CHAPTER XIV.

BIGGAR AND PARNELL--THE "UNITED IRISHMAN "--THE O'CONNELL CENTENARY.

The General Election of 1874 was remarkable as the first since the Union which had clearly and distinctly returned a majority of Irish members of Parliament as Home Rulers. Previously most of them had been returned as Liberals or Tories. It is memorable in my eyes, as it was the occasion when two of my personal friends, Alexander Martin Sullivan and Joseph Gillis Biggar, first entered Parliament. It was in the year after he was elected that Mr. Biggar made his debut as an "obstructionist."

Charles Stewart Parnell having been, in the spring of 1875, elected as successor in the representation of Meath to "honest John Martin," it was not long before the famous "Biggar and Parnell" combination, which was destined to revolutionize the whole system of Parliamentary procedure, was created.

Feeling the necessity for a newspaper representing the views of the Home Rule Confederation and chronicling its work from week to week, the Executive promoted the formation of a limited liability company for the purpose, and the outcome was the issue of the "United Irishman," the first number of which appeared on June 4th, 1875. I was appointed manager, and was also the publisher, the paper being produced at my place of business, 68 Byrom Street, Liverpool. The following were the Directors--Andrew Commins, LL.D., Chairman; and John Barry, Joseph Gillis Biggar, M.P., John Ferguson, Richard Mangan, Bernard MacAnulty, and Peter McKinley. William John Oliver was Honorary Secretary, with Hugh Heinrick as Editor at the commencement, and Daniel Crilly afterwards.

The newspaper was fortunate in its Honorary Secretary, for William John Oliver was one of the most enthusiastic workers we ever had in the Home Rule movement. He was at this time engaged in commerce in Liverpool, having previously been an officer in the Royal Navy. He was ever willing to be "the man in the gap" in case of an emergency, and that was how he became for a time the Honorary General Secretary of the Home Rule Confederation. He was always a cheery and, at the same time, an eminently practical man. He took a leading part in our local elections in Liverpool from the time we began to fight them on Home Rule principles--when the necessity arose, as I have elsewhere explained, to have public men who were not afraid to identify themselves with the national cause.

Hugh Heinrick, our editor, was a brilliant writer, who had, for several years, been a strenuous worker in the Home Rule cause. He was a frequent contributor of poetry to the "Nation" and other national journals, generally over the signature of "Hugh Mac Erin." He was born in the County Wexford in 1831. Before taking up the editorship of the "United Irishman" he was for many years resident in Birmingham, where he was a schoolmaster. He died in 1887.

Daniel Crilly, one of the most active and eloquent advocates of the Irish cause in Liverpool, succeeded him--this being his maiden effort in journalism. He was afterwards on the staff of the "Nation," and also did good service while a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party.

Among other contributors to the "United Irishman" were Isaac Butt, Dr. Commins, Frank Hugh O'Donnell, Michael Clarke, Captain Kirwan, and Frank Byrne. Our poetry was a strong point with us--Dr. Commins, Frank Fox, John Hand, Patrick Clarke, Heber MacMahon, and Miss Bessie Murphy being among the contributors.

When the "United Irishman" was started, the offices of the Home Rule Confederation, which had previously been in Manchester, were for convenience removed to my place of business. As the executive meetings and the meetings of the newspaper directors were held there, I frequently had the pleasure of meeting under my own roof Irishmen who either then were or afterwards became prominent members of the Irish Parliamentary Party, including Isaac Butt, Charles Stewart Parnell, and Joseph Biggar.

Mr. Biggar and I were always great friends. He had the reputation of being close-fisted and penurious; but that this was not so I knew from many circumstances, though it is quite true he would not allow himself to be defrauded of a penny.

He became a Catholic in his later days. Though such of us as were of the household of the faith welcomed him into the fold, his conversion did not increase his value in our eyes--indeed, from a political point of view, he was of more service to the cause as an Irish Protestant, there being too few of them in our ranks. He had a fresh, pleasant, shrewd-looking face, and spoke with a decided northern accent, which had somewhat of a metallic ring. Some of his brother Members of Parliament thought his "obstruction" methods highly ungentlemanly, but he believed in fighting England with her own weapons. If good Irish measures were not allowed to pass, he would throw every obstacle in the way of English measures being carried. The tempest of rage that assailed him in the "House" only added to his popularity outside. Not only was he an immense favourite amongst Irishmen, but with democratic Englishmen also; and at great mass meetings of English miners and agricultural labourers he could always get resolutions carried by the honest, hard-handed sons of toil in favour of the restoration of Ireland's rights.

Biggar used to get many letters approving of the attitude he and Parnell had taken up in Parliament. One in particular, from a warm admirer, he used to show to his friends with great glee. It was a song in the old "Come-all-ye" style. A few lines I can remember sang in words of high commendation of--

--Joseph Biggar, That man of rigour, Whose form and figure Do foes appal!

My place being the head-quarters of the Confederation at this time, the fact of my being known to be generally on the spot made me a kind of "man in the gap," to fill up engagements likely to fall through for want of a speaker. In this way I was often rushed off to distant parts of the country at the shortest notice.

The most important Irish event in 1875 was the celebration of the O'Connell Centenary in Dublin, on Friday, August 6th. Our Confederation was well represented in the processions, there being, as might be expected from its proximity, a large contingent from Liverpool. So great was the rush to cross the Channel for the celebration that we chartered several of the fine steamers of the City of Dublin Company, and kept them for several days fully employed in crossing and recrossing.

The pity of it was that there should be two processions--the magnificent display organised by the official Centenary Committee and the procession got up by the Amnesty Association.

The speeches of Messrs. Butt, Sullivan, and Power on the platform erected in what was then Sackville Street, when the outdoor display broke up, explained why the Amnesty Committee and their friends considered that a protest was necessary and justifiable--hence the second procession. The chief objections to the action of the official committee were that, while all honour was to be paid to the memory of O'Connell as the Liberator of his Catholic fellow-countrymen, his services as the champion of the political freedom of the Irish people were being kept in the background. Also--and that was why the Amnesty Association for the release of political prisoners took the initiative in the protest against the action of the Centenary Committee--because, on a great national occasion like this, the very existence of the martyrs for freedom, who were suffering in English prisons, appeared to be forgotten. Such forgetfulness was considered at the least highly inappropriate.

There was much indignation, too, that Lord O'Hagan should have been chosen to speak the panegyric on O'Connell, seeing that he had actually sentenced some of those very prisoners.

The Irish organisation in Great Britain sympathised with these views, and the various branches sending contingents showed their feelings by throwing in their part with the Amnesty Association.

The contingent from Great Britain was, on the proposition of Mr. Patrick Egan, given the place of honour in front of the amnesty procession which, on the morning of the Centenary celebration, the 6th of August, 1875, started from Beresford Place, near the Custom House. The banners of the three Liverpool branches were a picturesque feature in the procession, as also was the Sarsfield Band, a body of fine young Liverpool Irishmen who headed our contingent.