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The machinery of the Irish parliamentary party, 1880-85

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Conor Cruise O’Brien
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Extract

The history of modern political parties is rich in examples of the law that a sharp change in the party line involves a tightening in party discipline, often including a structural re-organization. The Parnellite movement did not escape the operation of this law. The Kilmainham treaty, which marked the transmutation of Parnellism from a quasi-revolutionary movement into a completely constitutional one, could not have been implemented without a drastic subordination of the various branches of the movement to central control, i.e. the control of the parliamentary party itself. As the party had been reduced by secessions until it contained, for all practical purposes, no opponents of Parnell, this meant that the whole great movement of the ‘New Departure’, or what was left of it, was now to be steered, by the little group of Parnell’s lieutenants, out of land-agitation into the more or less peaceful ways of electioneering. It was not immediately necessary to tighten the internal organization of the party itself, partly because of the secessions and partly because its make-up was such that it was inclined to welcome rather than oppose shifts to the right. What was needed was to discipline the ‘peripheral organizations’, as they would now be called, one or two of which had in the past not merely acted independently of the parliamentarians but had exercised some control over them. Before going further with the description of how the party machine was perfected in the years following the Kilmainham treaty, it might be well, for the sake of clarity, to list these organizations and indicate briefly their relation to the parliamentary party in the immediate pre-Kilmainham era.

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Irish Historical Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 17 , March 1946 , pp. 55 - 85
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Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1946

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References

page no 56 note 1 Freeman’s Journals, 13 Mar. 1880.

page no 56 note 2 The advance had to be secret because of the resolution passed on the formation of the National Land League against using any Land League money for parliamentary purposes. Davitt, (Fall of feudalism in Ireland, p. 173)Google Scholar states that this resolution was a concession to extremist prejudices in the U.S.A. Parnell admitted before the Special Commission that he ‘did not approve of it at all’ but claimed that, in 1880, ‘Mr Egan took a large view of it and he met me and I think the resolution was rescinded and he gave me a cheque for £2000’ (Special commission act, 1888; reprint of the shorthand notes of the speeches, proceedings, and evidence taken before the commissioners appointed under the above named act (12 vols, 1890; hereafter cited as Special comm. proc.), vii. 27). I have been unable to find any corroboration of the statement that the resolution was rescinded.

page no 56 note 3 The branches were not supposed to take any part in electioneering, but there were ways of getting around this. The Tullow branch of the Land League, for instance, met, during the campaign, to hear the home rule candidate, E. D. Gray, deliver an address on the land question. When he had finished speaking the Rev Chairman moved ‘that the meeting of the Land League be now dissolved, the league having pledged themselves not to take part in the election, as a body. They could then resume as a meeting of electors and ratepayers’. They did this and the meeting then unanimously adopted Gray as home rule and tenant right candidate (F.J., 20 Mar. 1880).

page no 56 note 4 See Special comm. proc., vi. 276. The evidence given by Hardcastle, accountant, regarding the Land League bank accounts is, so far as I know, the only authoritative information now available on Land League finances. I applied to the banks concerned (the Hibernian Bank and the National Bank) for permission to examine these accounts, but this was refused in both cases. The books of the Land League are, of course, ‘missing’ since before 1888, and may perhaps be presumed destroyed.

page no 57 note 1 Balla branch of the Land League, and Westport Tenant Union (F.J., 12 Mar. 1880).

page no 57 note 2 F.J., 20 Mar. 1880.

page no 57 note 3 Davitt, op. cit., p. 163.

page no 57 note 4 An English member noted in his diary that the production of the accounts of the Land League should clear up ‘many little mysteries of hotel accommodation, first-class railway-travelling and unaccustomed suits of clothing’ ( SirLucy, Henry, A diary of two parliaments, 2. 314).Google Scholar These taunts were not altogether without foundation, at any rate as regards the travelling expenses (see below p. 73), but contemporaries were inclined to exaggerate the extent of the dole.

page no 58 note 1 I do not deal with the Ladies’ Land League, which played no part in the constitutional movement and therefore cannot be regarded as a ‘peripheral organization‘.

page no 58 note 2 Resolution 10, F.J., 22 Nov. 1873.

page no 58 note 3 F.J., 22 Nov. 1873.

page no 58 note 4 F.J., 20 Feb. 1874; Nation, 28 Feb. 1874. The council had consisted initially of 75 members (Nation, 27 Dec. 1873).

page no 59 note 1 Nation, 31 Jan. 1874.

page no 59 note 2 F.J., 22 Nov. 1873. This hope was not completely fulfilled. The league seems to have spent some money on the 1874 campaign and is said to have offered Parnell £300 to cover his election expenses in that year ( O’Shea, Katherine, Charles Stewart Parnell, 1. 128).Google Scholar

page no 59 note 3 During the 1880 campaign, Parnell, speaking at a Home Rule League meeting, deplored ‘the want of local preparations which somehow or other always seems to be one of our failings at times of crisis (F.J., Mar. 27). Many months later the council of the league attempted to remedy this defect, and issued a circular urging ‘the formation of local associations’. This suggestion collapsed under heavy fire from left and right ; Egan replied without delay for the Land League : ‘The country has outgrown the Home Rule League’ (F.J., 23 Nov. 1881). Shaw, on behalf of the whigs, was no less crushing : ‘The league, as at present constituted, is unfit to produce any effect on Irish opinion’ (F.J., 24 Dec. 1881).

page no 60 note 1 For example the council came out immediately after the Enniscorthy incident with a denunciation of ‘the sham nationalist’ O’Clery and his supporters (F.J., 31 Mar. 1880). Such a manifesto against the right-wing clerical party obviously sounded better from the league founded by Butt than it would have from the organization of Davitt and Egan.

page no 60 note 2 F.J., 25 Nov. 1882.

page no 60 note 3 Denvir, John, History of the Irish in Great Britain, p. 265.Google Scholar

page no 60 note 4 O’Donnell, F.H., A history of the Irish parliamnentary party, 1. 162.Google Scholar

page no 60 note 5 O’Brien, R.B., Life of Charles Stewart Parnell (cheap ed., London, 1910), p. 100.Google Scholar

page no 61 note 1 Almost all the young ‘English-Irish’ Parnellites returned in that election were members of the confederation.

page no 61 note 2 It had previously been merged in the ‘Land League of Great Britain’ (Davitt, op. cit., p. 227), but this does not seem to have amounted to more than a change of title. It was not until 1883 that its constitution was altered, in a ‘parliamentary’ sense (see below).

page no 61 note 3 F.J., Mar.-Apr. 1880.

page no 62 note 1 e.g., the Carlow Registration Association corresponded with local branches of the Land League in the matter of Gray’s candidature (F.J., 16 Mar. 1880).

page no 62 note 2 One or two such associations (e.g. the Queen’s County Independent Club) had resolved at an earlier date to ‘support the Home Rule League’ but no organizational nexus seems to have developed. In the 1874 election, a number of local ‘home rule associations’, presumably affiiliated to the Home Rule League, had taken part (at Middlesborough, Drogheda, Cavan (3 branches), and Wexford), but by 1880 the array seemed to have dwindled to the Edenderry Home Rule Club (F.J., Jan. 1874; Mar.- Apr. 1880).

page no 62 note 3 Some of them had developed quite a high degree of organization. The honorary secretary of the Carlow Registration Association, for instance, induced ‘the priests and lay members to form in their respective parishes local committees appointing a secretary to correspond with him’ (F.J. 15 Mar. 1880).

page no 62 note 4 The only one which retained a vigorous life was the Dublin Registration Association, which sent 140 delegates to the National League Convention in Dublin City on 16 November 1885 (F.J., 17 Nov. 1885).

page no 63 note 1 Conference at the Antient Concert Rooms, 17 Oct. 1882 (reported in F.J., 18 Oct. 1882).

page no 63 note 2 The county conventions were more important, electorally, than the council, since the power of selecting candidates was supposed to be vested in them.

page no 64 note 1 These figures are based on an analysis of the attendance at the 32 county conventions held during the general election campaign of 1885 (Oct.-Nov- 1885). The total attendance ranged from nearly 500 (Cork convention 12 Oct. 1885) down to a a mere 7 (Antrim convention, 18 Nov. 1885). The latter was merely a symbolic gathering which pledged itself ‘to support only the candidates recommended by Mr Parnell’.

page no 64 note 2 Healy, T.M., Letters and leaders of my day, 1. 230 :Google Scholar O’Connor, T.P., Memoirs of an old parliamentarian, 2. 14.Google Scholar As regards the caucus, see § 4 (b) below.

page no 65 note 1 O’Connor, T.P., Memoirs of an old parliamentarian, 2. 16.Google Scholar

page no 65 note 2 See, for instance, the account of the county Louth convention in Irish Times, 24 Nov. 1885.

page no 65 note 3 Letter in Irish Times, 6 Nov. 1885.

page no 66 note 1 Introduced at the Wicklow convention (F.J., 6 Oct. 1885). The most important rule was that relating to the party pledge (see § 4 (a) below).

page no 66 note 2 T. P. O’Connor, op. cit., ii. 15. This episode occurred in January 1885. O’Brien, William (Evening memories, p. 66)Google Scholar recalls that the party man was ‘rejected in the fury of a local war-dance’ and that Parnell ‘summoned a second convention to reconsider the decision’. The R.I.C. were professionally impressed by the ‘discipline’ shown in this episode (R. E. Beckerson to Lord Carnarvon, Report on the progress of the Irish National League, Jan.-June 1885, 5 July 1885, among unindexed papers in S.P.O., Dublin Castle).

page no 66 note 3 The American Land League followed suit ; a convention at Philadelphia in April 1883 turned the organization into the National League of America (Davitt, op. cit., p. 390).

page no 66 note 4 For its secondary purpose of ‘land law reform’ its branches, which were probably mostly revived branches of the Land League, seem to have shown undue zeal. On 29 Jan. 1886, Parnell informed Gladstone that he had sent the league secretary, Harrington, to Ireland ‘with directions to overhaul the doings of the branches of the National League and with power to dissolve any that will not keep within bounds’ (quoted in O’Shea, Katharine, Charles Stewart Parnell, 2. 33).Google Scholar The steps taken were of course occasioned by the tactical situation as regards home rule, but the wording of the communication rather suggests a mutinously agrarian disposition in the lower levels of the league. This disposition was only partially counteracted by the clause in the league constitution making all priests ex-officio members.

page no 67 note 1 Beckerson report, as above.

page no 67 note 2 Ibid.

page no 67 note 3 Beckerson report, 11, Jan.-June 1886.

page no 67 note 4 The secretary of the National League stated in an interview with Press representatives in Dec. 1885, that there were then 1600 National League branches in Ireland, with an average branch membership of 300 (F.J., 17 Dec. 1885). This estimate was probably exaggerated.

page no 67 note 5 Davitt, op. cit., p. 301.

page no 68 note 1 The phrase is Davitt’s (op. cit., p. 377).

page no 68 note 2 Special comm. proc., vi. 345 (Hardcastle’s evidence). The receipts for the ‘interregnal’ year 1882–3, were made up of £28,000 for the Land League and £6,000 for the National League. The ‘Land League period’ receipts include the receipts of the Land League and Ladies’ Land League, both for relief and organization, but do not include the state trials defence fund. The ‘National League’ receipts include the parliamentary fund and parliamentary expenses fund. But see note on pp. 83–5, below.

page no 68 note 3 Most of the Land League books were not available for inspection by the Parnell Commission in 1888. Counsel for The Times insinuated that they were deliberately held back or had been destroyed (Special comm. proc., i. 165). The Parnellites stated that they did not know what had become of them. J. E. Kenny swore that on the suppression of the Land League the books had passed into the possession of one W. F. Moloney, and that he knew nothing further (ibid.). Parnell believed that Patrick Egan might have taken some of them with him to America, but could give no definite information (ibid., vii. 250). Biggar professed complete ignorance of the whole subject (ibid., viii. 387).

page no 69 note 1 Ibid., vi. 280. From 1 July 1880 the relevant lodgment slips were not available.

page no 69 note 2 Op. cit., p. 713. He is probably including contributions to the defence fund.

page no 69 note 3 Special comm. proc., vi. 326.

page no 69 note 4 J. L. Hammond ascribes Parnell’s intransigence in the autumn of 1881 to the political influence of American money, and observes pertinently that ‘the funds that English parties could raise for their needs were subscribed secretly by private persons but Parnell had to depend on the open support of poor Irishmen on both sides of the Atlantic’ (Gladstone and the Irish nation, p. 243).

page no 69 note 5 He may have been emboldened to do this by the fact that the period of agitation had left a considerable cash residue. Egan, on his resignation from the post of treasurer of the Land League in October 1882, handed over a balance of over £30,000—mostly invested in American securities (F.J., 18 Oct- 1882: Davitt, op. cit., p. 373). This sum, known variously as the ‘trust-fund’ the ‘national fund‘ and the ‘Paris funds’ was now under Parnellite control.

page no 70 note 1 F.J., 4 Mar. 1874.

page no 70 note 2 O’Connor, T.P. (Parnell movement, p. 312)Google Scholar gives the amount as £1,250: ‘£1,000 of which he obtained as a personal loan, £100 sent from Liverpool and £150 .(from tory funds)’. O’Hara, M.M. (Chief and tribune, p. 127)Google Scholar makes it £1,350, computed in the same way but making the tory contribution £250. Neither adverts to the Land League contribution, but I am assuming that the ‘personal loan’ is a veiled, and inaccurate, reference to this.

page no 70 note 3 See § ι (a) above.

page no 70 note 4 Special comm. proc., vii, q. 54,485: ‘I was indebted to the Conservative Club at Cork for the expenses of my own return’ (Parnell). This tory contribution was made in the misguided belief that Parnell’s candidature would split the liberal vote and let a tory in.

page no 71 note 1 The average returned expenditure of Parnellites was about £300 (figure based on Return of election charges etc., 1880, H.C. 1880 (382) ).

page no 71 note 2 We know that T. M. Healy received £290 under this heading from the Land League during 1880 (Letters and leaders, pp. 95, 100).

page no 71 note 3 In Meath, for example, Bishop Nulty instituted a collection at all the churches to defray Parnell’s expenses (Redpath’s interview with Parnell, Nation, 2 Oct. 1880). In Clare, the Farmers’ Club advocated ‘voluntary contributions towards the expenses of the home rule candidates’ (F.J., 19 Mar. 1880). Such gestures were, however, rare.

page no 71 note 4 F.J., 10 Sept. 1881.

page no 71 note 5 Special Comm. proc., vi. 325 ff. (Hardcastle’s evidence). There were six by-elections during this period.

page no 72 note 1 £11,068 in 1883; £11,508 in 1884; £12,014 in 1885 (Special comm. proc., vi. 326).

page no 72 note 2 Parnell estimated that remittances first came ‘to any extent’ from America for the fund in June 1885 (Special comm. proc., x. 319). A parliamentary collection had been going on in America since the Philadelphian convention (8 Apr. 1883), but apparently met with little success (Special comm. proc., xi. 559). The earlier remittances were presumably sent to the National League. According to Timothy Harrington the bulk of the subscriptions for the parliamentary expenses fund came from America, and the campaign of 1885 cost about £15,000 (F.J., 17 Dec. 1885).

page no 72 note 3 Special comm. proc., ibid.

page no 72 note 4 Mr Henry Harrison, in a letter to the writer (29 June 1943) states that his own nomination (May 1880) was agreed to by Parnell on condition that he was to be ‘no charge on party funds’, and that, generally speaking, he believed that someone ‘rich as well as politically robust’ would be preferred if such a person could be found.

page no 73 note 1 Parnell’s evidence before the special commission is informative as regards the Land League’s role :

Attorney general: When did members first begin to be paid as a class?

Parnell : The end of 1885 after the general election … I should think there were very small casual payments made from the beginning, from 1880. Mr Egan perhaps would have made some very small payments but they were very small payments, because the Land League had deliberately adopted the policy of starving us all out.

He added that he thought any such allowances ‘would have been in the nature of travelling expenses’ (Special comm. proc., x. 319).

page no 73 note 2 It appears that the yield of these ‘Paris funds’ was used for ‘the current expenses of the National League and of the parliamentary party’ (Special comm. proc., x. 302—Parnell’s evidence). R. Barry O’Brien (op. cit., p. 361) quotes a letter of 15 Aug. 1885 from Parnell to McCarthy (co-trustee with Parnell and Biggar of the Paris funds) asking for a cheque for £100 in favour of a member whose ‘affairs are not in a good position ’. It seems probable also that Parnell made some payments to members out of his own money. The attorney general, cross-examining liim before the Special Commission, referred to payments, averaging £100, made out of his private account to eight members— O’Connor, T.P., Harris, Matt., McCarthy, Justin, O’Kelly, J.J., O’Brien, William, Sexton, Thomas, Redmond, J.E. and Biggar, J.G. (Special comm. proc., 7. 273).Google Scholar Some of these, though certainly not all, were probably subsidies. His brother, John Howard Parnell, states that ‘he had in many cases actually to keep’ members during this period (Charles Stewart Parnell, p. 280).

page no 73 note 3 Special comm. proc., vi (Hardcastle’s evidence).

page no 74 note 1 O’Connor, T P., Memoirs of an old parliamentarian, 2. 61.Google Scholar But see note on pp. 83–5, below.

page no 74 note 2 F.J., 19 Nov. 1873. It is ironical that the only ‘strong, national organization ’ capable of playing the role envisaged turned out to be not Butt’s Home Rule League, but Davitt’s Land League.

page no 74 note 3 The text of the amendment was : ‘We recommend that the Irish members shall, after the general election, form themselves into a permanent committee for the public discussion of every ministerial or other proposal which may affect the interests of Ireland ; that no individual representative shall introduce any bill or give notice of any motion of importance unless his proceeding shall be sanctioned and supported by such committees ; and finally that the Irish members shall always vote in a body or abstain from voting in all party divisions as the majority shall direct’ (F.J., 22 Nov. 1873).

page no 74 note 4 Ibid.

page no 75 note 1 F.J., 4 Mar. 1874.

page no 75 note 2 Ibid., 27 Apr. 1880.

page no 76 note 1 F.J., 28 Dec. 1880: Nation, 1 Jan. 1881.

page no 76 note 2 Ibid., 14 May 1881. The member who did this (E. D. Gray) had been responsible for the insertion of the ‘loophole’ clause in the pledge. He finally bowed to the will of the majority.

page no 76 note 3 ‘I attended the Dungarvan convention to select a member in the room of Blake. Here I drew up what became known as the “Party Pledge”’. P. J. Power took it and was chosen. In 1885 I improved the wording, and it became the standard test for nationalists at all elections’ ( Healy, T.M., Letters and leaders, 1. 205).Google Scholar Parnell had, however, forecast this pledge, almost in its perfected wording, months before (United Ireland, 29 Mar. 1884).

page no 76 note 4 At the Wicklow convention, the first in the general election campaign of 1885, Timothy Harrington read a code of rules of which the following was the sixth : ‘If the person proposed to be adopted as a candidate is in attendance upon the convention, or is within immediate reach, he shall be asked to subscribe, in presence of the convention, the pledge required by the Irish party. If he is not present and cannot be communicated with at once his proposer shall notify whether he has undertaken to give the pledge in question. In case the pledge is not subscribedin the presence of the convention, or a positive undertaking on behalf of the candidate is not given by the proposer, the motion shall not be put’ (F.J., 6 Oct. 1885).T his implementead resolutioxl passed at a meeting of the Irish party on 25 August 1885 (United Ireland, 29 Aug. 1885). The rules were accepted and enforced by the conventions.

page no 77 note 1 Text (from a specimen among the Davitt MSS) in Curtis, and McDowell, , Irish historical documents, p. 281.Google Scholar

page no 77 note 2 F.J., 4 Mar. 1874.

page no 77 note 3 Ibid., 28 Dec. 1880.

page no 78 note 1 F.J., 28 Dec. 1880.

page no 78 note 2 Healy, T.M., Letters and leaders, 1. 72.Google Scholar

page no 78 note 3 Years later, during the split, Parnell described his system. : Parnell’, says William O’Brien, ‘especially cautioned Dillon against having a committee associated with him in the management of the party’. ‘Get the advice’, he said, ‘of everybody whose advice is worth having—they are very few—and then do what you think best yourself’ ( O’Brien, William, An olive branch in Ireland and its history, p. 47).Google Scholar

page no 79 note 1 At the first sessional meeting after the Kilmainham treaty, on 19 Feb. 1883, the officers were re-elected but the general committee lapsed (Irish Times, 15 Feb. 1883).

page no 79 note 2 The committee who met at Morrison’s Hotel to select candidates for the 1880–5 election consisted generally of Parnell, Gray, Kenny, Sexton, O’Brien, O’Kelly, Harrington, Healy, Biggar and John Redmond (Healy, op. cit., i. 230). T. P. O’Connor used also to attend, when in Dublin (Memoirs of an old parliamentarian, ii. 14). All these were members of the caucus in a sense, but Biggar as an individualist, Redmond as a comparative stripling, and O’Connor and Gray, whose outside interests left them very little time for party manoeuvres, were not quite in the inner ring. Similar considerations apply to Dillon and McCarthy, at this period, although Mr Henry Harrison, in the letter from which I have quoted, gives ‘O’Brien, Healy, Dillon and Sexton’ as the principal managers of the constituencies for the period 1882–90. The following figures based on reports in the Freeman’s Journal for October and November 1885, show the ten members who showed most activity in the crucial campaign of that time, with the number of county conventions attended by each :—

The list corresponds as to eight names with the ‘Morrison’s Hotel committee’ as given by Healy. The two members mentioned by Healy who do not figure on the list—Kenny and Gray—attended, respectively, three conventions and one convention. Sullivan and Dillon, who figure in the list but are omitted by Healy, may well have been more active in the open campaign than in the committee work. Sullivan’s reputation was that of a hard and loyal worker rather than a leader, and in any case it is not likely that if he had been a member of the inner ring his name would have been omitted by Healy, his close relative and friend. As for Dillon, who had just returned to public life after an absence of over three years, it is probable that he was still in some degree suspect for his earlier tendency to pursue an independent policy.

page no 80 note 1 Cf. R. Barry O’Brien, op. cit., pp. 317, 415.

page no 80 note 2 Healy, especially, did this with gusto (cf. op. cit., i. 232). There was even some suspicion that he was collecting personal, rather than Parnellite ‘yes-men’ ( O’Connor, T.P., Memoirs of an old parliamentarian, 2. 105).Google Scholar From very early on, he had tended to exalt Parnell’s prestige for reasons of ‘power-politics’ (‘I regard it as almost a calamity that our political interests compel us to idolize this man in public’—Letter of Dec. 1879 quoted ibid., i. p. 78). He later looked back nostalgically to the power he had wielded in Parnell’s name when the latter was in Kilmainham (‘The discipline of the Irish party at this date was perfect. Everyone spoke or moved according to plan’, ibid., i. 152). The use by ‘the lieutenants’ of Parnell’s name as an instrumentum regni is commented on by Davitt (op. cit., p. 467).

page no 81 note 1 At an early stage a leader in the Nation had put the matter brutally : ‘Ireland cannot afford to have representatives of the “independent” pattern’ (July 1881).

page no 81 note 2 Ostrogorski’s full and detailed analysis (Democracy and the organization of political parties) of the development of party machinery in England shows that the liberal party in the great cities had become highly mechanised by the mid-seventies, on the model of the Schnadhorst-Chamberlain organization in Birmingham. The National Liberal Federation, based on such organizations, was not founded until 1877, i.e. four years after the foundation of the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain, so that Irishmen in England were, to say the least of it, not backward in this type of political mechanism. The type of machine finally adopted in Ireland seems to have been more powerful in its limited sphere than the liberal one. There were a number of ‘checks and balances’ against the power of the liberal executive in the ‘seventies and early’ eighties, e.g., the conflict between radical and whig, and especially the great power and prestige of some of the local organizations themselves. No Irish ‘county convention’ could stand up to Parnellite dictation in the way the liberal association of, say, Bradford or Liverpool could, if necessary, resist the liberal executive. Ostrogorski regarded it as a rare occurrence for the liberal central organization to bring ‘regular pressure to bear’ on a local association in favour of a candidate. The party pledge and the payment of the majority of members out of party funds also conferred powers on the Irish machine which were lacking in the English counterpart. Similarly in America, although party machinery had become very complex by this date, and considerable power was wielded by the congressional campaign committees of the major parties, conditions did not permit of anything like the Irish degree of centralization. On the whole the comment of the Irish Times (2 Oct. 1885) on the working of the convention system seems justified : ‘This process of finding a parliamentary representation is unique. There has not been anything like it’. To-day, of course, this type of organization is usual among effective political parties, but the central headquarters possess a recognised right of veto over the local selections which, no doubt, renders unnecessary the ingenious devices of the old parliamentarians.

page no 83 note 1 The sources which I have been able to use for this article are limited both in number and in usefulness. The most important contemporary records such as minute-books and accounts are not, so far as I can ascertain, available. Mr Stephen Gwynn, in a letter to me of 14 October 1943 expressed doubt as to whether the party kept any regular minutes during the period; neither he nor Mr Henry Harrison, although both of them were very kind in supplying information, could give me any clue as to the existence of such records. An attempt to investigate the party’s bank accounts proved equally unavailing; the authorities of the National Bank and of the Hibernian Bank, in the possession of which are the accounts of- the party and of the National League, both regretted that they were unable to grant me permission to inspect these accounts. Nor was permission to inspect the Dillon papers, which might shed some light on the working of the party machine in the years 1880–2, forthcoming, as these papers have not yet been catalogued. In the circumstances I have had to rely almost entirely on the newspapers, in particular the Freeman’s Journal, which gave much fuller party news than the other dailies, on memoirs of party members and on the evidence given before the Parnell commission. The principal secondary works (other than biographies) dealing with this period of the Parnellite movement are : McDonagh, Michael, Home rule movement (1920)Google Scholar; McCarthy, Michael J.F., The Irish revolution (1912)Google Scholar; Palmer, N.D., The Irish Land League crisis (Yale, 1940).Google Scholar None of these sheds any direct light on the subject of this article. O’Donnell’s, F.H. A history of the Irish parliamentary party (2 vols., 1910)Google Scholar has some shrewd comments on the machine, but his account is distorted by personal and political bitterness.