Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/475

 divorce case. Next day the standing committee of the National League held its fortnightly meeting. Redmond, who had roused his friends, attended and was moved to the chair; and on his motion a resolution was carried, promising continued support to Parnell. Two days later Redmond with his brother and other stalwarts convened a public meeting in the Leinster Hall, at which similar resolutions were passed. On 25 November parliament assembled; by custom the Irish party met to choose a chairman for the session, and Parnell was re-elected unanimously. That afternoon Mr. Gladstone's letter was published which declared that the continuance of Parnell's leadership would render his own ‘almost a nullity’. In the split in the Irish party which followed, Redmond was Parnell's chief supporter, backing a principle rather than a person. He insisted on the need for absolute independence of British parties. If, he argued, at the bidding of any English statesman the Irish party reversed their previous resolution, their independence was gone. When death ended Parnell's career on 6 October 1891, Redmond inevitably became leader of the group which had followed him after the split. In these ten months the violence of faction had been so terrible that re-union was impossible. Resigning North Wexford, which had been his seat since the Redistribution Act of 1885, Redmond stood for Cork, which Parnell had represented since 1880. He was heavily beaten. Here and everywhere the decisive influence of the Catholic clergy was thrown as strongly against this devout Catholic as against his former leader. A few weeks later, however, a vacancy occurred in Waterford, and though Michael Davitt [q.v.] was made his opponent, Redmond was returned. This was the sole seat which the Parnellites captured, and when the general election came in June 1892 their party was reduced to nine. Yet from the opening of the first session of this parliament, Redmond ranked, by common consent, among the foremost debaters in the House. His position was indeed easier than that of the main body, since his was the more acceptable rôle of laying down what a Home Rule bill should be, theirs of considering what they could get. He was essentially at this time a partisan leader. Justin McCarthy [q.v.], chairman of the anti-Parnellites, wrote later: ‘Parnell's chief lieutenant had shown in the service of his chief an energy and passion which few of us expected of him, and was utterly unsparing of the men who maintained the other side of the controversy.’ Yet, though his group were by their position irresponsible, embittered by the campaign against them and especially by the part played in it by the clergy, Redmond himself avoided personal vilification and, moreover, never sank the statesman in the partisan. Thus in 1894 he served on the Childers commission on financial relations alongside of Mr. Sexton, one of his chief opponents. When the tories came into power (1895), and Sir Horace Plunkett put forward the proposal that Irish members should act together in the recess as a committee to advise on Irish affairs, Mr. McCarthy, for the anti-Parnellites, refused, but Redmond accepted and signed the report which led to the creation of an Irish department of agriculture in 1899. In 1897 when Mr. Gerald Balfour promised a local government measure, again the larger group refused to welcome the proposal, and again Redmond promised his support. He did not share the fear that Ireland's desire for Home Rule might be killed by minor concessions.

Meanwhile Ireland was sick of faction, and proposals for re-union were constantly under discussion. Ultimately the South African War united Irishmen in a common feeling; and at the opening of the session of 1900, Irish members assembled as one party for the first time since the split. Redmond was chosen to be chairman. It was a choice largely dictated by irreconcilable claims among the leaders of the larger group; and it was clearly laid down that he should be chairman of the party, not leader of the movement. Probably no one contemplated that he would be irremovable. He became so by sheer merit; above all, by total lack of jealousy. As chairman, he never sought to impose his will on the party; but he had an extraordinary gift for so presenting a case as to carry acceptance. He always thought very far ahead and in broad outline, giving to details their just value and no more. During the first years of his chairmanship, the star of George Wyndham [q.v.] was rising, and Redmond threw his whole weight behind the policy which resulted in land purchase; yet he did not allow himself or the party to be involved in the quarrel which arose between Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Dillon over the new measure. He was rewarded with a steadily growing warmth of support from Mr. Dillon; while Mr. Devlin, the one important figure who appeared in the parliamentary movement after Parnell's death, though coming from the anti-Parnellite wing, became more and more 449