Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/331

Parnell .' Hitherto the fenians had refused all association with merely parliamentary agitators. Addressing a meeting of extreme nationalists at New York on 13 Oct. 1878, Mr. Davitt, while expressing sympathy with the suspicions attaching to all members of parliament in the eyes of the fenians, suggested that the obstructionist party led by Parnell was of a different calibre from Butt and Butt's predecessors. 'They are,' he said, 'young and talented Irishmen, who are possessed of courage and persistency, and do what they can to assist Ireland.' Mr. Devoy followed, and explicitly recommended the revolutionists to join in constitutionial agitation for their own ends. They should enter into the public life of the country; they should seek to influence the parliamentary, municipal, and poor-law elections, and thus gain the confidence of the whole people.

This policy, known as 'the new departure,' was more fully defined in terms which were telegraphed to Dublin, and published in the nationalists' newspaper, the 'Freeman's Joumal,’ on 11 Dec. 1878. Parnell was promised the support of the Clan-na-Gael in America, and of its agents in Ireland, on five conditions: a general declaration in favour of self-government was to be substituted for 'the federal demand;' the land question was to be vigorously agitated on the 'basis of a peasant proprietary;' sectarian issues were to be excluded from the platform; Irish members of parliament were invariably to vote together, were to pursue an aggresive policy, and were to resist coercive legislation; finally, they were to advocate the cause of all struggling nationalities in the British Empire and elsewhere. Although Parnell had, on 27 Sept. 1879, announced himself as a federalist, he had little hesitation in accepting these terms as a basis of alliance between himself and the fenians in America. The alliance accorded with his ambition to unite Irishmen all over the world, and to mass all organisations, revolutionist and constitutional, in combination against 'the common enemy.' But a very small section of the Clan-na-Gael proved ready to ratify the compact, and he had to bring his personal powers of persuasion to bear on the fenian chiefs before the suggested union could be rendered effective.

Early in 1878 Mr. Devoy and Mr. Davitt arrived in Europe. The former, after making vain efforts to induce the directory of the Irish Republican Brotherhood at Paris to support his plans, joined Mr. Davitt in Ireland. There for the first time Mr. Devoy met Parnell, and discussed 'the new departure' in detail. At the moment a partial famine was causing acute distress among the farming population. The opportunity was presented of creating an agrarian imitation on a large scale, and of thereby furthering the cause of union between constitutionalists and revolutionists under Parnell's direct auspices.

In the early months of 1879 Mr, Davitt and Mr. Devoy visited Mayo, where the fenian organisations were strong in Ireland, and where there was much agrarian distress. They addressed meetings on the injustice of existing land laws. On 7 June 1879, at Westport, co. Mayo, Parnell for the first time publicly Joined Mr. Davitt in the work. A meeting had been convened with a view to recommending the new policy to the fenians; it had been denounced beforehand by the archbishop of Tuam in a published letter as likely to encourage secret societies whose object was outrage. Parnell attended and moved a resolution declaring the necessity of a sweeping readjustment of the land laws in the interest of the tenant. Although he had felt some scruples in grafting on the national movement any merely agrarian question, he had carefully considered the conditions of Irish land tenure, and had come to the conclusion that the best solution would be found in the purchase of the land by the tenants. In February 1877 he had vainly introduced the Irish Church Act Amendment Bill, with the object of facilitating the purchase of their holdings by the tenants of the disestablished Irish church. 'You must show the landlords,' he now told the Westport tenants, 'that you intend to hold a firm grip on your homesteads and lands.' 'A good land bill, the planting of the people in the soil,' would be followed, he foretold, by an Irish parliament. On the same platform Mr. Davitt congratulated Parnell on his success 'in blocking the machinery of the English House of Commons.' The meeting was deemed satisfactory by the section of the Clan-na-Gael leaders favourable to the new policy. On 16 Aug. 1879, after the ground had been thus cleared, a society called 'The National Land League for Mayo' was formed at a convention held at Castlebar; it was based on a declaration that 'the land of Ireland belonged to the people,' but the principle of compensation to the landlords was admitted.

Parnell seemed at first reluctant to extend the land movement to the whole of Ireland, but he was easily convinced of the necessity. In October 1879 the National Land League of Ireland was founded at a convention in Dublin, and Parnell was chosen president. The league announced the two-fold aim of bringing about a reduction of