The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-10-08
SETTLE. rHuRsDAY. oCr. s.
PARNELL.

PARNELL.
Parnell, the famous reorganizer and
leader of the Irish Home Rule party for
ten glorious years, from 1879 to November,
1890, lies dead at As years Of age. To cor
rectIy measure Parnell it is necessary to
admit that the principle upon which he
reorganized and welded the forces of the
Irish Home Rule party with mastery
skill and success was not new, for it was
the same successfully employed by O'Con-
nell TO extort all the great reforms
of Irish misgovernment that form
the chaplet of that great mans
fame as statesman and agitator
for constitutional Irish freedom. O'Con-
nell voted with Peel for the repeal of the
corn laws, and then voted with the vim
dictive Tory protectionists against Peel to
kill the Irish coercion bill. O'Connell's
parliamentary motto was to be always for
Ireland; he voted one session with the
Tories, the next session with Wings; al
ways with the party that would
policy O'Connell helped to force
Catholic emancipation and the reform OF
the 1.-THE system. He was without ques-
ton Ireland's greatest statesman, meas
ured by his time, from 1920 to 1s47, but he
had advantages for success that Parnell
did not possess. He was of pure Celt
stock; he was man of enormous elo-
quence; a man of giant frame, with a
voice like trumpet, he could make him.
self audible TO a vast outdoor assem-
bly, of 10000 people; he was a
trained jury advocate and learned
lawyer; he was devout Roman Catholic,
and was loved and trusted by the priest
hood, and above all he had the essential
quality of patriotic leadership-he was
always capable of self-suppression, of COM
pletely sinking himself in his cause to the
point of unlimited personal sacrifice of
ambition, worldly honors, personal hates,
loves or fears.
Until bodily infrmity crippled and at
last paralyzed his noble powers O'Connell
held the fate of Ireland for veal or woe
in the hollow Of his hand. In 1913, the
year of the agitation for repeal, word from
O'Connell would have set Ireland into a
fame of instruction, but he was a man of
peace; he would go to the extreme
limit of constitutional agitation, but when
ever the government proclaimed his meet
ings and when arrested he always for
babe resistance, saying the shedding of
innocent blood was indefensible when it
was useless. To O'Connell, who died in
III H. ssV
Party" led by few brilliant young en-
thusiasts who were never so happy as
when they were blowing beautiful bubbles
with the pipe of fancy and the lather of
forid eloquence concerning Irish indie
pendence. The instruction of 1913,
stimulated and led by Mitchell, Meagher
and Smith O'Brien was a wretched fasco,
the consequence of an insane revolt
against the wisdom of O'Connell, whose
policy was expressed in the saying that
''all things come at last TO him who waits. "
Between the disastrous failure of 1913
and the rise of Parnell in 1875 Ireland had
no statesman of organizing ability and ca.
pacity for leadership. In 1866 began the
Fenian movement, which was not long In
proving, as 1913 had shown that pipe
bowls are not cannon nor soap-bubble ora.
tory solid shot. A number of gallant men
lost their lives or their liberty in this pu-
Grille movement for the absolute independ.
ence of Ireland, scheme so impracticable
as to obtain the contempt of the wisest
and ablest men of the Irish race on both
sides of the water. In 1868 Mr.. Gladstone
accomplished the reform measures of the
disestablishment and abandonment OF
the State Church of Ireland and the Irish
Land Act of 1870.
In 1873 the Home Rule party first began
TO lift its head; it asked for Ireland a
separate government, still allied with the
imperial government on the principles
which regulate the alliance between the
United States of America.
The proposed Irish parliament in Dub
lin would bear just the same relation to
the parliament at Westminster that the
legislature and senate of every American
state bear to the head authority of the
congress in the capitol at Washington.
All that relates TO local business it was
proposed to delegate TO the Irish assem-.
bly,; all questions of imperial policy were
still TO be left to the imperial government.
st the general election of 1874 sixty
Irish members were elected as Home
Rulers to the British parliament, and
among these members was Charles Stewart
Parnell, who in 1875. at - years, began his
remarkable career. He was member for
Meath, was descendant of the English poet
Parnell, and of the two Parnells, father
and son, John and Henry, who stood by
Grattan TO the last in the struggle agains.
the Union. lie was a granddaughter OF
Sir Henry Parnell, the first Lord Congle-
ton, the advanced reformer and friend OF
Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne. He
was Protestant, and q member of
the Protestant Synod. His mother
was a daughter of Commodore Charles
Stewart, of the American navy.
OF cold. cynical temper, with a trace of
ilI-suppressed arrogance in it. he was ST
first unpopular with his fellow Irish men,
bers of the Home Rule party; Isaac Butt
disliked him, while Shaw, the leader of the
Irish party, detested him. A clear, cold,
logical speaker, without impassioned elo-
r. l.