MR. JOHN MARTIN.
THE House of Commons had been already advised that in the new philo-Fenian Member for Meath it would not encounter a mere rhetorical rowdy of the kind which is not uncommon as yet in Irish politics, nor absolutely extinct even in the Irish representation ; but as mild a mannered man as ever tried to set the Liffey on fire, one who could be eminently rational in mode even when wrong-headed in matter of fact, and whose style of speech, showing no trace of the poetic ardour and finish of Young Ireland, is essentially prosaic, and even dis- posed occasionally to become prosy. The House of Commons accordingly heard Mr. Martin with almost but not quite as much attention as it paid to his predecessor, Mr. Frederick Lucas, when the county of Meath twenty years ago discarded with contumely the veteran Repealer Henry Grattan, son of the great Grattan, and sent as its representative a converted Quaker and an Englishman to plead in the anti-diluvian days of Lord Aberdeen for the repeal of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, the abolition of the Protestant Church Establishment, and the somewhat meagre measure of Tenant Right contained in Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill. Mr. Martin certainly spoke with a degree of candour and sincerity that may be not unfairly described as refreshing. The Irish Liberal member generally does not produce that impression on the House, when he produces any impression at all, which is of late rarely. He too often seems to be trying to smother his memory of the tremendous pledges of the hustings in the cloudiest verbiage of Parliamentary formalism, and so produces a certain eminently uncandid effect, as if
he spoke with his tongue in his cheek. But Mr. Martin is a man of at least transparent veracity,—a man of a narrow groove, it may be, but in that absolutely open and straightforward. He is also evidently a man of culture, who has derived no inconsiderable amount of sweetness and light from books and travel. This deserves to be especially noted, as some of the younger Irish Members appear to be decidedly deficient in such elements, and in those respects at least, are a deterioration, even from Mr. O'Oonnell's " tail," and "the Pope's Brass Band" of 1851. But Mr. Martin's style, even when most earnest, has, to a marked degree, the monotonous earnestness of the Presbyterian pulpit ; and he appears to have but one stock argument, which, after all, is only an assertion, that it is the inalienable right of the Queen, Lords, and Commons of Ireland to make laws for the people of Ireland.
This argument can hardly be said to found itself in the nature of things ; nor is it one which Mr. Martin himself has always regarded with implicit reverence. Quite the contrary. In 1848, Mr. Martin belonged to what might be not inac- curately described as the Red Republican section of the Young Ireland party. This section was headed by Mr. Mitchel. As was David to Jonathan, and as was Box to Cox, so was Mr. John Mitchel to Mr. John Martin. When Mr. Mitchel was transported to Bermuda, and his journal the United I rishnzan suppressed under the Treason Felony Act, Mr. Martin founded the Irish Felon. The political doctrines of the Irish Felon were republican and communistic. Not merely the connection -with England by the Union, but the antecedent political con- stitution of Ireland were spoken of with unmitigated contempt, and the confiscation of all property in land advocated as a necessary act of revolution. In one or other of these journals at this time appeared a ballad, which it was felt by the mob summed up the whole case as ballads only can, and which was as popular in the Confederate Clubs of Dublin as Lillibullero was among the Williamites after the battle of the Boyne. It began :—
"The Constitution of '82, Didderum doo, didderum doo !"
And all its efficacy lay in the profane refrain of these two lines. Mr. Smith O'Brien, Mr. Gavan Duffy, Mr. Meagher, Mr. D'Arcy McGee, Mr. O'Gorman, the ablest and most respected leaders of the National party, held as long as they could to the platform of the Constitution of '82; but the truth due to history compels us to record that Mr. Mitchel and Mr. Martin did their utmost to ostracize that Constitution with irreverent cries of " Didderum deo! " To talk of it as sacred and, above all, inalienable now-a-days, is a serious blunder of memory on the part of Mr. Martin.
There is hardly anything more bewildering in the study of political symptoms than an Irish election, such an election, for example, as Mr. Martin's for Meath, or O'Donovan Rossa's for Tipperary. It may be remembered that Mr. Martin, before he stood for Meath, was a candidate for the representa- tion of the county of Longford. The priests and people of Longford always had the reputation of being ardent Repealers, but when Mr. Martin appealed to them he found that they vastly preferred a young Guardsman ready to vote and to fight, if need be, in defence of the Union. To whom is the Union so all-important as it is to a family like the Grevilles, with a brand-new British peerage and fine old Irish estates But the priests and people of Meath, who shortly afterwards returned Mr. Martin without any trouble, were certainly about the last men in Ireland who might have been expected so to distinguish themselves. Not merely had they in a strictly- conducted contest, in which the county was polled out, ousted Mr. Grattan in favour of Mr. Lucas ; but at such general elections as had since occurred, and on other public occasions, their proclaimed politics had been of a decidedly Conservative complexion. We have heard it said by one who is somewhat versed in the mysteries of Irish politics, that the real reason of Mr. Martin's election was that his opponent, Mr. Plunkett, was strongly supported by Cardinal Cullen. Powerful as that eminent dignitary is in regard to the nomination of Bishops, the same good fortune does not, it seems, attend his well- meant efforts to make Members of Parliament. His candi- dates are always treated with the greatest possible politeness and respect, but somehow or other, at the end of the election they find themselves at the bottom of the poll. So it was in this case certainly. An Ulster Presbyterian, a Repealer and rather more, was preferred by this exceed- ingly Catholic and rather Conservative constituency to an unexceptionable candidate, a scion of the most ancient family in Meath, which never changed the Roman faith, which gave it a martyr in the time of Charles IL, and gives it priests to the present day. This perplexes. But then it must be observed that the majority of the Meath electors did not take the trouble of polling. They did not care to vote either for the Cardinal's candidate or Mr. Butt's
candidate. Perhaps the provision of outside cars to bring them to the poll was inadequate. At all events, in Meath, as in Tipperary when O'Donovan Rossa was elected, the majority of the electors simply stayed at home and attended to agricul- ture. The Clare electors in 1828 did not stop to consider this vital question of cars, but camped in the streets and fields for days together, while O'Connell was conducting his celebrated contest. The different conduct of the great mass of the- Tipperary and Meath electors nowadays proves, notwithstand- ing the actual result in each case, that there is not much popular enthusiasm of an active and practical character to back the agitators of home rule, whenever they may be called upon to undertake the contest of constituencies on a really large scale.
The part that Mr. Martin proposed to himself to play in Parliament is already apparently played out ; and we are rather sorry for it. He seems to think it is his duty to enter Parliament in order to protest against its jurisdiction, and that he would not be justified even in allowing his name to be numbered in a division list. If Mr. Martin be right in prin- ciple, he ought not even to vote for the repeal of the Act of Union, if it were proposed to the House of Commons. His constituents, especially the Priests, are perhaps not at heart so dissatisfied with the Act which suspends the Habeas Corpus in some baronies of Meath. The rapid emigration, which is at present taking place, of certain very troublesome members of their congregations is, doubtless, far from disagreeable to them. But if Mr. Martin should carry out his sublime doc- trine of total abstinence in regard to some question in which they are really interested—the question of Denominational Education, for example, or some issue of foreign policy that may appear to afford a hope of restoring the Temporal Power of the Pope—then Meath will very probably consign Mr. John Martin to the same limbo that received Mr. Henry Grattan. It is not, we imagine, a constituency that will long submit to be represented by a mere political teetotaller, however amiable, intelligent, and incorruptible.
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