I first met Justin McCarthy in the schoolroom of a little Gloucestershire village. It was during the short-lived “union of hearts” between the General Election of 1886 and the general upset which followed the Parnell divorce case. Justin McCarthy was appearing on the platform of a popular county member of that time, one Arthur Brend Winterbotham, a fine specimen of the more hearty type of middle-class Liberal. Winterbotham had the reputation of a shrewd man of business; he was a Stroud Valley weaver in a highly comfortable way. But on the platform one would imagine that he had no thought but for the People—“the People, Lord, the People, not Crowns, not Kings, but Men”; to use one of his favourite quotations. In politics he was a perfect Lawrence Boythorne of a man, irresistible in his frank good-humour; his silence was one expansive smile, and his speaking one melodious roar. His strong and splendid voice had a wonderful trick of falling when he spoke of the tears Liberalism intended to dry if it could only get hold of an official pocket-handkerchief; it vibrated with splendid scorn when he exposed the democratic pretences of the Tories. He was never more effective than when reading a newspaper extract; he seemed to be able to impart the dignity of Isaiah to something in the Daily News. To hear him quote an enemy’s speech, and add, “‘Loud cheers,’ gentlemen! The newspaper says ‘loud cheers’—but were they the cheers of agricultural labourers?” was a liberal education in platform style. And each of his chins—he had a number—was worth hundreds of votes.

On this occasion he gave a real rousing speech on Ireland. He remarked several times that his blood boiled. His voice trembled when he spoke of evictions. It rose to bugle tones when he denounced Mr. Balfour’s “bayonets and battering rams.” He spoke of Home Rule as the one great Liberal policy. And then the Chairman called on Mr. Justin McCarthy with a certain embarrassment, as if he had an idea that he was a celebrity of some kind, but did not quite know his claim to fame (which was probably the fact), as “one who had fought and suffered for the cause of tortured Erin.” And Mr. Justin McCarthy, a gentle-mannered little man, with timid, spectacled eyes, a scholar’s diffidence, and one of those beards which give the impression that their purpose is less to advertise virility than to conceal a feminine softness which might be too apparent with a clean-shaved face, delivered, without a gesture or an exaggeration, the most moderate speech I have ever heard on the Irish question. It had no perceptible effect, except that the blacksmith in the back benches, who had fiercely interrupted Mr. Winterbotham—he was a Tory, as became a shoer of the horses of the nobility and gentry—began to snore heavily about half-way through. But, whenever I have since heard people talk about the emotional and unreasonable Irishman, and the strong, passionless, unsentimental Englishman, I have always seen in my mind’s eye the strenuous Gloucestershire cloth-weaver and the mild Irish scholar side by side. And I have never been able to acquit the English Liberal of those days of a great responsibility. It was not, perhaps, wholly his fault. Assuredly he meant no harm. But he did nevertheless a mighty evil. His well-intended sentimentalities were taken in earnest by an intensely earnest people. Then awkward things happened, and it appeared exactly how much clear thought and sincere conviction lay beneath all the loose talk about “living to see the day, when the clouds should pass away, and the sun of freedom shine again on Erin’s land.” It was seen that Parnell was in essence right—that the Liberals would do exactly what they were forced to do, that when the Irish question was “up,” Home Rule would be “practical politics,” but that when Ireland was out of the picture, Home Rule would be out of the Liberal programme. On the other hand, the Conservatives, when they promised coercion, invariably fulfilled their promises most conscientiously. So the fatal legend grew up that the English could only be trusted to “deliver the goods” when they took the form of handcuffs.

Englishmen often think of the Southern Irishman as a clever child. I will not discuss that view. But those who held it would have been wise to consider how logical children are in their own way, what an awful sense they have of the nature of a bargain, how hard it is to restore their faith when once shattered. You and I may quite easily forget that we have promised wide-eyed innocence, aged five, an elephant for Christmas. But wide-eyed innocence will not forget the fact, or accept our lame explanations that we really could not get the elephant, because some still wider-eyed innocence had thrown itself on the floor and screamed till it was black at the mere suggestion of such a present. Half the Irish trouble is this exaggerated logicality on the part of the Irishman, child or no child, and this happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth spirit of compromise and procrastination on the part of the undeniably mature and businesslike Englishman. We, as a practical people, seldom set our hands to a business document without intending to carry it out. But we have a nasty habit of signing intellectual promissory notes without the smallest idea of meeting them. When it is a question of money, our undertaking to pay “this first of exchange” in ninety days is the best security of the kind in the world. But an English Minister will cheerfully say, “We are all Socialists now,” or tell Labour to be “audacious,” or speak in favour of nationalisation of the coal mines, or give his “personal pledge” that food shall not cost more, without the smallest sense of responsibility. Now, the Irish are not the best people in the world with whom to do money business; but they do take ideas seriously. And if they have been promised an elephant, they expect an elephant. It is no use arguing with them that the elephant would be a white elephant, that an elephant in Ireland would not be nearly so well suited to the bogs as a stork, that so dangerous a brute is no fit plaything for children of the flighty Celtic temperament. They keep repeating (with some passion) that an elephant they have been promised, that an elephant they will have, and that they won’t be happy (or let anyone else be) until they get it. And they become noisier than ever when told that they “only do it to annoy,” and that everybody knows the last thing they really want is the elephant.

I have chosen Justin McCarthy, from a knot of Irishmen who occupied a considerable place in the politics of the Nineties, because he seems to me a figure worth the study of those Englishmen who are inclined in their haste to dismiss Irish agitation as an insincere and artificial thing. There could hardly have lived a man less inclined by nature for the rough-and-tumble of politics. His every instinct was literary. A good library satisfied almost every craving except that for an occasional quiet little dinner with people capable of talking interestingly about Shakespeare and the musical glasses. His love of humane learning was proclaimed at an age when the ordinary boy of his position—he was born in “genteel poverty” which grew in poverty and lost in gentility as his easy-going dilettante father, who had occupied the post of clerk to the Cork City magistrates, came down in the world—was chiefly engaged with marbles and whip-top. “We were nearly all poor,” he says of his school set, “but we all belonged to families in which education counted for much, and where scholarly studies found encouragement.... We could read our Latin and make something of our Greek, most of us could read French, some few Italian, and many of us were taking to the study of German.”

It was natural that a lad whose own degree in such a circle is indicated by Lord Moulton’s statement that “McCarthy was the best all-round scholar he knew” should drift into the literary career. Long before he was twenty McCarthy, on whom the support of the family now depended, was working as a reporter on the staff of the Cork Examiner at a salary of £1 a week. But Irish journalism was then—possibly still is—too hungry a business to detain long an ambitious and capable man, and it was not many years before McCarthy left it behind. Establishing himself first in Liverpool and afterwards in London, he soon attained a certain position in the republic of letters. In 1868 he went to America, had considerable success, and was told, by one who had power behind him, that he might have the post of United States Minister to London if he would remain and be naturalised. By this time, however, he had decided that his main business in life was to work for Irish Nationalism, and he decided that this could be better done as a British subject.

In 1879 he was returned for Longford, and shortly after was elected Vice-Chairman of the Nationalist Party. He entered the House of Commons with a “profound respect” for its constitution and history. Unlike those Irishmen who saw in the House only an alien instrument of oppression, he had always regarded it as a “powerful agency in the development of constitutional and religious equality,” and his “main desire” in public life was “to see the establishment of such an institution in Ireland for the government of the Irish people by the Irish people.” The vision of Irish independence never floated before his mind’s eye; he was content with “a compromise which should give to Ireland the entire management and control of her own legislation while she yet remained a member of the British Imperial system.” That there was perfect sincerity in these professions may be inferred, not only from the character of Justin McCarthy’s public career, but from the tone of his History of Our Own Time. An English Unionist might possibly be as fair in writing a history of Ireland; probably he would not. But it would be miraculous if such a man could dwell on the deeds of Sarsfield with enthusiasm equal to that which inspires Justin McCarthy in paying tribute to the splendours of the British Army. But this same man, with his gentle and peace-loving nature, took his part in the drudgery of obstruction under Parnell, and had his turn in being “suspended.” “It was not very pleasant work,” he admits, “for one who had been for more than a quarter of a century a resident of England, and had formed many very close friendships and some relationship there, and had been doing his best to win for himself a position in English literature and journalism.” But, however unpleasant it might be, every Irish member had to take his fair share in the work of obstruction; and he did it knowing that it was only a means to an end. Under the leadership of Isaac Butt an Irish night had been simply a Scottish night with a brogue. Obstruction forced the Irish question on the attention of the English people.

Just before the Parnell divorce suit came to shatter so many things, McCarthy had come to believe that the main trouble was over, and that, in his own words, “an Irish Nationalist member was henceforward to be a welcome associate in the great progressive work of English politics.” But the Liberal conversion, like all wholesale conversions, was not much more than skin-deep. At the best it was a conversion of sentiment; at the worst a conversion of expediency. There was a good-natured acquiescence on the part of the rank-and-file, an acquiescence not always good-natured on the part of the subordinate leaders. Mr. Gladstone was in earnest; one or two of his lieutenants were in earnest; the party generally was like the Roman masses under Constantius and Julian, ready to deride the gods or stone the saints as the people in authority wished. The foundations of the policy were laid in sand, and it could not stand the stress of the storm caused by the O’Shea divorce suit.

It was a curious example of the irony of circumstance that brought the cold and silent Parnell into conflict with the genial and chatty man of letters who had been hitherto his devoted factotum. But when the issue was joined McCarthy showed that he also could be inflexible. Parnell bitterly described him, on his election as chief of the Nationalist Party, as “just the man for a tea-party,” and assuredly he was the last person to enjoy an atmosphere of vendetta. But, while it was a “cruel stroke of fate” that compelled him to stand forth as the opponent of Parnell and John Redmond, his resolution was firm from the moment that Parnell issued the manifesto which he believed would be fatal, unless counteracted, to the Home Rule cause. And if it was ironical that McCarthy should be pitted against Parnell, it was still more ironical that Parnell should be defeated by McCarthy; that he was defeated was made evident some time before his stormy career ended.

But the struggle was scarcely less disastrous to the victor. Writing was McCarthy’s only means of living, and the demands on his time made writing difficult. His work for Ireland, moreover, involved him in serious financial loss, and when he resigned the chairmanship he was virtually ruined both in health and estate. His last years were spent in invalidism in Westgate, with the pressure of want driving his tired brain and enfeebled physique to a too copious output of novels, historical studies, and newspaper articles. An act of political generosity on Mr. Balfour’s part at length lightened the burden, and from 1903 to his death in 1912 he enjoyed a Civil List pension of £250 a year. McCarthy was greatly touched by this tribute from one whom he had consistently attacked. But the attacks, however trenchant, had never been marked by a tone of personal bitterness. That was not in McCarthy’s nature. But for the cursed spite of politics he could never have indulged a more serious quarrel than those which arise between amiable scholars over a disputed reading or a historical doubt. And even in politics he could combine perfect firmness of principle with a certain large charity. Nothing further from the stage Irishman of English fancy could be imagined than the modest and agreeable man of letters, courtly after the older manner, soft in step and gentle in voice, with only a slight and agreeable trace of brogue, who was so often to be met with at all sorts of neutral dinner-tables during the Nineties. But he was in his way as indomitable an Irish Nationalist as any of those unhappy fellow-countrymen whose death on the scaffold it was his mournful duty as a historian to chronicle. His sacrifices would have been little felt had the cause triumphed to which he devoted the best years of life; things being as they were, he could not but think that talents which might have given him a much higher rank in literature had been frittered away in a great futility.

It is only necessary to compare the Irish Nationalist represented—at the best, it is true—by Justin McCarthy with the Irish Nationalist represented to-day by “President” de Valera in order to realise the mischief wrought rather by levity than ill intent. The impotence of the Nationalist Party in the Nineties made it a negligible ally and a negligible enemy, and both English Parties hastened to forget that there was an Irish question. Thus the opportunity of a settlement in the absence of agitation passed, and when, with restored Irish unity, a new demand arose, the atmosphere was in the nature of things unfavourable to statesmanlike handling. The “Union of Hearts,” had it been a real thing, might well have worked a cure for Irish ills. Being in the main an unreal thing, it but added to Irish embitterment. And to-day we know the greatness of our gain.