composition of the Irish Nationalist party certainly cannot be said to have been changed for the better, though the changes have been many and important. The members of the Irish parliamentary party are not, with the exception of some half-dozen prominent figures, familiar to the British, or indeed to the Irish public; so that little would be gained by a detailed examination, which would in any case be invidious, of the changes which have taken place in the representation. But it must be said, and there is no fair-minded friend of Ireland who will not lament the fact, that the character of the Irish representation has changed for the worse of late, in obedience to the stress of the internal rivalries of Nationalism. It is not for us to exhibit a preference for one or other of the contending forces, and it is probable enough that had the electoral triumph of Mr. Healy over Mr. O'Brien been as signal as, in fact, has been his defeat, the House of Commons and the Irish representation must have suffered through the elimination of some conspicuous and not discreditable figures. But upon the whole we are inclined to consider that the losses incurred through the retirement of Mr. Vesey Knox a year or two back—a retirement avowedly due to the despotic attitude of the dominant faction-and the defeat at the polls of so capable a member of Parliament as Mr. Arthur O'Connor are greater than any which could have been sustained had the conditions been reversed.

The chief interest, however, of the Irish elections centred in the struggle for the mastery between Mr. William O'Brien and Mr. Timothy Healy, and it is in the triumph of the former that their true significance as a serious factor in British politics lies. For the elections have resulted in an entire change in the kaleidoscope. To begin with, Parnellism as a parliamentary entity has disappeared. It had no doubt been understood to have merged in the predominant section some time before the general election. But down to the date of the dissolution there still remained a small band of men who had been elected as Parnellites on the strength of the Parnellite tradition, and in avowed opposition to those who had been parties to the dethronement of the dead king. These picturesque survivals survive no longer. The individuals have indeed been returned once more to Westminster, but not in the same character or under the same standard. So feeble has the Parnellite cause become that even the brother of the great leader, whose original election was designed as a mark

of respect to Parnell's memory, was suffered to be custed from his seat through a piece of clever electioneering, which, like most clever electioneering, appears to the ordinary observer to have been of somewhat dubious morality. The Parnellite members are indeed supposed to have saved their faces through the election of Mr. Redmond, their erstwhile leader, to the chairmanship of the parliamentary party. But that talented parliamentarian now presides over a gathering-it would be inaccurate to term it a followingwhich owns no allegiance to the memory which Mr. Redmond and his friends strove to perpetuate so gallantly but so ineffectually for so many years. The processions which for years after Parnell's death thronged the streets of the Irish metropolis in pilgrimage to his grave at Glasnevin have dwindled to insignificant proportions, and Ivy Day has failed to secure a permanent place in the political calendar. For the Irish people Parnell is as dead as O'Connell, and in the sense of a living movement dominated by the ideas of its founder and leader the Home Rule agitation of the 'eighties' is as dead as the Repeal agitation of the 'forties.'

But though Parnellism has disappeared, Nationalism remains. That form of Irish patriotism which consists in professions of hearty hatred of England is as rife as ever, and the Irish masses appear to be more than ever in the hands of irreconcileables. Mr. Redmond may be chairman of the Irish party, and Mr. Dillon may be prominent in its tactical arrangements at Westminster; but it is Mr. William O'Brien who directs its strategy, and who in all but name is its leader. The result can hardly be acceptable to those who would fain discern symptoms of a kindlier feeling towards Great Britain. For perhaps of all Irish politicians, certainly of all her present parliamentary representatives, the quondam editor of United Ireland' Las been the most vehement in his expression of that racial antagonism which never fails to raise cheers in Ireland. Nor is the disturbed complacency of English or Scotch observers likely to be restored by the actions or expressions of the only Nationalist politician who has refused to acquiesce in the predominance of Mr. O'Brien. Mr. Healy's attitude in the House of Commons during the short December session, however much we may suspect his activity to be due to the necessity he is under of keeping himself in evidence, was certainly not more reassuring to those who desire to promote good feeling between Great Britain and Ireland than any of Mr. O'Brien's most wrathful denunciations.

But though Mr. Healy has survived the General Election, still sitting-but by a greatly attenuated majority—for his old constituency of North Louth, and though, so long as he remains in the House of Commons, his remarkable parliamentary qualities will enable him to exert a very important influence upon the future developements of Irish Nationalism, even though ostracised from its councils, his defeat in the country has been decisive and all but overwhelming. The sturdy band of supporters who rallied round him in the struggles of the last Parliament have, with scarcely a considerable exception, disappeared. So successfully was the hostility of the people inflamed against him, or so real are the distrust and dislike which his rancorous invective has excited -it is not for us to choose between the alternatives-that all over the country, save in a small group of seats in South Ulster and North Leinster, his adherents were hunted from the constituencies. To be his friend was to court defeat, to be his relative ensured destruction. In Donegal Mr. Arthur O'Connor, perhaps the most valuable representative as a private member of the House of Commons in the whole Nationalist party, was rejected by a large majority, after fifteen years' unbroken tenure of his seat, for no other offence than his espousal of Mr. Healy's cause. In Mayo Mr. W. M. Murphy, a former member for Dublin, and a man of considerable eminence in the industrial and financial world, was rejected for no better reason than that Mr. Healy supported him. While in Cork City Mr. Maurice Healy, who had actually been Mr. O'Brien's colleague at the General Election of 1892 in their then successful struggle against Mr. Redmond's attempt to carry the southern city for the Parnellites, and who is himself a man of ability and vigour, was defeated by the crushing majority of 2,500 votes. In Wexford another brother suffered almost as decisive, though scarcely so dramatic, a defeat. The author of God 'save Ireland, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, who is also closely connected with the member for Louth, found that even to have been the laureate of Nationalism was no sufficient apology; and the maker of the people's ballads is no longer to have any share in making the people's laws. Mr. Healy is therefore in a position of almost total isolation, and the victory of Mr. O'Brien is complete.

There is, however, one important limitation to Mr. O'Brien's triumph and to that unfettered control which is usually exercised by Irish leaders in the era of their temporary predominance. The priesthood is not unanimous.

VOL. CXCIII. NO. CCCXCV.

R

Mr. O'Brien has, indeed, secured the valuable patronage of Archbishop Walsh, who has subscribed to the parliamentary funds. But Mr. Healy still appears to enjoy a large share of clerical confidence. At the Louth election he was able to produce a certificate in his favour from no less a personage than Cardinal Logue, the head of the Irish hierarchy, if not its most powerful personality; and his adherents everywhere enjoyed a substantial share of clerical patronage. Whether this circumstance is due to a real preference for Mr. Healy, inspired by a perception of his superior parliamentary capacity, or is the result of a calculated policy dictated by the dislike of the clergy to the unchecked predominance of a single faction, it is a curious feature in the situation, and one which may prove productive of important results.

For the present, however, Mr. O'Brien is at the helm; and the proceedings at what was grandiloquently designated the Irish National Convention, which assembled at the Rotunda in December, shows that he is determined to steer the ship. It is interesting, therefore, to recall his qualifications for the post, and, besides considering what use he is likely to make of his power, to note the illustration which his success affords of the temper of the people who have acquiesced in his assumption of the leadership. Frankly we cannot but regard the rehabilitation of Mr. O'Brien in popular confidence as a thoroughly unsatisfactory sign of the times. We do not at all mean by this that his leadership is likely to be more successful or more enduring than that of any of his colleagues would be. We mean simply that it is disappointing as an evidence of the practical sense of the Irish people. Mr. O'Brien is not a bit a more dangerous leader from the point of view of the English connexion than Mr. Healy or Mr. Davitt or Mr. Dillon would be; probably he is less dangerous. But he certainly bears a record which in any other country would have barred his path to power. He was, indeed, one of the most active members of the Parnellite party in the height of the Home Rule agitation and the heyday of Parnell's movement. Every one remembers the grotesque incidents with which his name is inseparably connected in the days of Mr. Arthur Balfour's Irish Secretaryship; his action against Lord Salisbury and its sequel, and the Hudibrastic tragedy of Tullamore. These, however, were episodes in the struggle against the forces of the British Government which was then maintained in Ireland, which, upon Irish principles, fully entitled Mr. O'Brien to his meed of popular applause. It is otherwise

with his connexion with the Plan of Campaign, particularly in its application to Mr. Smith Barry's estate at Tipperary. That was a proceeding so absolutely fatal to the unfortunate persons most directly concerned, and the policy which resulted in the ruin of so many thriving tenants was so universally attributed to Mr. O'Brien's persistence, that it is really difficult to understand the temperament which condones so real and material an injury, and which raises to the most influential position in Irish politics a personage who seven years ago appeared to have retired into private life in a blaze of derision.

That an agitator pure and simple should have thus come to the front is matter for regret from the point of view from which we have been speaking. We do not know that it is nearly so regrettable from a party standpoint, still less from that of those charged with the duty of vindicating the reign of law in Ireland. It is not difficult to imagine leaders more adroit than Mr. O'Brien, even if he listens to the tactful counsel of his nominal leader; and if, as may be inferred from the proceedings of the National Convention in Dublin, and of the United Irish League in the country, the Irish people are prepared to enter afresh on a campaign ostensibly constitutional, but working through a machinery of illegality, it is as well that there should be no room for doubt as to the real character of the agitation.

And on this point there is certainly no room for doubt. That the United Irish League, which was founded by Mr. William O'Brien in conjunction with Mr. Michael Davitt, himself the founder of the old Land League more than twenty years back, is in truth the representative of the agrarian and political organisations which between them formed the machinery of the Separatist movement under Mr. Parnell, is a proposition which scarcely needs to be established, since its promoters would be the last to deny it. It is the lineal descendant of the old Land League. It was first formed, indeed, in the days of the Irish National Federation, the anti-Parnellite successor to the National League, for objects purely agrarian. Its operations were then understood to be confined to the west of Ireland, where it aimed at increasing the holdings of the cottiers of Connaught by the subdivision among them of the large grazing runs which are the most profitable form of agricultural enterprise in that province. The graziers were not prepared for voluntary and uncompensated extinction, to make room for what Mr. O'Brien- in an hyperbole positively