Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1922-12-15
YORK, s. c., FRIDAY, DECENGB
means you must both bate" and bait"


quish boys like himself On a day II
! 1874 he stole away to London and crept
into the visitors gallery in the house
Of commons, there to listen with burn
ing eyes fixed on the great Isaac Butt
as he made a speech for Home Rule
Tim was nineteen years old. When
big Ben tolled midnight, that night
high above him in the tower of West
Minister the boy had heard his first
speech in commons-and was to hear
and make them for forty years to come
When he was twenty-five he went
| to London and stuck. His uncle edited
newspaper in Dublin, the Nation
Young Tim reported the speeches in
parliament in shorthand and sent them
to the paper He became its regular
parliamentary correspondent. Morn
| ings, he read law.
He heard every debate in parliament
and he came to know every phase of
| Irish politics backward and forward.
He took as his hero the great Irish
leader, Parnell, and his articles in the
Nation championing the cause of Ma
tionalism won him instant recognition
and admiration.
And then he began using his tongue
as well as his pen--the tongue whose
biting rcasn1 and merciless wit were
to ma him the Tim known all over
England and Ireland and America. He
went back home and began making
speeches, and when he was twenty
five years old one speech in the South
Of Ireland landed him in Jail.
The penalty might have been both
long imprisonment and public whip
ping. He was acquitted.
The same year, at twenty-five, he
became Parnells private secretary. 1t
was probably the proudest moment in
his life. The following year, when only
twenty-six, he himself was elected Il
member of parliament!
One day soon after he had taken his
seat in the house, Lord Harrington de-
livered a speech Young. Tim, repre-
senting County Wexford, Ireland, rose
to reply. The members stuck their
monocles in their eyes and stared. He
wasn't much taller than a boy. He
looked like farm hand. He pushed
his shock of black hair back from his
forehead with a clumsy gesture. Some
body guffawed.
And then Tim started to talk.
When he got through, there wasn't
enough left of Lord Hartington's
speech to wad gun with.
He talked facts-and he couldn't be
ignored.
That year-1SSt--he managed to get
a clause into the Land Act which saw
ed millions of dollars for the Irish farm
tenants in rents. Tins picture, torn
from "the paper" went up on the shelf
beside the peat fire i'll hundreds of cot
tages.
And the stories they told Of him.
The little man never had any awe of
any Of the giants-Gladstone, or
Chamberlain the elder, or Balfour, or
Asquith, or Lloyd George or any of
thin lads. He fought amy of thin to
a standstill.
Members of parliament" he once
said, after thirty years Of wrangling
with them, "are not the extraordinary
body of sacrosanct persons they imag-
inc themselves"
"tThe right honorable baronet who
has just sat down." he once said in the
house, referring to a lanky cabinet
minister who had just concluded an
unusually offensive speech against
Irish members, reminds me Of Pope's
line-like a tall bully lifts its head,
and lies"
A roar of laughter shook the house
and the cabinet minister said no more.
He opposed the British war upon the
Beers. In the house one day, as
though asking for information as to
the cost of army operations, he meekly
inquired:
How many asses have we sent to
South Africa?"
He was not always so gently ironic.
At directors meeting in Dublin from
which he had been asked to withdraw
he jumped up and shouted:
Don't make an ass Of yourself"
When a member of parliament at
tackled the National Irish League, say
ing that it was supported mainly by
criminals, dynamiters and murderers
across the Atlantic" Tim threw the
house into an lproar by shouting in
reply:
You're q liar!"
He was suspended for this, but the
member was made to withdraw his
statement. AS a matter of fact, Tim
was suspended time and time again.
One of his milder statements was:
Neither you, nor the Irish party nor
any human authority will secure from
me n withdrawal of the words l used
at Omagh or an apology for them"
Most of his public meetings in Ire
land broke up In free-for all fights
after he broke away from his hero,