The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-08-08
SEATTLE, 1rONDAY. AUG. s.

rELI1cEScER.
SEATTLE, MONDAY. AUG. 8.
FROM PRISON TO PARLIAMENT.
Among the home rule Irish members
elected to the British parliament is
Michael Davitt, one Of the foremost
figures in the history Of the present Irish
struggle for self-government. He did
great work, different from that of Parnell,
but work without which Parnell would
never have risen from the obscure leader
of half dozen home rulers to the head
of great party. which today, under Glad
stone, includes 354 members of the house
of commons.
Davitt formed the Irish Land League
that is. he organized the whole body of
the Irish people behind Parnell; he organ
lied the land league in America, whose
generous contributions have kept the
Golfers Of the home rule party full. besides
relieving the distress of thousands of
helpless victims of inhuman evictions
and thousands of others who were not
evicted only because their wretched homes
on the sands of Galway and Donegal,
where they starved, were not worth the
outrage of dispossession.
Parnell never suffered personally any
Of the horrors Of English misgovernment.
but Davitt was born of peasant parentage
In the county Mayo. While yet . child
brutal landlord tore the roof from the
cabin that sheltered him, and the Davitt
family, six in number, were thrown out
upon the roadside of Mayo, to live or die,
like thousands had been before them. At
II years Of age young Davitt lost his arm
working in an English cotton mill; at ID
he entered printing Office and became an
excellent and swift composition.
On May IA, 1870. Davitt, at q years of
age, was arrested and on the perjured tes-
timony of an informer who swore that
Davitt was privy to the Fenian attack on
Chester Castle in 1867, he was sentenced to
fifteen years penal servitude. After serv-
ing seven years and seven months of his
sentence he was released on q ticket of
leave in December. 1877. He went
TO America and in October, 1873,
in q lecture in Brooklyn, first
announced his scheme of the Land
League. Returning to Ireland he reused
the whole west country by his eloquence,
organized the Land League at Dublin and
formed an alliance with Parnell, who had
succeeded to the leadership Of the Homo
Rule League on the death Of Isaac Butt.
In 1879 Davitt organized the Famine Re-
lief League; was again arrested charged
with having violated the spirit of his
ticket-of-leave and spent five months in
Richmond Jail, making over nine years in
all that he has been confined in an English
prison.
He is self-cducated man, educated like
our great anti-slavery agitator, Garrison,
ut the printers case. He has never re-
ceived penny from the Irish people for
his services, although offered thousands of
dollars; he Is a man Of stainless integrity
In public and private life, . sober, pious
enthusiast, like Garrison. Indeed, he
might be called the Garrison of ireland.
Both were born to poverty; both were
graduates of the printing Office: both suf-
fered imprisonment for their opinions.
Like Garrison, Davitt is q man Of be-
nignant, amiable, kindly nature, but terri
bly, in earnest. Like Garrison he is calm,
genial, but resolute; he is that tremendous
force. an intelligent, able, pure man, fol-
lowing his cause and his conscience with .
out compromise. He il unterriied, in
corruptible, without any personal ambi-
ton, losing himself so absolutely in his
cause that even when differing with many
Of his associates in his theory of the land
question, he always yields his own views
and gives both hands to the cause of home
Yule.
While in his youth Davitt was Fenian,
he has always been the unfiinching de-
nouncer Of the dynamite and dagger Irish
nihilists as the worst enemies of the suffer-
ing country they assume to aid but really
help to assass;nate. He never attempts
to posture as a martyr; he is not a man
with personal grievance. he is a man
with ideas to enunciate and to execute,
and he has thus far dedicated his life
calmly but resolutely to the cause Of Ire
i6Eu lie - u lriSu ptdSaUt, 0iWdyS
ut the feet of his unfortunate mistress, his
country, his iong-suffering, indomitable
Ireland.
Davitt sided with Gladstone when the
''break" came in the home rule party,
because he believes iii devotion to prin-
ciple rather than senseless worship of
''good men gone wrong" 1t is reported
that Davitt's title 10 his seat will be dis
puted on the ground that he has never
served out his full sentence. but it woul.
hardly seem probable that the crown
would make any obstruction TO his ser.
vice in parliament. Gavin Duffy, john
Dillon, the elder. Thomas darcy MCGEE.
aud others of the exiles of lS4s, were per-
mitted by England to hold places of polit-
ical honor and trust in Australia, in Can
ada and in Great Britain, and il is not
likely that the crown will make martyr
Of Davitt.
LAWS PASSED By CONGRESS.