Chapter IX

Gladstone's Land Act (188I)

On the 7th April, 1881, Gladstone introduced his Land Bill. Ireland was on the tenterhooks of expectation, and Philip Callan, Member for Louth (whom Parnell denounced on 29th March, 1880), tried to get an advance copy of the Bill from Hugh Law (Irish Attorney-General) for the Freeman.

"I couldn't give it you," said Law. "My copy is numbered and locked in that box," pointing to a dispatch case on the table. "Mr. Gladstone, if there were any premature publication, would call in the copies circulated amongst the Ministers to see who had given it away."

Callan was resourceful. Stooping down beside the grate in Law's room, he picked up a poker, smashed the box, seized the Bill, and strode off with it to the Freeman office in Fleet Street. Thence it was telegraphed to Dublin. That evening Callan returned the Bill to Law with apologies for damaging the box. Nor did Callan suffer for this, being a supporter of the Liberals.

To enable me to criticize the Bill my brother (aged 22) drew up suggestions. I urged him to send them to the Freeman. That organ refused to publish his analysis, being persuaded that young Nationalists were upstarts. However, after the Habeas Corpus Act had been suspended, and imprisonment on "reasonable suspicion" became legal, the Freeman did good work.

The Inspector-General, R.I.C., issued a secret circular to stimulate arrests, worded:

"This document is not to leave the hands of the County Inspectors to whom it is addressed, and must be kept under lock and key.

"Any orders given to ensure the instructions in it being carried out must be communicated verbally when practicable to Sub-Inspectors, Head, and other Constables, as emanating from the County Inspectors themselves.

"The Inspector-General deems it absolutely necessary to convey to the County Inspectors his disappointment that the police have been unable in the majority of instances either to give ground of reasonable suspicion as to who are the perpetrators of outrages, or as to those who instigated them and used inflammatory language.

"It is most difficult to conceive that the police, with the local knowledge they possess of the character and habits of the people among whom they live, are not officially in a position to know at least some of those who are the perpetrators of these outrages, but it is still more difficult to understand that they fail in so many instances to give ground of reasonable suspicion against them.

The Inspector-General can only express an earnest hope that the energies of both officers and men will be used to wipe out what must necessarily appear to those unacquainted with the difficulties they have to contend with, to be a reproach to their efficiency as preservers of the peace and directors of crime."

On the 21st May, 1881, the Freeman published it.

The discovery of this incitement to arrest provoked long debates in Parliament. Chief Secretary Forster declared the circular was sent only to 17 persons, and while admitting his responsibility, denied that it encouraged the Constabulary to multiply imprisonments.

So enraged was he that it should have found its way into the Press that a victim had to be provided. The State printers then (as now) were Messrs. Alex. Thom & Company. They declared that the document had been entrusted to a specially confidential man, a Protestant Conservative, and that he had, after setting it into type, struck off only the 17 copies specified by the Castle. Yet his instant dismissal was ordered. The poor man, knowing himself guiltless, got into communication with the Freeman, and implored its proprietor, E. D. Gray, M.P., to clear his character. Gray, aware of the man's innocence, went to Forster and assured him that the dismissed printer was not the source from which the Freeman had received the circular, and that he had nothing to do with its publication. His reinstatement was, therefore, sanctioned.

Nobody else had handled the document in Thorn's, so how did it reach the Freeman? Gray explained the mystery to me. On the day the MS. reached Thom's it was given to their most trusted type-setter to put into print. He worked at the end of a row of compositors, one of whom called for a chew of tobacco. The trusty "comp" engaged in setting up the circular had just taken a rough proof of it, which was smudged and defective. Hearing the call for a "plug," he, unthinkingly, rolled the discarded proof round some tobacco and threw it to the man who asked for a chew. The latter, having taken what he needed at the moment, put the rest in his pocket. A day later he saw that it was enclosed in a dirty proof. This he read, and was amazed by the find. He brought it to the Freeman, and telling E. D. Gray how he got it, was rewarded with £20.

The incitements the circular contained were never disclaimed by Forster. He was merely sorry for being caught out. He had just prevented the Empress of Austria from hunting in Ireland on the pretence that her life was not safe. In 1880 this splendid woman joined the Meath Hounds. In 1881 she was not allowed to come back because of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. For it would never do to have the Empress sporting amongst the "wild Irish," cheered by enthusiastic crowds, while Forster was ramming his opponents into jail on the ground that murder was rampant. The Empress, thus warned off, retorted by sending the College of Maynooth a silver statue of St. George and the Dragon, believing they symbolized Ireland. Learning her mistake, she forwarded a magnificent set of vestments and altar requisites as a memento of her happy time in Kildare. Every one knew that she would have been safer in Ireland than anywhere else in Europe, but her popularity galled the advisers of Forster, who could not venture into the country he governed without a cohort of police. Her exclusion was a business loss, as Austrian nobles had taken to importing Irish horses. One of them won so many races with our animals that the sporting authorities in Vienna made a rule that future entrants should be locally bred.

After her visit a horse-dealer, who was asked about the gain to his trade, exclaimed, "Troth, I'm pestered with princes and emperors now!" This traffic Forster helped to kill.

When the Empress went a-hunting with the Meaths, the reporter of the Freeman, Fred Gallagher, ravished at the style in which she took her fences, wrote of her ecstatically. At the first jump she was "The Empress of Austria." Next she became "Austro-Hungary's Queen." At the third fence "Her Majesty." At the fourth, "the Royal equestrienne." At a "double-ditch" Fred, gravelled for lack of more courtly matter, proclaimed her "The Imperial ten-stone-two!"

Gallagher was adored by the racing world. Horsiest of the horsey, he described every event in sporting terms. Visiting Belgium, he surprised the Scheldt by recording that the cows browsing on its banks "wore the colours of the late Lord Meath." Threatened with removal from a sinecure he enjoyed under the Dublin Corporation, he, after his last chance had almost evaporated canvassed its committee unabashed. By a casting vote he secured retention, and being asked the result by an anxious admirer, chirruped, "Romped home, my boy!"

On the suicide of Fred Archer, the famous jockey, Gallagher's lament in the Freeman, was limned by William O'Brien as a "mixture of tears and stable-dung."

Though the mistakes of Gladstone's Government in 1881 were many, its perplexities must not be underrated. The House of Lords was hostile to Irish reforms, and the Commons largely indifferent. Many Irish Members were landlords, and a county like Leitrim returned Colonel Tottenham, M.P., who declared that the "best manure for land is that it should be well salted with rent."

Gladstone, in the debates on the Land Bill, threw out delightful sallies. His reply to Colonel Tottenham as to the date when its second reading should be taken was greatly relished by Irishmen. Tottenham was the most amazing-looking person. Nearly seven feet high, splendidly proportioned, and with a scornful handsome face, he seemed to dominate the pygmies of this earth. On the motion for the Easter adjournment, he had urged that to fix a Monday after Easter for the second reading of the Land Bill was inconsiderate as it would compel Irish Members to leave their homes on a Saturday night. Gladstone, enheartened by our cheers, and desiring oblivion for the Coercion Acts, rose in a playful and bewitching manner to make answer. Words like these, musically spoken, came from his "lower register." "We have been engaged for the past three months on measures of repression for Ireland. Hundreds of suspects have been arrested, and we have watched Ireland rise from anxiety to expectancy. Admitting the grave inconvenience to the honourable and gallant gentleman from the circumstance with which he has confronted us, I would beg his attention to another aspect of affairs. Let him, I pray, consider the obligations of the Government towards his countrymen, the misery and wretchedness into which many of them have been plunged, the well-justified expectation which the most moderate entertain, the solemnity of the moment, from the view both of Irish and British policy, and let me add to this my own personal appeal and beg him to rise to the height of this great occasion and leave his home on the Saturday night!" Even Tottenham's arrogance gave way at this banter.

Yet Gladstone's Bill was coldly received by Parnell. Pat Martin, Q.C., a Whig, and M. Marum, an unwilling supporter of Parnell (both Members for Co. Kilkenny), understood its value. Martin was a shrewd lawyer and a man of the world; Marum, a lawyer, too, but one who used to spin letters about "Emphyteusis," the "Black Act," and the "Button Plea," in the Freeman. Parnell loved to describe Marum's method of getting a crowd for meetings to secure his election, and repeated his apostrophes to me half-a-dozen times.

Parnell declared that he got a trumpet and blew it at every cross-roads to gather the rustics during the contest, and declaimed: Vote for Marum, your God, and the grand old Church of Rome!"

This was the only story connected with General Election of 1880 that Parnell cherished. As he recounted it his nose twitched with enjoyment. One of Marum's relatives was bishop, who in the 'thirties took O'Connell's side against Rome; three men had been hanged for shooting his grandfather, so his canvass was at times jolty. Marum would have joined O'Connor Power in voting for the second reading of the Land Bill despite the decision of the Party to abstain, but that the Speaker refused "see" him to enable him to explain his reasons. In a huff he took up his papers and strode out of the House.

O'Connor Power, who voted for the second reading, separated himself from us three years later and joined the Liberals. He stood for Kennington (a London constituency) as a Liberal in 1885, but was defeated and never got back to Westminster. It is due to his memory to record that in 1888 he rejected overtures from The Times to "inform" against former colleagues at the Forgery Commission. Another ex-M.P. privately gave information to little purpose.

Parnell gave small attention to the Land Bill and seldom attended. I appealed to him, when it reached "Committee," to be oftener present, saying, "If you would only sit beside me, Gladstone will take my amendments, even though you don't say a word." In vain; his mind was far away. Yet the fortunes of hall a million farmers and their families were at stake. Life or death for many depended on the Bill.

Pat Martin, Q.C., was fond of Parnell, though he sat with the Liberals, and commented on the contrast in his behaviour in the new and the old Parliament. He mournfully said that when Parnell began in 1875, he seldom spent an hour away from the House. If he left for an assignation he came back at once to attack the Government. "Now," Martin deplored, "he stays away for days, and neglects everything."

The Eastern Question then embarrassed Gladstone, while the Bradlaugh difficulty was handled so skilfully against him by Lord Randolph Churchill that religious-minded people shrank from supporting the Liberals. Quotations from the Fruits of Philosophy, which Bradlaugh published, offended Nonconformists and Churchmen alike. Yet London papers to-day advertise "contraception" or "birth control (called in America "race suicide") , while an Anglican bishop and the greatest medical peer smile approval. (Daily Express, 8th November, 1924; The Times, 3rd June, 1925; Spectator, 4th July, 1925; plus Lord Buckmaster's "triumph" in the Lords in April, 1926)

I wrote frequently about the Land Bill to my brother:

House of Common,
24th May, 1881,
"The Chairman ruled I could not put the amendment repealing the 13th section of the 1870 Act at the point I had it down, so I have put it at the end. I think he has done so because the Government mean to accept it, and they don't like to give the Tories to say that they had begun to accept amendments from our side. Charles Russell came to me and said not to be put out about it, as he had spoken to the Government, and told them it contained a good point."

Charles Russell was very useful behind the scenes in helping to rid the benefits of the Bill. Before its introduction he had visited Kerry in 1880 for the Daily Telegraph, and though many of his severities referred to the famine period, and were gainsaid by the late Lord Lansdowne, his writings made a profound impression on Liberals.

House of Commons,
25th May, 1881.
"Judges Fitzgerald and Lawson were in the House "under the clock" yesterday. Since Forster brought in the Coercion Bill there was not such a scene during a Minister's speech. In fact, it was the most extraordinary upset I have known. We have ruined Forster. Nobody not a spectator can fancy the demoralizing effect of our baitings on him. . .

Parnell remarked to me yesterday after the Government concession to the Tories, which allows the landlord to take a tenant into court, that we were only wasting our time trying to amend the Bill."

Attorney-General Law accepted amendments of mine in such numbers that the Tories jeered continually. Finally he hit on the device of promising to consider them "on report." Several proposals I drew were later set down in his own name and engrafted on the measure. Most of them came from my brother Maurice, who, though barely 22, understood agrarian law better than I did at 26.

The "Healy Clause" (protecting tenants' improvements from rent) could not have been carried but for Hugh Law. He was as keen for justice to the farmers as we were. On a Wednesday afternoon the House emptied for luncheon during a morning sitting. The sole representative remaining on the Tory Front Bench was David Plunket, M.P. for Trinity College (afterwards Lord Rathmore). He was not an expert on the land question like his colleague, Edward Gibson (Lord Ashbourne). Had Gibson finished lunch five minutes earlier the "Healy Clause" would never have become law.

Gibson's services to the landlords were immeasurable, yet his brother, Judge Gibson, a Liverpool Tory M.P., was blackballed when he sought admission to the Dublin Kildare Street Club. Edward Gibson's helpfulness to his Party appeared when Chief Secretary Forster proposed to limit the landlord's right to issue ejectments in the High Court as to farms under £100 valuation. With a strong voice and an apt readiness for law-points, he dominated Forster and compelled him to vote against his own amendment, which we refused to allow to be withdrawn.

Gibson stormed against the acceptance of any proposal of mine, and Gladstone once laughingly likened him to a "haughty beauty" who could not bear admirers to look in any direction save her own. Can imagination realize that it was Gibson's daughter who fired at Mussolini in 1926, and that his son, garbed in a kilt, refused to speak English in the House of Lords?

I was then piloting a Bill to amend the Coroners Acts at the request of M. J. Horgan of Cork, which became law. I attached undue importance to it, and wrote Maurice:

House of Commons,
24th June, 1881.
"My Coroners Bill I would have got through last night, only that Wharton "counted" us out after I had spent hours hanging round listening to the debate on the Turkish Convention! I appealed to Wharton not to "count," as five minutes more would have finished everything; but, as he agreed not to "block" my Bill, he said I could get the stage any night.

I got him squared by Alderman Fowler, the Tory member for the City, who is a decent fellow. I am afraid of Colonel Tottenham, however, who might "block" it.

Fowler was horrified the other night when fellows were groaning at him late and I was commenting on their "courtesy" in allusion to some sneer of Gladstone at O'Connor. I said, "I would study it at the feet of the member for the City of London, whose groan I recognized so well!"

Whereas, I was referring to Lawrence, who always yells at us. The Echo next day remarked that Mr. Healy, amongst his other accomplishments, possessed a fine ear for music, since he was able to distinguish amongst the groans that of Alderman Lawrence."

Now came an incident when the Prime Minister approached me for the first time and chidingly reproved my youthful ardour. I related to my brother:

House of Commons,
12th July, 1881.
"Gladstone took entire charge of the Land Bill last night, and Law didn't speak at all; while Johnson, who has never opened his mouth before, was up a couple of times. I don't know whether Law could have been unwell, as he was there all the time.

Gladstone came up to me last night on the floor of the House after our division against the Irish Board of Works, to make a little joke.

I had never spoken to him, and was astonished to see him sailing up the floor towards me, with a twinkle in his eye. I had been pitching into Colonel McKerley of the Board of Works, and said he was an old man, and should be pensioned off and new blood thrown into the place.

During the division when we re-entered the House from opposite doors, Gladstone opened out on me with a smiling broadside: "I quite see the force of your arguments, Mr. Healy, as to pensioning off the old man! Yes, pension off the old man."

I protested, but he rather "had" me in a playful way.

The House was in amaze to see the Prime Minister communing openly with one of its greatest horrors. Everyone wanted to know what he had been saying. I gave no information, so it is reported that I have a sub-commissionership under the Land Bill!"

As the fortunes of the Bill fluctuated I wrote Maurice almost from hour to hour. Shorthand made this possible.

House of Commons,
July, 1881.
Just as the House was adjourning for a lot of badgering, Law accepted my amendment inserting "For the recovering of rent" in the process-serving clause.

He at first contended that there was no necessity to put in my words, but in the end said they could do no harm, and agreed to them!

Again Gladstone came across the House to me to-day for the amendment I moved about "present" and "future" tenancies to know what part of the Bill it was on. When I had given him this information, Johnston [Solicitor-General] came and told me the Government will move that no "future" tenancy shall begin until the 1st January, 1883, for anything arising out of "present" breaches, which I think will be as much as smasher as we could hope to obtain.

The Government also, on my moving the amendment about "no increase of rent in the second statutory term except for landlord's improvements," put in at my suggestion, owing to the course the the debate took, some capital words - which in my opinion fully make up for the mischief done to the 7th Clause afterwards to please the Tories.

They are to the effect that "no improvement by the tenant or his predecessor in the title shall be taken into account in any fixing of the rent."

This is magnificent, and will make it a first-rate Bill. I am better satisfied with to-day's work than with anything we achieved.

My Coroner's Bill about which I had a lot of trouble in the Lords, went through Committee there yesterday. It will come back to the Commons amended and will become law this session.

I got Johnston to get Lord Cork to take it up on the part of the Government, on the bargain that I would get Biggar to withdraw his opposition to the Alkali Bill in the Commons, and this has been done . . .

Apart from the Land Bill there were diversion which amused. In a debate on the question of distress Parnell used the phrase that the Irish people were "clemmed with the cold." Having spent six months in Lancashire, I knew it was a good dialect word. It is the shoemaker's phrase for drawing soles together - "clemming." Sexton (a purist) said, when Parnell finished, "What the devil sort of word is 'clemmed'? " "A very good word, sir," was the haughty reply. So I told Sexton it meant "pinched."

Sexton had the most exquisite choice of dictionary English. Gladstone hardly excelled him. Had he enjoyed a university education he would almost have been Gladstone's equal. As a lad I resorted to the Nation office in 1870, and once had a sudden sample of his powers. Taking up a pen to write a note I commented on the excellence of the ink, and chaffingly said, "This is too good for you fellows."

Sexton looked up and in a flash rejoined, "Ink distilled from amaranths that grow beside the golden gate of Paradise would not suffice for our pens." Yet as a boy Sexton only knew Gaelic, having been born on the Knockmealdown (Co. Waterford) mountain. Near by was a smaller peak, "Knockacomortheesh" - the "hill of competition," enthrallingly "Englished" by the peasantry as "the little hill that wants to be as big as its neighbour."

Electric light was first turned on in the House of Commons when the Land Bill was reached on "Report" It threw a bluish hue associated with the nether regions over the chamber, and was a poor substitute for the Bude illumination which thitherto sufficed.

In 1877-8 Palace Yard, the Thames Embankment and Holborn Viaduct had been lit by the "Jablakoff "candle, but the new experiment in the House seemed doomed to failure, and the Bude light was reverted to until invention improved.

On the third reading of the Land Bill, it was assailed by Lord Randolph Churchill with what he called "a parting kick." He declared Gladstone had yielded to the Land League everything it claimed - "the Three F's" - fixity of tenure, fair rent, and free sale. I whispered to him that Land Purchase, and not the "three F's," was our demand. "Oh!" he jerked out, "I'm only worrying the Old Man," and declaimed that "Davitt planted, Parnell watered, but Gladstone gave the increase."

O'Gorman Mahon, a veteran over 80, the oldest member of the House, who seldom spoke, made on the same occasion a speech adjuring Gladstone to 'beware of Gibson!"

He was a man of a bygone era. His unbent form and flowing white locks assorted with the stories of duelling feats in O'Connell's campaigns. Accounts that he had captained the armies and navies of South America in the 'forties made him romantic. Warlike in person, in politics he was Whiggish. Before the House of Commons was burnt in the 'thirties he sat as a Liberal and retained after half a century his olden prepossessions. Parnell's arrest in 1881 pained him so much that he approached Chamberlain to counsel clemency. In his brusque way he guaranteed his Chief's future good behaviour (without any authority). Chamberlain inquired what guarantee he could give for Parnell, and the old warrior replied, 'By G--- If he doesn't behave, sir, I will shoot him!

O'Gorman did not stand at the General Election of 1885, Parnell restored him to Parliament after Gladstone's adoption of Home Rule in 1886, so that the "Grand Old Man" might be encouraged by the sight of an older member than himself hale and hearty.

O'Gorman Mahon repeated to me the pretty words of his father when giving him his first pony. "My boy, whenever you see a poor man on the road, draw rein lest you spatter him."

He passed away in 1891, at over 90 years of age, M.P. for Carlow. Determined not to die in his bed, when the doctor reported that his last hour was near, he staggered to the floor to seek his revolver. Fortunately it had been removed, and he was forced back to his pillow to draw his last breath.

Shiel depicts him as a young man at O'Connell's election for Clare in 1829, saying that in the Courthouse, when O'Connell was nominated, he had chosen the most singular position. For instead of sitting in the seats in the gallery, he climbed its rail, and suspending himself above the crowd, afforded an object of wonder to the great body of the spectators, and of indignation to the High Sheriff.

He wore a coat of Irish tabinet with trousers of the same material. He had no waistcoat. A blue shirt lined with streaks of white was open at his neck. A broad green sash with the medal of the "Order of Liberators" at the end of it, hung conspicuously over his breast, and a profusion of black curls curiously festooned about his temples shadowed a very handsome and expressive countenance, a great part of which was occupied by whiskers of a bushy amplitude.

"Who, sir, are you? " exclaimed the High Sheriff, in a tone of imperious solemnity which he had acquired at Canton, where he had long resided in the service of the East India Company. .

"My name is O'Gorman Mahon," was the reply. The Sheriff said, "Tell that gentleman to take off that badge." The following answer was slowly pronounced: "This gentleman tells that gentleman that if that gentleman presumes to touch this gentleman, this gentleman will defend himself against that gentleman, or any other gentleman, while he has got the arms of a gentleman to to protect him." O'Connell surveyed him with gratitude and admiration.