The land war in Ireland: being a personal narrative of events, in continuation of "A secret history of the English occupation of Egypt,"

Front matter

by Wilfrid Scawen

Blunt

CORNELL

Preface

THE present volume, though it is issued as the fourth of the series of my Egyptian Memoirs, will be found to contain little about Egypt. Beyond a few incidental allusions to the Drummond Wolff convention, and the account of a three months' visit I paid to Cairo in 1887, it deals with nothing relating to Eastern or Mohammedan affairs. Almost the whole of it is devoted to Ireland, the westernmost of all the European nations and the most Christian, and in this way it stands in complete contrast to my other experiences.

Nevertheless, if I am to continue my Memoirs with due regard to chronology, this important section of them needs to be told, and I give it with little other comment than a plain transcription of my diary of the time. This I am sure will have its value, if not quite as history itself, at least as a contemporary document serving the history of the years treated and as a corrective of the accounts already published, some of them by Irish writers better qualified than myself to treat of the events but trusting to memory for their day to day details and subject to a stronger political bias. It was my good fortune to take the small part I played in Irish affairs at a moment when Jiall nationalist Ireland was united in its fight for iree-^j ^^m, and to have retired from them before the great civil strife of 1891 began, retaining thus my independence of judgement between the rival parties which immediately afterwards rent asunder the body politic. I have consequently none but pleasant memories of the Irish leaders with whom I was associated, and am able to speak without bitterness

Preface

of Parnellite and anti-Parnellite alike, where all still living have remained my friends. On this point I have an advantage as narrator which will be found of use even in contrast with such admirable historians as Barry O'Brien in his " Life of Parnell," and Michael Davitt in his " Fall of Feudalism," to name the two most important Irish writers, while I am equally free of bias as between English parties and have no brief to defend as is the case with those two best English historians Morley and Eversley. All my partisanship has been for the cause of Irish national independence against English Imperial rule, and I should have been equally pleased to see Home Rule wrested from Salisbury as from Gladstone, from the Radicals as from the Socialists, by violent methods as by Parliamentary manoeuvring.

The aspect of the Irish problem has greatly changed from what it was a generation back when I was partaker of its hopes and fears, and, strongly as I sympathize to-day with Mr. Redmond's Parliamentary triumph, there is much in the more strenuous conditions of the past, as I remember them, that I cannot help regretting. The spirit of Fenianism, in my day a vitalizing force in every patriotic Irish mind, is now almost dead; and I am not ashamed as an Englishman to avow that it grieves me it should be so. Injured nations cannot so entirely and so speedily forgive their enemies without losing something of their virility, and it grates on me to hear leader after leader of the modern Parliamentary party declaring without shame that Home Rule when it is won for Ireland is to be used as a new weapon of offence in English hands against the freedom of the world elsewhere. This form of inconsistency and weakness was perhaps to be expected; but the old Fenian doctrine of undying resentment

vi

Preface

seems to me in Ireland's case to have been a manlier and a worthier one. We live, however, in an age where liberty for the weak is everywhere in danger at the hands of the strong,* and Celtic Ireland, if it is to live at all, must perhaps render service to its old oppressor by helping her to oppress others, and take its half loaf of liberty, mixed though it be with the dust and ashes of Anglo-Saxon imperialism, as a full wage of bread.

Ireland has suffered much, and the land war of her people for the right to live on their own soil has been long, but it is already won. There is no longer fear of a racial disappearance from the land which gave the Celt his birth. Let us be thankful therefore for this much, and hope thatj when Ireland's political freedom shall have also been achieved and she has her parliament on College Green, its leaders may prove better than their present words, and she may be found worthy of her enfranchisement, abroad as well as at home, even though the flag which waves over her Dublin House of Commons be not all that was once hoped for, the Harp without the Crown.

W. S. B.

vu

Contents

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Preface .

Frontispiece

CHAPTERS

Chapter I Gladstone Declares For Home Rule

IN my former volume, " Gordon at Khartoum," I narrated how the deep interest I took in Egyptian and Islamic nationalism during the early eighties had

ERRATA

Page 28, line 14, for " Lord Clifton the " read " Lord

Clifton and the."

Page 409, line 13 of Sonnet, /(7r " for me " read"hoxa me."

and he had explained his position to me before the elections as that of one " educating " Lord Salisbury on both subjects, so that, as on English politics I was already a Conservative and indeed a member of the Carlton Club of some ten years' standing, I had found no difficulty in avowing myself his follower. I was, I believe, the only candidate at the 1885 elections who declared himself in plain terms for Parnell's full demand, the restoration of a parliament at Dublin. Nor did the fact of my Catholic bringing up fail to influence me in favour of Catholic Ireland. The two causes, the Irish and the Egyptian,

I B

CHAPTER I

GLADSTONE DECLARES FOR HOME RULE

IN my former volume, " Gordon at Khartoum," I narrated how the deep interest I took in Egyptian and Islamic nationalism during the early eighties had brought me into connection with certain of the Irish members of the House of Commons who were then waging a fierce war against Mr. Gladstone's coercive government in Ireland, and how, at the General Election of 1885, I stood for Parliament as a Tory Home Ruler in opposition to Gladstone, and as a supporter of Lord Randolph Churchill. Churchill at that time professed himself to be friendly to Ireland's hopes, as also to most of the views I held about political and religious freedom in the East, and he had explained his position to me before the elections as that of one " educating " Lord Salisbury on both subjects, so that, as on English politics I was already a Conservative and indeed a member of the Carlton Club of some ten years' standing, I had found no difficulty in avowing myself his follower. I was, I believe, the only candidate at the 1885 elections who declared himself in plain terms for Parnell's full demand, the restoration of a parliament at Dublin. Nor did the fact of my Catholic bringing up fail to influence me in favour of Catholic Ireland. The two causes, the Irish and the Egyptian,

. I B

Tory Home Rule in 1885

the Catholic and the Mohammedan, seemed to me to stand on a common footing of enlightened humanity, and of that adherence to religious tradition which I held to be essential in every well ordered community. I was no fanatic, and I found little difficulty in recognizing in both movements a title to my reverence. It was a joy to me to identify myself in Ireland with a cause so spiritually congenial, so entirely in its best sense conservative.

It was, however, difficult to impose ideas so very un-English on an English constituency, the minds of electors being obdurate to any but very simple issues, and there were too few Irish among mine at Camberwell to make my declaration for Home Rule regarded as other than an unfortunate mistake, while there, as everywhere else in England, there was, and I believe still is, a minority of at least five per cent, to whom the name of "papist," whatever might be his political opinions, was altogether damnatory. The majority against me at the polls amounted to just that percentage of the votes, and it was less a surprise than a disappointment to my friends when I failed in my object. At the same time I think it was a misfortune at that particular moment for the Irish cause, and perhaps, too, for the Conservative, that the election went against me. Had I been returned to the House of Commons as Tory Home Ruler, the fact would have given weight to Churchill's position with Lord Salisbury, and perhaps have kept him loyal to his professions. There were some twenty Conservatives in the new Parliament who, though they did not avow themselves Home Rulers, were inclined that way, and many more who, with Lord Carnarvon, were strong anti-coercionists. I still think that it would have been better for Ireland to have obtained her free-

Salisbury and Paruell

dom from these, while Parnell, Protestant and Conservative, was still alive to reconcile Protestant with Catholic prejudice and to come to honest terms on the land question, than to owe it, as seems likely now to happen, to the socialistic movement of a generation later. Conservative England would at any rate have been spared the misfortune of witnessing a disintegration of her Parliament and the general discredit into which her House of Commons has; fallen.

Be that, however, as it may, my defeat at the Camberwell election ended my connection with the Tory Party, though, for a month after this, I did not wholly make up my mind on the subject. It was thought at that time, November 1885, by not a few Tories, including Randolph Churchill, that the alliance between Parnell and Salisbury for election purposes might still be: continued in the coming, Parliament through a concession of some kind of Home Rule, if it did not quite include a Parliament at Dublin. Churchill himself was still prepared, or half prepared, for. it, at least so I judge from his language to me at the time which was in this sense, though he blamed me for my premature declaration in its favour. An alliance with the Irish seemed indeed a Parliamentary necessity for the Conservatives if they were to have a chance of retaining office, for it was known that Chamberlain had been in communication with Parnell, and had made a bid for Nationalist support by the offer of a National Council as a first step to Home Rule. It was absolutely unguessed, however, that Gladstone had any tendency himself in that direction, and Chamberlain's offer was looked upon as an intrigue and a means of supplanting his chief as Leader of the Liberal Party. Salisbury's attitude was very doubt-

Randolph Churchill

ful. He had certainly had dealings with Parriell indirectly through Carnarvon; and both had declared themselves before the election to be opposed to coercion in Ireland, coercion to which Home Rule was the only practical alternative. All was therefore still in doubt during the first three weeks that followed the elections, as the following extracts from my journal show. They are of importance as throwing light on Churchill's position,

"Dec. 4, 1885. — Called on Randolph and had a long talk with him at the India Office. He expressed himself very strongly in favour of my going on with him, and assured me that there would be a new dissolution in a few months, and that I could not do better than stick to Camberwell. I told him that he understood my plans in life well enough to see I could not throw away four or five years running after a seat in Parliament, but that, if it was really a matter of months, I would do as he wished — only I must be helped at head-quarters. I had failed at the election mainly from want of help, and he must see that I was not neglected again. He then wrote a note in this sense to Middleton (the Conservative agent), and promised all should be done that could be done. Afterwards we talked, about Ireland. He thought I had perhaps lost votes by saying what I had about Ireland and Egypt, but I assured him that was not the case, at least about Egypt. About Wolff's mission he told me it was at a standstill because the Sultan was angry at Lord Salisbury not agreeing to a restoration of the status quo ante in Bulgaria. ' The Turks are quite mad,' he said, ' and will ruin themselves '; the Sultan would not now let Mukhtar go to Cairo. I told him I thought Jemal-ed-Din had been at work against Wolff, and regretted that Wolff had not secured him when he still Fast and Loose

had the chance.' On the. whole I think Churchill is sincere in wishing me to be in Parliament with him — but I only half trust him about Egypt and Ireland — his instincts are good, but he constantly in public belies his private views. Button ^ declares he will not hear now of Parnell or his Parliament. Lord Salisbury's mind, however, it would seem is open, and we may yet see the Tory Party giving Home Rule to Ireland. If not, Chamberlain will certainly give it. The Irish question must break the Government anyway, and it will dissolve Parliament.

"Dec. 8. — Chapman [the Reverend Hugh], my chief supporter at Camberwell, is down here at Crabbet arranging our future campaign in the constituency, and though I feel much less than keen, I have decided to go on with it at least for the present. I make it, however, a sine qua non that, whatever course the Tory Party may adopt about Ireland, my own programme for it shall remain unchanged. When I mentioned Ireland to Churchill the other day, an odd mischievous look came over his face. I fear he won't stick to his flag. Also, I feel pretty sure the extreme Radicals will join Parnell, and that, when the pinch comes and it is a question of Home Rule or Civil war, Parliament will be dis-

^ Drummond Wolff's mission will be found fully explained in my " Gordon at Khartoum." It had been arranged; with my assistance on certain points, between Churchill and Sir Henry Drummond Wolif, its object being to come to an amicable understanding with the Sultan for a permanent settlement of the position in Egypt such as would allow a recall of the English occupying garrison. My part in the matter had been the bringing over to London, in order to confer with them, of the well-known Mohammedan reformer and Panislamist, Seyyid Jemal-ed-Din.

^ My cousin, the Honble. Algernon Bourke, then on the staff of the "Times." (See my "Secret History" and "Gordon at Khartoum.")

Gladstone's Home Rule Kite

solved with a Tory cry for martial law in Ireland. Then, unless I am very firmly seated at Camberwell, I shall be unhorsed. On the whole I feel vastly indifferent as to the result of Chapman's efforts. Talking about Burmah, Churchill told me they had discovered it was not so much King Thebaw's fault as that of his ministers. They always make these mistakes somehow.^

''Dec. 12. — Wrote to Parnell to congratulate him •on his victories at the elections. It is very aggravating that I shall not be able to help now in bringing about Home Rule which the Irish are sure to get from one party or the other."

Five days later Mr. Gladstone put forward his notorious new programme of Home Rule for Ireland for which no one, either Whig or Tory, was at all prepared. The manifesto as published on the 17th was not signed by him, and turned out to have been drawn up by his son Herbert; but it was universally understood as the first indication of a total change of policy on the part of the G.O.M. I believe that the real reasons for his sudden decision were these : Mr. Gladstone had of course long had a certain private sympathy with Irish Nationalism, and a dislike for the barbarous methods by which the Government of Ireland was carried on from Dublin Castle. He was, however, not a man to allow mere sentiment, however strong, to rule his Parliamentary conduct, and the Irish might have waited for ever

^ I find a note of this date, 8th December, from Lady C. In it, after condoling with me for my defeat at Camberwell, she says: " Into the House you must get, and it will not be long before you will have another try, when you will understand matters better. The Prince (of Wales) was so sorry, but he says this must make you stick more to it, as they really want someone like yourself in the House. He says this Government cannot last a year. I will tell you more of what he said when we meet."

Reasons of his Conversion

for a practical alliance with him but for two urgently strong reasons. The first of these was the great increase secured by Parnell in the representation of his party in Ireland. The Nationalist members had risen from sixty to eighty-five; also, what was still more decisive with him, the Irish vote had, or seemed to have, a powerful influence on the English constituencies. The organization of the Irish vote in England had been intrusted to T. P. O'Connor, and that astute parliamentarian had been able through his intimate connection with the press to persuade every one in England that the importance of the Irish vote, which he enormously exaggerated, would be henceforward a determining feature in English party elections. A second and more creditable motive with Gladstone for making the Irish cause his own was the terrible moral discredit into which he had personally fallen, through the blundering iniquity of his Egyptian policy, resulting as it had in a complete stultification of his Midlothian preaching, and saddling him with the special odium of the death of Gordon. He was unwilling to end his public career, once so honourable, in such a sunset of disgrace. This at least is how I read at the time, and still read, his sudden and wholly unlooked-for change of policy. Doubtless, too, he feared that Chamberlain would forestall him as the champion of Ireland and rob him of the Liberal Leadership. Be this as it may his new resolution seems to have been known not even to those most intimate with the workings of his mind. I find in my diary the first notice of it as follows : ^

"Dec. 17. — To London and dined with Ferid

' This appreciation of Gladstone's reasons was written before the publication of Morley's " Life of Gladstone," which gives it a more consistent and elevated character. I do not, however, materi-

" These Rascals abuse him "

Bey, who has been recalled from the Turkish Embassy here, apparently in disgrace, now that Rustem Pasha the new Ambassador has been appointed. He seemed to fancy his communications to me two months ago might have had something to do with his recall. But I reassured him. I have never mentioned his name to a soul.^ Eddy Hamilton* came in and sat down beside us. -I attacked him at once about Mr. Gladstone's programme of Home Rule for Ireland, which was printed in this evening's ' Pall Mall.' ' You mustn't believe,' he said, ' all you see in the papers.' But he did not deny the report. I said, 'it is a sign of grace in the Old Man, and I feel half inclined to forgive him. We may see him doing justice to Egypt yet.' He said, ' Nobody has done more for Ireland than Mr. Gladstone has, and yet these rascals [the Irish members] do nothing but abuse him.' He was curious to know whether Lord Salisbury had reversed my sentence of exile from Egypt.*

"Dec. 20. — Wotton. I hunted yesterday from Norwood Hill, the run of the season and the best I ever had south of the Thames, an hour and forty minutes without a check and killed at Old House Farm, a mile beyond Ockley. Shiraz, out for the first time, carried me splendidly. Then I drove on and slept at Wotton. This is a fine old house, the property of a fine old gentleman, and one who has a heart to understand. There are a number of young

ally alter my opinion that his reasons were in fact mainly those that I have named. Gladstone was above all things an "old parliamentary hand." See also page 39.

' See "Gordon at Khartoum."

'^ Sir Edward Hamilton, Mr. Gladstone's principal private secretary.

' I had been forbidden to return to Egypt by Lord Granville in 1883. See "Gordon at Khartoum."

" You must go to Gladstone "

ladies in the house and children, a fine family party. I remember William John Evelyn thirty years ago at West Horsley Place, a shy young man, much bullied by my old relative Henry Currie, who thought himself the lord and master of this part of Surrey. Evelyn was then already M.P. for Surrey. He has now just been returned for Deptford, where he has a large inherited property and is called ' the Squire ' — a truly honest man, such as it does one good to see. Wotton is of course a most interesting house, and the library, though of no great size, one of the best worth going through I know. There is an American, Van Zant, staying here, who has silver mines in CaHfornia. We discussed the Irish, question which is in all men's mouths; he does not love the Irish Americans.

" Dec. 25. — Christmas Day, which I am spending at Newbuildings looking over the events of the past year. I have decided to retire definitely from the Camberwell candidature, as Gladstone's adoption of Home Rule has made my position as a Conservative Home Ruler impossible. I have written to Randolph to ask him about it, or rather to warn him that I can go no farther, and I am writing also to Duckett, my chairman,, to announce my retirement. The whole thing has left me deeply dispirited, and I find it impossible to turn my hand to what interested me before. Ambition is a poisonous thing, mere gambling ; and this is the morning after.

"Dec. 27. — An answer has come from Randolph to say: ' It is out of the question. If you want Home Rule you must go to Mr. Gladstone. We cannot touch it.' This is frank, but it almost necessarily ends my connection with the Tory party. Harry Brand ^ writes to ask me to a political dinner

^ The Honble. Henry Brand, M.P., afterwards second Lord

T. P. O'Connor

at Brooks' to form a ' Fourth Party." I have answered that I am quite in the mood to form a Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth Party, being for the moment in a cave all by myself. I am not likely, however, to get much comfort out of the Whigs.

"Dec. 29, — Dined with Bertram Currie; he is less unfavourable to Home Rule than I thought he would be, taking the purely commercial view that a Home Rule Ireland would get no financial credit.*

"Dec. 30. — Called at the Irish National League Office, where I had a long talk with the sub-secretary, who gave me some amusing details about the way they had turned the elections in England. At Brentford the priests and all the Irish, of whom there are a great many market gardeners of a very early immigration, who had voted Liberal for generations, were pledged up to the eye^ for the Liberal candidate, but, the day before the election, one of the O'Connors, M.P., had gone down and called a meeting and had made them vt»te, 800 solid, for the Conservatives.

" Went on to T. P. O'Connor, in Grosvenor Road, by the river, and found him just up at one o'clock. He is a tall athletic man, intelligent, communicative, with a certain journalistic, twist, but evidently a man of vigour. He talked freely about Ireland; he said the more complete the separation now, the sooner the wound would be healed; half measures would only prolong the agony, and embitter the anger. He would not hear of the necessity of continuing the connection with the Imperial Parliament, though he has ' personally no intention of going

Hampden. He had been Surveyor-General of the Ordnance in Gladstone's administration of 1880-1885.

^ My cousin Bertram Currie, the well-known banker; he was arf intimate friend of Gladstone's, and much in his confidence.

A Dinner at Brooks'

back to live in Dublin.' He would heal the quarrel by absolute separation, except only the connection of the Crown. This last would be an advantage to Ireland. But they must control the whole of the administration, finance, police and all. Ireland would be in a poor way, but would be all the happier; they had a deal of leeway to make up, and would have to attend to their own affairs; why should they meddle with Imperial matters or pay for Imperial wars? As to the confiscation of property and the persecution of Protestants, Parnell was a Protestant and a land owner, and would see to all rights being protected.

" Dined with Harry Brand, Bo Grosvenor, and Courtenay Boyle — Bartley, the late Conservative agent, along with them. They talked about liberty in a way to make Charles James Fox turn in his grave. They are all for blood and iron in Ireland, and are going to support Lord Salisbury if he goes in for martial law. They are for disfranchising the whole country, suspending habeas corpus, and dragooning the people. Bartley chimed in. He is a vulgar fellow, not quite at his ease in the company of gentlemen. The others are all Whigs of the old school, who are a bloody race; and they are maddened with the thought of losing property in Ireland. Hartington, Harry says, will go with them, for he has great possessions. Courtenay Boyle was the least unreasonable of the three. I, of course, was in a minority of one, but stuck to my guns; it is a bad business. [This dinner at Brooks' Club seems to have been a very early idea of the Liberal Unionist secession. Harry Brand became Liberal Unionist Whip.]

" Button tells me they have found out already that Burmah won't pay, and are at their wit's end

II Naworth Castle

how to finish the job ; Indian finance can't find the money, and they intend to- raise the salt tax and impose an income tax. He ' has seen Wolseley. They have no pohcy for Egypt, but were to attack the Arabs to-day, and put as many as they could to the sword.

"Dec, 31. — A final meeting in Camberwell of certain electors in Duckett's house. I propounded to them my Home Rule views and proposed to retire from further candidature. Now that I intend to leave them they are sorry, and it has been agreed that the thing shall stand over till Parliament has met and Lord Salisbury has declared his policy. I wrote a letter to the ' Times ' on Home Rule, and left by the night train for Naworth. There I am spending the New Year. May it be more fortunate than the old !

''Jan. I, 1886. — Arrived at Naworth in the dark, an hour or more before daylight. I had to walk from the station, a wild, blowy, pitch-dark morning. But it is fortunately a quite straight road. There is something exciting about being out in the dark before the dawn, and I felt like a moss trooper on a raid. When I arrived at the old Border Castle the door stood open, and I had got upstairs before I met anybody, and then only a housemaid over whom I stumbled in a dark passage cleaning the floor. Mary was the first member of the family I saw, who wished me good morning and a happy new year. All at Naworth is unchanged, children, governesses, and tutors, in the same noisy order which surprised me the first time I came here. The racket does one good, and the discomfort, for all our evils come from too much ease and selfishness. At twelve we rode and got wet through, and in the afternoon played hockey.

fafnes Anthony Froude

" The Goodenoughs are here, and Froude ^ and his daughter. I never was more taken with any one than with Froude, from the moment he came into the room and spoke, for his voice is the most sympathetic in the world, and I am always attracted by old men. He has been staying with Lord Derby at Knowsley, and gave an amusing description of him and his optiftiist view of public affairs. In the course of the evening Froude said quite a number of ^ood things. He described having seen Gladstone at the Tower fingering the axe. 'He is just the man,' he said, ' who in other days would have found his way out of the world in that fashion. A man formerly, when he had made as many enemies as Gladstone has, always ended his days in the Tower." He thinks, just as I do, that Gladstone is a mere Parliamentarian, to whom the great politics of the world have no true existence, and are, with his principles, only a means to Parliamentary ends. Chamberlain he thinks highly of, as a man who knows his own mind, has a sense of justice along with deep prejudices, and would have the courage to play a Cromwellian part. Our talk was very much, of course, about Ireland. He recognizes in the Irish a people belonging to a different age of ideas from our own, and he thinks that Parnell might perfectly well, if he is a man really of courage and prepared to fight, rule them with a strong hand. He believes Home Rule must come, on account of our democratic weakness here, which, is incompatible with Empire. He has little belief in its dangers to England. What I like about Froude is his lightness in hand. Though a pessimist in politics, he is one who smiles through it all, and makes neither himself nor others unhappy about it. His ^ James Anthony Froude, the historian. 13