion Bill, or the concession of it by the introduction of a Home Rule Bill. … {1799} How the Government of Ireland Bill was brought into the House of Commons on April 8th, amid circumstances of curiosity and excitement unparalleled since 1832: how, after debates of almost unprecedented length, it was defeated in June, by a majority of thirty; how the policy it embodied was brought before the country at the general election, and failed to win approval; how the Liberal party has been rent in twain upon the question; how Mr. Gladstone resigned, and has been succeeded by a Tory Ministry, which the dissentient Liberals, who condemn Home Rule, are now supporting—all this is … well known.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1885-1886.

… But the causes of the disaster may not be equally understood. … First, and most obvious, although not most important, was the weight of authority arrayed against the scheme. … The two most eminent leaders of the moderate Liberal, or, as it is often called, Whig, party, Lord Hartington and Mr. Goschen, both declared against the bill, and put forth all their oratory and influence against it. At the opposite extremity of the party, Mr. John Bright, the veteran and honored leader of the Radicals, Mr. Chamberlain, the younger and latterly more active and prominent chief of that large section, took up the same position of hostility. Scarcely less important was the attitude of the social magnates of the Liberal party all over the country. … As, at the preceding general election, in December, 1885, the Liberals had obtained a majority of less than a hundred over the Tories, a defection such as this was quite enough to involve their defeat. Probably the name of Mr. Bright alone turned the issue in some twenty constituencies, which might otherwise have cast a Home Rule vote. The mention of this cause, however, throws us back on the further question, Why was there such a weight of authority against the scheme proposed by Mr. Gladstone? How came so many of his former colleagues, friends, supporters, to differ and depart from him on this occasion? Besides some circumstances attending the production of the bill, … which told heavily against it, there were three feelings which worked upon men's minds, disposing them to reject it. The first of these was dislike and fear of the Irish Nationalist members. In the previous House of Commons this party had been uniformly and bitterly hostile to the Liberal Government. Measures intended for the good of Ireland, like the Land Act of 1881, had been ungraciously received, treated as concessions extorted, for which no thanks were due—inadequate concessions, which must be made the starting-point for fresh demands. Obstruction had been freely practised to defeat not only bills restraining the liberty of the subject in Ireland, but many other measures. Some members of the Irish party, apparently with the approval of the rest, had systematically sought to delay all English and Scotch legislation, and, in fact, to bring the work of Parliament to a dead stop. … There could be no doubt as to the hostility which they, still less as to that which their fellow-countrymen in the United States, had expressed toward England, for they had openly wished success to Russia while war seemed impending with her, and the so-called Mahdi of the Sudan was vociferously cheered at many a Nationalist meeting. … To many Englishmen, the proposal to create an Irish Parliament seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand over to these men the government of Ireland, with all the opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in Ireland and to worry England herself. It was all very well to urge that the tactics which the Nationalists had pursued when their object was to extort Home Rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule had been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament would probably contain different men from those who had been sent to Westminster as Mr. Parnell's nominees. Neither of these arguments could overcome the suspicious antipathy which many Englishmen felt. … The internal condition of Ireland supplied more substantial grounds for alarm. … Three-fourths of the people are Roman Catholics, one-fourth Protestants, and this Protestant fourth sub-divided into bodies not fond of one another, who have little community of sentiment. Besides the Scottish colony in Ulster, many English families have settled here and there through the country. They have been regarded as intruders by the aboriginal Celtic population, and many of them, although hundreds of years may have passed since they came, still look on themselves as rather English than Irish. … Many people in England assumed that an Irish Parliament would be under the control of the tenants and the humbler class generally, and would therefore be hostile to the landlords. They went farther, and made the much bolder assumption that as such a Parliament would be chosen by electors, most of whom were Roman Catholics, it would be under the control of the Catholic priesthood, and hostile to Protestants. Thus they supposed that the grant of self-government to Ireland would mean the abandonment of the upper and wealthier class, the landlords and the Protestants, to the tender mercies of their enemies. … The fact stood out that in Ireland two hostile factions had been contending for the last sixty years, and that the gift of self-government might enable one of them to tyrannize over the other. True, that party was the majority, and, according to the principles of democratic government, therefore entitled to prevail. But it is one thing to admit a principle and another to consent to its application. The minority had the sympathy of the upper classes in England, because the minority contained the landlords. It had the sympathy of a large part of the middle class, because it contained the Protestants. … There was another anticipation, another forecast of evils to follow, which told most of all upon English opinion. This was the notion that Home Rule was only a stage in the road to the complete separation of the two islands."

_J. Bryce, Past and Future of the Irish Question (New Princeton Review, January, 1887)._

IRELAND: A. D. 1886. The "Plan of Campaign."

On the 11th of September Mr. Parnell had introduced in the House of Commons a bill to make temporary provision for the relief of suffering tenants in Ireland, and it had been defeated after a sharp debate by a majority of 95. The chief argument for the bill had been that "something must be done to stay evictions during the approaching winter. The rents would be due in November, and the fall in agricultural prices had been so great, that the sale of their whole produce by the tenants would not, it was contended, bring in money enough to enable them to pay in full. … The greatest public interest in the subject was roused by Lord Clanricarde's evictions at Woodford in Galway. … His quarrel with his Woodford tenants was of old standing. {1800} When the Home Rule Bill was before Parliament the National League urged them not to bring matters to a crisis, but their sufferings were too great to be borne, and they set the National League at defiance, and established a Plan of Campaign of their own. Lord Clanricarde would grant them no reduction, and they leagued themselves together, 316 in number, and when the November rent day came round in 1885 they resolved not to pay any rent at all if twenty-five per cent. reduction was refused. This was refused, and they withheld their rent. … The eviction of four of these tenants, in August, 1886, attracted general attention by the long fight the people made for their homes. Each house was besieged and defended like some mediæval city. One stone house, built by a tenant at a cost of £200, got the name of Saunders's fort. It was held by a garrison of 24, who threw boiling water on their assailants, and in one part of the fight threw out among them a hive of bees. … To evict these four men the whole available forces of the Crown in Galway were employed from Thursday the 19th of August to Friday the 27th. Seven hundred policemen and soldiers were present to protect the emergency men who carried out the evictions, and 60 peasants were taken to Galway gaol. It was to meet cases of this kind that, after the rejection of Mr. Parnell's Tenants' Relief Bill, the Plan of Campaign was started. In a speech at Woodford on the 17th of October Mr. John Dillon gave an outline of the scheme on which he thought a tenants' campaign against unjust rents might be started and carried on all over the country. … On the 23rd of October the 'Plan of Campaign' was published in full detail in 'United Ireland.' The first question to be answered, said the 'Plan,' was, How to meet the November demand for rent? On every estate the tenantry were to come together and decide whether to combine or not in resistance to exorbitant rent. When they were assembled, if the priest were not with them, they were to 'appoint an intelligent and sturdy member of their body as chairman, and after consulting, decide by resolution on the amount of abatement they will demand.' A committee of six or more and the chairman were then to be elected, to be called a Managing Committee, to take charge of the half year's rent of each tenant should the landlord refuse it. Everyone present was to pledge himself

(1) To abide by the decision of the majority; (2) To hold no communication with the landlord or his agents, except in presence of the body of the tenantry; (3) To accept no settlement for himself that was not given to every tenant on the estate.

Having thus pledged themselves each to the others they were to go to the rent office in a body on the rent day, or the gale day, as it is called in Ireland, and if the agent refused to see them in a body they were to depute the chairman to act as their spokesman and tender the reduced rent. If the agent refused to accept it, then the money was to be handed to the Managing Committee 'to fight the landlord with.' The fund thus got together was to be employed in supporting tenants who were dispossessed by sale or ejectment. The National League was to guarantee the continuance of the grants if needful after the fund was expended, or as long as the majority of the tenants held out."

_P. W. Clayden, England under the Coalition, chapter. 8._

IRELAND: A. D. 1888-1889. The Parnell Commission.

Early in 1887, certain letters appeared in "The Times" newspaper, of London, one of which, printed in facsimile, "implied Mr. Parnell's sanction to the Park murders of 1882." It created a great sensation, and, "after many bitter debates in Parliament, a commission was appointed (1888) consisting of three judges to inquire not only into the authenticity of this and other letters attributed to several persons as their authors, but into the whole course of conduct pursued by many of the Irish Members of Parliament, in reference to the previous agitation in Ireland and their connexion with an extreme faction in America, who tried to intimidate this country by dastardly attempts to blow up our public buildings on several occasions between the years 1884 and 1887. The court sat from the winter months of 1888 until the summer of the following year, and examined dozens of witnesses, including Mr. Parnell and most of the other accused members, as well as dozens of the Irish peasantry who could give evidence as to outrages in their several districts. One of the witnesses, a mean and discarded Dublin journalist named Pigott, turned out to be the forger of the letters; and, having fled from the avenging hand of justice to Madrid, there put an end to his life by means of a revolver. Meantime, the interest in the investigation had flagged, and the report of the Commission, which deeply implicated many of the Irish members as to their connexion with the Fenian Society previous to their entrance to Parliament, on their own acknowledgment, fell rather flat on the public ear, wearied out in reiteration of Irish crime from the introduction of the Land League until the attempt to blow up London Bridge by American filibusters (1886). The unfortunate man Pigott had sold his forged letters to the over credulous Times newspaper at a fabulous price; and even experts in handwriting, so dexterously had they been manipulated, were ready to testify in open court to the genuineness of the letters before the tragic end of their luckless author left not a particle of doubt as to their origin."

_R. Johnston, Short History of the Queen's Reign, page 65._

ALSO IN: _Sir C. Russell, The Parnell Commission: Opening Speech for the Defence._

_M. Davitt, Speech in Defence._

IRELAND: A. D. 1889-1891. Political fall and death of Mr. Parnell.

On the 28th of December, 1889, Captain O'Shea, one of the Irish Nationalist Members of Parliament, filed a petition for divorce from his wife on the ground of adultery with Mr. Parnell. The Irish leader tacitly confessed his guilt by making no answer, and in November, 1890, the divorce was granted to Captain O'Shea. In the following June Mr. Parnell and Mrs. O'Shea were married. The stigma which this affair put upon Mr. Parnell caused Mr. Gladstone, on behalf of the English Liberals, to demand his retirement from the leadership of the Home Rule Party. He refused to give way, and was supported in the refusal by a minority of his party. The majority, however, took action to depose him, and the party was torn asunder. A sudden illness ended Mr. Parnell's life on the 6th of October, 1891; but his death failed to restore peace, and the Irish Nationalists are still divided.

IRELAND: A. D. 1893. Passage of the Home Rule Bill by the British House of Commons. Its defeat by the House of Lords.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1892-1893.

IRELAND: End--------

{1801}

IRENE, Empress in the East (Byzantine, or Greek), A. D. 797-802.

IRISH NIGHT, The.

See LONDON: A. D. 1688.

IRMINSUL, The.

See SAXONS: A. D. 772-804.

IRON AGE.

See STONE AGE.

IRON CROSS, Order of the.

A Prussian order of knighthood instituted in 1815 by Frederick William III.

IRON CROWN, The Order of the.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1804-1805.

IRON CROWN OF LOMBARDY, The.

See LOMBARDY, THE IRON CROWN OF.

IRON MASK, The Man in the.

"It is known that a masked and unknown prisoner, the object of extraordinary surveillance, died, in 1703, in the Bastille, to which he had been taken from the St. Marguerite Isles in 1698; he had remained about ten years incarcerated in these isles, and traces of him are with certainty found in the fort of Exilles, and at Pignerol, as far back as about 1681. This singular fact, which began to be vaguely bruited a little before the middle of the 18th century, excited immense curiosity after Voltaire had availed himself of it in his 'Siècle de Louis XIV.', wherein he exhibited it in the most touching and tragic light. A thousand conjectures circulated: no great personage had disappeared in Europe about 1680. What interest so powerful had the government of Louis XIV. for concealing this mysterious visage from every human eye? Many explanations more or less plausible, more or less chimerical, have been attempted in regard to the 'man with the iron mask' (an erroneous designation that has prevailed; the mask was not of iron, but of black velvet; it was probably one of those 'loups' so long in use), when, in 1837, the bibliophile Jacob (M. Paul Lacroix) published a very ingenious book on this subject, in which he discussed all the hypotheses, and skilfully commented on all the facts and dates, in order to establish that, in 1680, Fouquet was represented as dead; that he was masked, sequestered anew, and dragged from fortress to fortress till his real death in 1703. It is impossible for us to admit this solution of the problem; the authenticity of the minister Louvois' correspondence with the governor of the prison of Pignerol, on the subject of Fouquet's death, in March, 1680, appears to us incontestable; and did this material proof not exist, we still could not believe in a return of rigor so strange, so barbarous, and so unaccountable on the part of Louis XIV., when all the official documents attest that his resentment had gradually been appeased, and that an old man who asked nothing more than a little free air before dying had ceased to be feared. There are many more presumptions in favor of Baron Heiss' opinion, reproduced by several writers, and, in the last instance, by M. Delort ('Histoire de l'homme au masque de fer'; 1825),—the opinion that the 'man with a mask' was a secretary of the Duke of Mantua, named Mattioli, carried off by order of Louis XIV. in 1679, for having deceived the French government, and having sought to form a coalition of the Italian princes against it. But however striking, in certain respects, may be the resemblances between Mattioli and the 'iron mask,' equally guarded by the governor St. Mars at Pignerol and at Exilles, however grave may be the testimony according to which Mattioli was transferred to the St. Marguerite Isles, the subaltern position of Mattioli, whom Catinat and Louvois, in their letters, characterize as a 'knave' and St. Mars threatens with a cudgel, ill accords, we do not say with the traditions relating to the profound respect shown the prisoner by the keepers, the governor, and even the minister,—these traditions may be contested,—but with the authentic details and documents given by the learned and judicious Father Griffet in regard to the extreme mystery in which the prisoner at the Bastille was enveloped, more than twenty years after the abduction of the obscure Mattioli, in regard to the mask that he never put off, in regard to the precautions taken after his death to annihilate the traces of his sojourn at the Bastille, which explains why nothing was found concerning him after the taking of that fortress. Many minds will always persist in seeking, under this impenetrable mask, a more dangerous secret, a mysterious accusing resemblance; and the most popular opinion, although the most void of an proof, will always doubtless be that suffered to transpire by Voltaire, under cover of his publisher, in the eighth edition of his 'Dictionnaire philosophique' (1771). According to this opinion, the honor of the royal household was involved in the secret, and the unknown victim was an illegitimate son of Anne of Austria. The only private crime of which Louis XIV. was perhaps capable, was a crime inspired by fanaticism for monarchical honor. However this may be, history has no right to pronounce upon what will never emerge from the domain of conjecture."

_H. Martin, History of France: Age of Louis XIV., volume 1, page 40, foot-note._

"The Paris correspondent of the 'Daily Telegraph' records a fact which, if it is correctly reported, goes a long way towards clearing up one of the problems of modern history. A letter to Louvois by Louis XIV., written in cipher, has been long in the archives of the Ministry of War, and has at length been deciphered. In it the King orders Louvois to arrest General de Burlonde for having raised the siege of Conti without permission, to send him to Pignerol, and to conceal his features under a 'loup' or black-velvet mask. The order was executed, and the presumption is therefore violent that the 'Man in the Iron Mask'—it was a black-velvet one with iron springs—was General de Burlonde. The story tallies with the known fact that the prisoner made repeated attempts to communicate his name to soldiers, that he was treated with respect by his military jailors, and that Louis XV., who knew the truth of the whole affair, declared it to be a matter of no importance. The difficulty is to discover the King's motive for such a precaution; but he may have feared discontent among his great officers, or the soldiery."

_The Spectator, October 14, 1893._