The week at Chicago has been noisy,—first in preparations for
the Congress on Irish affairs, and then in the manipulation of them. The first great event was Congressman Finerty's speech of this day week, which greeted Mr. Davitt on his arrival, as a wet squib goes off detonating and sputtering before the hero of a fête. Mr. Finerty was extremely wroth with Mr. Parnell for professing to commit Ireland. to a final acceptance of Mr. Gladstone's terms, and denied that the Irish race could accept them as anything but a platform from which to wrest more. Mr. Davitt had to look very solemn and disgusted at this manifesto, but he protested feebly, and for the time Mr. Finerty had the best of the encounter. Later in the week, when the Irish deputies actually arrived, and Mr. Patrick Egan gave up the President's chair to Mr. John Fitzgerald, who was elected temporary chairman, the Parnellites recovered their ground, the formula on which the war party and the Parnellites fraternised being Mr. Egan's, " We are for Irish liberty, peacefully if we can, otherwise if we must." But what Irish liberty was, was not defined. Whether it involves Separation, repeal of the Union, a statutory Parliament, or only full representation at Westminster (which Ireland has at present), was too delicate a question to discuss. The mottoes round the hall of Congress were such as these :—" I am amazed at the deadness of English opinion to the blackguardism that befouls the history of the Union."—Gladstone. " Always keep hammering away at the Union."— Grattan. "Home-rule or —," the blank being a delicate attention to the newly professed pacific feelings of the Irish deputies, like the conven- tional blank between the two " d's " with which oaths are printed in respectable English works. "Much cry and little wool" would have been the fittest motto of all.
Previous page
