Parnell was the most remarkable man I ever met. I do not say the ablest man; I say the most remarkable and the most interesting. – Gladstone
We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. – Gothe
PARNELL – Rise & Fall of a LEADER
Thomas McEnery
Summer 1968
The Great Famine provides a definite end of one period and the start of another in the study of Irish history. With this disastrous event, the Repeal movement, together with all constitutional efforts, and even the insurrectionary agitation collapsed. The country was prostrate. Frederick Engles, while on a tour of Ireland, describes the scene in a letter to his friend Karl Marx: “Whole villages are devastated, and there among them lie the splendid park of the lesser landlords, who are almost the only people still there. Famine, emigration and clearances together have accomplished this. There are not even cattle to be seen in the fields. The land is an utter desert which nobody wants.” 1 This was no exaggeration. In two short years the population declined by some two million. The old Gaelic language and tradition also suffered a fatal blow. It would seem to the objective observer that England was finally within striking distance of a totally subservient Ireland.
However, the character of English rule in Ireland was such as to create rebels of simple peasants. (They also deigned to supply an adequate number of martyrs.) It united in the struggle for independence men from all spectrums of political and religious thought. Catholics and Protestants, Republicans and Constitutionalists affected workable alliances based on a common hatred of England, or more properly, English rule. This union of diversity was to be the strength and weakness of the Irish struggle henceforth.
The forces of resistance channeled into two parallel lines. Those who advocated the use of force and the subsequent establishment of a Republic was the more dynamic group. The failure of the Fenian Rising in 1867, the so-called “Coroner’s Inquest War,” discredited this philosophy for decades, and even though the Brotherhood was secretly reorganized six years later, it had no program for action and few active adherents. Although the Fenian movement was dead, the ‘idea’ was alive and extremely viable. Thenceforward the Fenian spirit was the dominant spirit in Ireland even though it got itself labeled Land League, National League, Home Rule, or any permutation or combination of these. 2 The second group, and the one we are primarily concerned with, has as a goal something less than full independence. Daniel O’Connell was the precursor of a line of Irish Parliamentarians whose hope for Ireland lay in a measure of self-government under the Crown – Home Rule. In 1870, a Home Rule league was founded with the Protestant lawyer Issac Butt as chairman, and its members constituted the cream of the educated Protestant gentry. At the General Election of 1874 Butt entered the British Parliament with fifty-six followers, but his was a party of moderate aims; the fire and passion had yet to be added. (For the most part, this party also represented the propertied class. Twenty-four members held sizable estates of 500-15,000 acres; two held properties of over 15,000 acres.)3 This party encountered an attitude of cynical contempt at Westminster. Twenty-eight bills introduced between 1870 and 1880 with the object of ameliorating conditions in Ireland were rejected. The Irish Party, by the method of ‘obstruction’, was able to prolong debate and harass its opponents, but was unable to secure any substantial measure of relief. 4
The last years of the seventies were years of bad harvests in Ireland; famine, the most odious word in the minds of the people, threatened again. The peasants had lost all confidence in constitutional agitation for redress. It was a Fenian, a ticket-of-leave man just out of prison, Michael Davitt, who organized them in defense of their land. 5 The people responded and supported one another in the conflict with a loyalty no less than heroic – evictions were resisted, excited tenants were housed and helped. Davitt and his Land League became forces too powerful to ignore; the rank and file of the Republican Brotherhood (Fenians), though not its leaders, supported him. In the House of Commons, the Irish Party was experiencing an evolution, an evolution led by one man – Charles Stewart Parnell.
Parnell was born in 1846, one of a family long at Avondale, County Wicklow.6 He was a man of exceptional ability and silent reflection, fired by a burning love for Ireland and an innate detestation of English policy. Parnell had been elected as a member for Meath in 1875 on his second try; he took his place as a member of Butt’s very moderate party, a party more sensitive to the tone of Westminster than the feelings of its constituents in Ireland. It was on this lost point that Parnell first distinguished himself. From the beginning he remained indifferent to what was thought of him in England, provided he could secure the confidence of the Irish. He became a member, and soon the most conspicuous member of the ‘active’ or obstructive section of Butt’s party. 7 Parnell interfered in every detail of Parliamentary business; nothing was too small or
too large. The legislative machinery was brought to a halt under a storm of hatred and abuse. Often he was forced to stand for as much as a half-hour before he could begin, but always Parnell remained calm in the midst of the turbulence. One observer remarked that he exhibited the demeanor of a man in love. It was a sagacious statement: the young Parnell was quietly going about the business of organization. As John, Vicount Morley tells us: “In the first state he built up the frames of his army, secured excellent captains, declared open war against Ministers, Imperial Parliament, and English public opinion.” 8
In October of 1879, Parnell became president of the Irish Land League. The chairman of the Irish party in Parliament, William Show, – Butt having died in the early summer of the same year – held aloof from the league as did most of the members of the party. This, in effect, sealed the fate of Butt and Shaw’s party. In Fenian terminology the era of the New Departure – the association in one great national movement of an agrarian agitation, the progressive elements in both England and Ireland, a strong Irish-American section, and the most determined and aggressive section of the Irish representation in parliament, led by Parnell 9 – had dawned with the promise of a glorious day. Here, in this one act, Parnell gained the overwhelming support of the Irish people and gained the services of an able and strong lieutenant in Michael Davitt.
But across the Irish Sea at Westminster, Parnell’s position was tenuous at best. As late as 1879, he could count on only from four to eight men, among them Joseph Biggar, a typical maverick, as consistent as the Irish weather. It might be edifying to dwell on Biggar for a moment, not only because he was the founder of the obstructionist tactics and soon one of Parnell’s chief lieutenants, but because he was so representative of the type that followed the man. It is sufficient to note that as Tim Healy says, “the mere sight of Biggar aroused the rage of the Conservatives”: he bored the House with blue book, insulted Gladstone, insulted the Prince of Wales, in fact, being the object of a Biggar jibe was rapidly becoming a status symbol in England. Parnell realized that there was genius and originality in the man, and must have admired that strain of irreverence that ran through both. To fully complete the character and tactics of Biggar (i.e., the tactics soon appropriated by Parnell), I would like to quote from a lecture given by John Redmond, the future leader of the reunited party after the Parnellite split. Mr. Biggar spoke for four hours. At first, Members indulged in the usual interruptions, and seeing that
Mr. Biggar rather welcomed them as affording a pleasant rest, they adopted another plan to discourage him and left the House in a body, some half-dozen only of their number remaining. After three hours the Speaker, attempted to cut him short. (A rule that every speaker must make himself audible to the chair was evoked; Biggar’s voice had grown weak and husky. He summarily gathered up his books and papers and moved to within a yard of the Speaker.) “As you have not heard me, Mr. Speaker,” said Biggar, “perhaps I had better begin all over again.10” Such was Parnellite strategy.
Parnell represented the link between the land agitation and parliamentary obstruction in the General election of 1880. The Parnellites made great gains; Parnell himself had been elected for three constituencies, and a number of young men of whom little was known, except they were Parnellites, had been returned. It was still a party made up of men with some means. As Parnell said: “It is unfortunately exceedingly rare to find a tenant farmer with sufficient means to enable him to go over to parliament. That is because parliament is in London instead of Dublin. The class from which we can select our candidates under the circumstances of parliamentary representation in London is an exceedingly limited one.” 11 At the next Party meeting, Parnell was elected as chairman over Shaw. He had now assumed the post he was to hold for over a decade – Leader. He used all the weapons and employed all the talents of inflexible will, the unbeatable tenacity. By his reserved and silent personality, he impressed, even such avowed enemies as Lord Salisbury. Irish leaders had often tried to flatter England in the past, but Parnell was always to speak as an equal, apologizing for neither, Ireland nor himself.
Another important effect of the recent election was the toppling of the Tory Government; Gladstone’s Liberals took office with a substantial majority. At this time the Liberals had no policy toward Ireland, and this inactivity naturally intensified the Land War. The Government decided to strike back and accordingly decided to suspend the ‘habeas corpus act’ and break up the Land League by jailing its leaders, of which Parnell was the foremost one. This occurred what Parnell considered one of his greatest victories – the fight over the Coersion Act. The attempt to stop the suspension of the constitution was abortive, but Parnell and his sixty followers succeeded in something greater. The Speaker at Westminster was forced to call off debate, with the net result that in order to pass the Coersion Bill, England was obliged to abrogate her most cherished possession – freedom of speech in Parliament. Only the most obtuse observer could fail to see the ominous results: Parnell maintained the delicate balance of power between the two larger parties.
Gladstone, not only from a practical political viewpoint but also from a feeling of moral duty, realized the justice in Ireland’s cause. The monumental Land Act of 1881 gave the tenant security in his holding, a fair rent, and the opportunity for a free sale. It had the further effect of removing the ‘raison d’etre’ of the Land League, something the bullying of the Coersion Acts had failed to do. That organization, guided by Parnell and Davitt, had served its purpose. Gladstone remarked of it: “I must make one admission, and that is, that without the Land League, the Act of 1881 could not now be on the Statue Book.” 12 Parnell had taken a sectional issue and made it a national movement. The first battle (for it was such regarded by Parnell) was over; the war still to be won.
Ireland was still restless. In 1882 the Phoenix Park murders of Lord Frederick Cavendish, Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Mr. Burke, Under-Secretary, by a secret gang of ‘Invincibles’, horrified England and made Parnell’s constitutional leadership difficult. (It was to play a much greater part in his later career.) But again the election of 1885 showed the faith the people had in Parnell, returning him as Chairman of a party of eighty-six. The ‘mud-cabin’ vote, as Conservatives contemptuously called it, had voted solidly for Parnell. 13
Gladstone, sure that the only way to win the eternal loyalty of Ireland to the Imperial connection was by concessions, introduced his first Home Rule Bill the following year. The opposition was galvanized in the Tory Party and the House of Lords, determined the uphold Pitt’s dictum that the seat of the Empire must not be allowed to disintegrate. The second reading of this Bill occasioned one of Parnell’s greatest speeches. “We can not afford to look upon a single Irishman as not belonging to us” became the battle cry of a nation. 14 Gladstone begged that this golden moment, which he warned them would only return after a long interval and “under circumstances which no man can forecast”, not be passed by. 15 Despite the rhetoric the Bill failed to pass. The vote was 343 to 313 with 93 Liberals led by Joseph Chamberlain joining the majority. Ireland had been scorned again.
Parliament was dissolved following the defeat of the Home Rule Bill. The next General Election maintained Parnell as ‘uncrowned king’, but the Conservative Party returned to power with Lord Salisbury as Prime Minister. The advent of a completely hostile regime at Westminster provoked a resurgence of the Land League. Boycotting was again the chief weapon in the Irish arsenal. 16 The British Government met the campaign by a perpetual Coersion Act- The Crimes Act of 1887. Even Joseph Chamberlain, no friend of Ireland, referred to this wasteful and tyrannical method of government in indignant terms. He said: “I do not believe that the great majority of Englishmen have the slightest conception of the system under which this free nation attempts to rule the sister country. It is a system which is founded on the bayonets of thirty thousand soldiers… I say the time has come to reform altogether the absurd and irritating anachronism which is known as Dublin Castle.” 17
This ‘campaign against Ireland’ was two-pronged: the first we have seen was embodied in the legislation above, but the second was a direct attack on Parnell. On the day of the Second Reading of the Crimes Act, The Conservative London “Times” began a series of articles under the Title of “Parnellism and Crime.” 18 The Solemnity of the occasion was marked by the fact that, for the first (and for the long the only) time in the history of the paper the headlines extended over more than one column. The series contained a letter purportedly written by Parnell condoning the Phoenix Park murders. The letter had been bought from a man named Richard Pigott for the tidy sum of 2,500 pounds, so important was the discrediting of Parnell desired. It was to cost the eminent journal a good deal more. (The final cost to the “Times” was reputed to be 200,000 pounds,
including a settlement of 5,000 pounds to Parnell.) 19
By a strange quirk of fate, Parnell’s enemies were to enhance his prestige to a new pearl. The savage charges were met not with a defense, but with a sardonic offense. Parnell arose in the Commons and embarked upon an acerbic attack on the pending coercive legislation. “I trust in God that this nation and this House”, he concluded, “may be saved from the degration and the peril that the mistake of passing this Bill puts them in.” 20 A Special Commission which Parliament established to examine the whole case had unmasked the forger, Pigott; the collapse of Pigott in the witness box and his subsequent suicide in Madrid were events which not only completely vindicated Parnell, but achieved it with the greatest possible publicity. The Commission had begun sitting in September, 1888, and it was in February 1889, that Pigott’s confession was read. However, evidence concerning vague charges of conspiracy and intimidation continued to be taken until November, 1889, and the report was not signed until the early part of February, 1890. It acquitted Parnell and the Irish of the graver charges which had been made, and solemnly found them guilty of such things as organizing intimidation and preaching sedition. For the Irish – many of whom would certainly have thought little worse of him if he had been proved to be the author of the letters – Parnell appeared now as the symbol of their country, slandered by Englishmen, before the world. 21 For the English Liberals, long bearing the taunts about associating with murderers, it was a sweet revenge.
At Parnell’s first appearance in the House after the collapse of Pigott, the entire opposition, including Gladstone, rose to their feet and cheered him for some minutes: a demonstration of feeling which he characteristically ignored; he was not vain, merely aloof as always. Even those Liberals who were most suspicious of the alliance with Parnell, now began to see it as an asset rather than a liability. “There need now be no further difficulty”, wrote Harcourt to Gladstone, “on the public recognition of our ‘solidarity’ with Parnell in the interest of Home Rule.” 22 By the autumn of 1890, the Irish Party under Parnell’s stewardship had successfully withstood a variety of challenges and had emerged stronger than ever. It seemed that T.D. Sullivan spoke justly when he said at Parnell’s birthday banquet: “… our leader is on the verge of accomplishing all he ever promised us.” 23 Parnell was shining in the light of complete success. “Anyone,” Oscar Wilde once quipped, “can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature… to sympathize with a friend’s success.” Parnell was very soon to learn the meaning of these words, for he had many “friends”. In the last days of 1889, a Captain O’Shea filed a divorce suit against his wife, Katherine, naming Parnell as co-respondent.
In the interval that elapsed between the filing of the divorce petition and the hearing of the case, Parnell suffered from no anxiety whatsoever. Everyone was aware that Captain O’Shea, who had testified to the authenticity of the Pigott forgeries before the Special Commission, was but a tool of Chamberlain’s. That the Captain also harbored an unusually strong hatred for Parnell (having nothing to do with the relationship between Parnell and his wife, a relationship which he actually encouraged for political gain) was common knowledge too. Parnell stubbornly refused to contest the charges for the simple reason that he would probably have been vindicated. This all may sound a bit incongruous, but Parnell was in love, and any defense would have resulted in the double ignominy of the scandal of Katherine still being bound to O’Shea. Accordingly,
the decree of divorce was given on the 15th of November, 1990.
There was at first no question of a ‘Split’. Davitt, previously estranged, came out against Parnell; T.D. Sullivan, the heartening speaker of the recent birthday banquet, also came out against him in “The Nation.” Everywhere else the lines remained steady; both the Party and the people stood firm. On 20 November a vast audience in the Leinister Hall, Dublin, affirmed their confidence in Parnell. Tim Healy was particularly eloquent in support of his leader. At this time many of Parnell’s closest friends advised him that it would be a tactical error not to resign until the storm blows over. This same advice was tendered by Cecil Rhodes. He put it tersely: “Resign. Marry. Return.” 24 Parnell could not even feel any wind. Obviously, this proceeded the storm. Five days later Parnell was unanimously re-elected Chairman of the Party. It was to be a fatal error.
The next day a letter from Gladstone to Morley was published, in which the following phrase appeared: “…the continuance of Mr. Parnell at the present moment in the leadership of the Irish Party… would render my retention of the leadership of the Liberal Party… almost a nullity.” Gladstone and his colleagues clearly had no wish to destroy Parnell; he was their valued ally. Their action was based solely on the movement of English public opinions; they bowed before the moral indignation of the lower middle class, a force which hardly anyone in Victorian England, and certainly not the Liberal Party, could withstand for long. 25 This letter hit Ireland like a thunderbolt. Members of the party began to be restless. A special meeting of the party, held on requisition (i.e., against the wishes of the Chairman, Parnell), asked Parnell to reconsider his position. 26 Parnell bluntly refused and the meeting was adjourned until Monday (Dec 1). Inconclusive as were its proceedings, this meeting was a heavy blow to Parnell’s power, for it reopened the question of leadership.
On Monday when the party met in its room in the House of the Commons, there were seventy-three members present, including Healy who had traveled to London to strengthen the anti-Parnellite cause. This was the opening of the famous meeting in Committee Room 15. A resolution to move the meeting to Dublin was defeated 44-29. This was an ominous vote, for the move to Dublin was part of Parnell’s strategy to appeal from the party, which he knew he had lost, to the country, which he thought he might hold. 27 Events now moved rapidly to the only end possible. The next three days saw the standing committee of the Irish hierarchy call on the people of Ireland to reject Parnell; Gladstone refused to discuss ‘anything’ with Parnell; and finally, all compromise attempts within the party failed. To put it mildly, tempers by now were running high. “Henry Cambell told Matt Kenny yesterday that he would bring down two revolvers to the meeting and shoot the first man that voted against Parnell. 28 The final denouncement occurred on 6 December, the last day in Committee Room 15.
The meeting was held in an atmosphere of high tension. A procedural discussion soon gave way to the charge that the anti-Parnellites were bowing to the will of Gladstone. The following exchange gave a foretaste of the cruelty which certain men would use against Parnell in the campaigns in Ireland:
A. O’Conner: “He (Gladstone) is not a member of the party.
J. Redmond: “…the master of the party.”
O’Conner: “I appeal to my friend the chairman.”
Parnell: “Better appeal to your own friends. Better appeal to that cowardly little scoundrel there, that in an assembly of Irishman dares to insult a woman.” 29 Parnell had risen to his feet, his eyes glaring. Some of Healy’s friends moved to his side, certain that Parnell would attack him. Then a strange quiet settled on the room. McCarthy, followed by Healy and forty-three others, stood and left the room in silence. The silence was appropriate; The Irish Party was dead.
Parnell now took the campaign to Ireland, where he hoped the people would stand behind him. The fight was based solely on the moral issue, and the combined weight of the Church, Gladstone, and the majority of his own party proved too much. The influence of the clergy was, as always, a major political factor. Archbishop Croke adequately described that perverse influence when he said: “I hereby positively declare, that I shall look on all my priests in exactly the same light whether they denounce Mr. Parnell or support him – the latter being, I think, impossible.” 30 Under such conditions Parnell fought and lost three by-elections, pushing himself as hard as humanly possible. In September the “Freeman’s Journal”, the only remaining Parnellite paper, was taken by the other side at a meeting of shareholders. Parnell rushed to Dublin and energetically began the foundation of a new organ for his thoughts. At the end of the month he sailed to England, promising to return in a few short days and continue the battle. On 6 October, Dublin received a telegraphic message from Brighton – “C.S. Parnell died today of rheumatism of the heart.” It took no doctor to tell the cause of Parnell’s death; he died because he had no reason to live. His one true love, Ireland, which had made Parnell, had turned from its erstwhile leader. For Parnell, Schiller’s line must surely have been true: “What is so universal as death must be a blessing.”
Sometimes it is not so much what a man does, but how people remember him, that counts in the final assessment. If that be so, then Parnell was indeed a great man. It seems that the rapid fall was simply too much for the Irish. The “split” was simply too traumatic to bear. His untimely death unleashed the same type of guilt feelings as were prevalent in America following the Kennedy assassination. The result of all this was a tremendous outpouring of poems, sagas, short stories, and various other literary attempts, all pro-claiming Parnell as the very embodiment of virtue, strength, and courage. Some of the greatest names in English letters appear in this group of idolaters, figures that were to make the Irish Renaissance in a few short years. To take two of the best known might be beneficial.
The first known work of a boy of nine, named James Joyce, was a comparison of Parnell and Caesar: “Et tu, Healy!” In another of his stories appears the line: “…priests and priest’s pawns broke Parnell’s heart.” This view was not endemic to only the anti-clerical like Joyce. Joyce’s classic short story, “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” contained the following passage: “This is Parnell’s anniversary,” said Mr. O’Connor, “and don’t us let stir up any bad blood. We all respect him how that he’s dead and gone – even the Conservatives.” The irony is scarcely veiled. Guilt and sorrow are the predominate ingredients.
W.B. Yeats was also infatuated with the dead leader. Sometimes, as in “Parnell’s Funeral,” he represented the noble king, besieged by the howling mob: “None shared our guilt; nor did we play a part upon a painted stage when we devoured his heart.” At other times he was simply a man in love, made to bear a moral code not his own, destroyed by a pack of selfish politicians and priests:
“The Bishops and the Party that tragic story made.”
Many people feel – as does Conor Cruise O’Brien – that Parnell deviated after the split from politics to literature. Perhaps, in this deviation, Parnell provided a much greater service to Ireland dead, then he ever could do alive. Death was to bind Parnell eternally to the people. All the triumphs of his career paled in comparison to the terrible beauty of his final defeat. You could almost put Gothe’s words into the mouth of the dying Leader: “Nearer to the grave new light streams for me. We shall continue to exist. We shall see each other again.”
Footnotes
1. James Carty, Ireland 1851-1921. (Dublin, 1951), p.2.
2. P.S. O’Hegarty, A History of Ireland Under the Union (London, 1952), p.453.
3. Conor Cruise OíBrien, Parnell and His Party (Oxford, 1957), p.15.
4. The one exception was the Secret Ballot Act of 1872 which enabled Irish peasants to vote without fear of their masters.
Soon many conservative gentlemen were swept out of office.
5. Dorothy Macardle, The Irish Republic (Dublin, 1951), p.51.
6. His great-grandfather, Sir John Parnell, had fought bitterly against the Act of Union in 1800; hence the young Parnell’s
goal to regenerate legislative independence was in part hereditary.
7. Issao Butt, a great orator and constitutional lawyer, directly controlled four-fifths of the party, and denounced the new
policy as insane.
8. James Carty, Ireland 1851-1921 (Dublin, 1951), p. 51
9. O’Brien, p.6
10. Carty, p.46
11, Freeman’s Journal, March 10, 1880. There was a marlied decrease in big landlords in the party of 1880, with none owning
over 15,000 acres and only 14 (as compared to 26 in 1874) owning from 500 to 15,000 acres.
12. Spoken in the House of Commons, April 21, 1883.
13. The Franchise Bill of 1884 had increased the electorate in Ireland from 200,000 to 700,000 – mainly in the rural areas.
14. Speech delivered in the House of Commons on June 7, 1886, on the second reading of the Gov. of Ireland Bill (i.e. Home
Rule Bill).
15. Speech of June 7, 1886. The occasion returned thirty-five years later, but as Gladstone predicted, the circumstances were
changed. (See Anglo-Irish Treaty, 1921.)
16. The entire Irish campaign, including the boycott, were condemned by Papal Rescript.
17. At Holloway, 1887. A contrary view expressed by Lord Morley many years later characterized Dublin Castle as “the best
machine that has ever been invented for governing a country against its will.”
18. London Times, March 7, 1887, p.1.
19. Freeman’s Journal, Feb.4, 1890.
20. From a speech in the Commons, April 18, 1887.
21. O’Brien, p.232.
22. Letter of March 9, 1889.
23. Freeman’s Journal, June 30, 1890. The Freeman’s Journal had supported Parnell since the election of 1880. It was the
chief nationalist daily paper and the last to turn on Parnell.
24. Margaret Leamy, Parnell’s Faithful Few (New York, 1936), p.24. Mrs. Leamy was the wife of Edmund Leamy, M.P. one of the
“few”. Cecil Rhodes, founder of Rhodesia, was a financial supporter of the Irish Party and a close friend of Parnell’s.
25. O’Brien. p.294.
26. The requisition was signed by thirty-one member, but none of the really competent men added their names. Dillon, the most
obvious successor, and O’Brien, another, were in America; Healy was in Ireland; Justin McCarthy, the Vice-Chairman, who did
sign, was only a political figurehead. The motion to ‘reconsider’ was proposed by John Barry, the same man who had proposed
the deposition of Butt in 1877.
27. Dublin was overwhelmingly pro-Parnell. Of the nine seats which the Parnellites held in the General Election of 1892 –
after their leader’s death – there were in Dublin city and one in Dublin county.
28. Carty, p.64.
29. National Press, Nov. 21-Dec 5, 1891. Account of Donal Sullivan, M.P.
30. Freeman’s Journal, Feb.26, 1891.
Bibliography
1. O’Brien, Conor Cruise. Parnell and His Party. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957.
2. O’Hegarty, P.S. A History of Ireland Under the Union. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1952.
3. Leamy, Margaret. Parnell’s Faithful Few. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1936.
4. Carty, James. Ireland – 1851-1921. Dublin: C.J. Fallon Ltd., 1951. [Edited Work]
5. Curtis, Edmond. A History of Ireland. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1936.
6. Macardle, Dorothy. The Irish Republic. Dublin: The Irish Press Ltd., 1951
7. MacDonald, John. The Daily News Diary of the Parnell Commission. London: T. Fisher Unwin Co., 1890. [Edited work]
8. Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York; Viking Press, Inc. 1958. *