no books-he had by nature no gift of eloquence, and broke down miserably in his first public speech. He was the last man in the world likely to attract Irish popular enthusiasm-he was an aristocrat and a Protestant—he had an exaggerated pride in the Parnell name and history-he was full of superstitions. He despised his band of clever lieutenants, 'sweeps and guttersnipes' he called them, but he was a great personality—he knew his own mind-he had an inflexible will, indomitable courage, and tenacity; above all, he had a deadly hatred of England. What made this strange man espouse the cause of the Irish tenant? It always was and always will be a mystery. Did he use the Irish situation as a weapon for the punishment of hated England, as Dean Swift to some extent had done before him? He joined himself to another strange performer-Joseph Biggar, the Ulster Republican, who like himself had an unbounded contempt and hatred for everything that was English. By shameless obstruction they broke down all the conventions and rules of the House of Commons. When Butt protested he rang his own death knell in Ireland, for Irish sympathy was all with the Parliamentary anarchists. Down to the year 1879, however, Parnell had not made much progress in Ireland; but in that year Davitt, a real democrat, following the principles of confiscation started by Fintan Lawlor, threw the land into the scale. The appeal to greed has always been more effective in Ireland than the appeal to patriotism. The bad harvests 1877-79 played into their hands; a large number of tenants were unable to pay their rents, a still larger number took advantage of the situation to keep their rents in their pockets. The landlords were by no means well advised, and the end of the matter was that this strange aristocrat, the very contrary of O'Connell, wielded all the power once possessed by the great demagogue, and the long struggle went on. Fortune was always on the side of Parnell till the final catastrophe, not least when the blunder of holding a State trial in Dublin was committed. Only once did he receive a staggering blow, caused by the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr Burke in 1882. When this happened he was on the point of throwing up the whole game, for he must have known that his never-ending

incitements to hatred produced the atmosphere in which the Invincibles acted.

The next stage in his career was his long contest with the 'Times' newspaper. He had very little interest in the matter, he cared nothing whatever for British opinion on the question of his guilt or innocence, but after the discovery of the Piggott forgeries he was raised to the highest pinnacle of distinction. The demonstration in the House of Commons to celebrate his victory in the great contest he treated with open contempt, for he cared as little for their admiration as for their condemnation, but throughout he played his game skilfully with the ambitions of the two great parties, and came in contact with all the leading politicians of the time-Gladstone, Morley, Chamberlain, Randolph Churchill, and Carnarvon. He used them all for his own purposes; he used Chamberlain to get rid of W. E. Forster, a representative of true British integrity, who was a great inconvenience to him; he used Churchill to get rid of Lord Spencer; Carnarvon to stimulate Gladstone-every one seemed to fall under his spell. There was only one great obstacle in his path, which he never made light of the cold steel of Ulster, which he could neither bend nor break. He never exhibited any hatred against them, and no doubt admired their dour determination and will power as inflexible as his own. He kept his supporters, many of whom hated him, subservient to his imperious authority. He was the master of their souls and was contemptuous of their feelings. Was there ever such a scene, as when in a Dublin hotel he cut short the eloquence of the presentation Committee, took the big cheque from the Lord Mayor, and put it in his pocket without a word of thanks? He appeared and disappeared when he chose, giving no explanation to anybody, but the fickle goddess who had always befriended him, was waiting to destroy him at the last. He marched to his final doom fearless, contemptuous, and defiant. A more amazing drama was never acted in any country. When the master hand was gone, the Irish party drifted about helplessly for many years, until at last, when the walls of the British Constitution had been broken down to admit the Wooden Horse, Home Rule of some kind became a certainty.

Sir James O'Connor takes us rapidly to the rebellion of 1916. No portion of this remarkable book is more vivid than the chapter describing this event. The sun as it rose on Easter Monday looked down upon a peaceful, prosperous, and apparently happy Ireland, protected by the British fleet against the ravages of the war that was devastating the homes of other countries. Ireland's contribution of men from North and South was purely voluntary, there was plenty of money and plenty of food, all the industries were flourishingagriculture, shipbuilding, linen, and tobacco. No country in proportion to its population was so wealthy. Imports and exports came to 200,000,000l. each way, there was no unemployment. The system of primary education was adequate; the long demanded Catholic University had been set up; Local Government was in the hands of the people; Ireland had got the benefit of all the beneficent legislation passed at Westminster: the Factory Acts; the Children's Act; the Housing Acts; the Workmen's Compensation Acts; the National Insurance Act; the Old Age Pensions Acts; and the Labourers Act, under which 50,000 labourers were in occupation of comfortable cottages with an acre or half an acre of land attached at rents from 10d. to 1s. 6d. a week. The legal and medical professions and the Civil Service of the Empire were open to every Irishman. Two and a half millions of Irish Roman Catholics had their homes in Great Britain. A Home Rule Act was on the Statute Book. None of the men of '98 or of '48 could have dreamed of such a paradise. The sun as it set on that fatal day saw Ireland in the throes of a German-aided rebellion, and the results were-the conversion of this fair land into a slaughter-house, degradation and demoralisation of the people, anarchy and permanent loss of character.

The suppression of the rebellion by Sir John Maxwell was not a matter of any great difficulty, but the injury to the public and private buildings was immense. The huge cost of compensation was ultimately borne for the most part by the British Government. At first no doubt the sympathy of the populace was against the rebels and with the troops, but later it veered round in a very marked way. An unfortunate event, which took place in September 1917, gave an enormous fillip to the Sinn

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Fein movement. Thomas Ashe, a National school teacher, who in 1916 had successfully ambushed a party of constabulary at Ashbourne, in which the County inspector and a considerable number of his men were killed, had been sentenced to death, but was reprieved. When the amnesty came he was released, whereupon he began again to take part in seditious movements. He was then re-arrested and sent to Mountjoy prison, where he went on hunger strike. The prison authorities to save his life had him forcibly fed, which in some way affected his heart, and he died a few hours after the food had been administered. An inquest was held, and furious attacks were made on the Government, on Mr Max Greene, John Redmond's son-in-law, and on the prison doctor. Ashe's body lay in state in the City Hall, and the funeral that followed, headed by a Roman Catholic Bishop and a hundred priests, was enormous. people were told that the Government had murdered Ashe, and the popular indignation became intense. James O'Connor regards the Ashe affair as one of primary importance in the history of the revolution. Prior to that event the Bishops had frowned on Sinn Fein, but from that time he thinks it received its full quota of the grace of Ecclesiastical sanction. Then followed the socalled Anglo-Irish war, which consisted in the systematic murder of the members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Notwithstanding this terrible form of attack, the discipline of the famous Irish force kept the men steady for a time, but when combined with this, their families and relatives all over the country were terrorised and persecuted, the line began to give way. No time or place was sacred to win sanctuary from the gun-men. The book gives a moving description of the Roman Catholic Benediction service. After this was given in a Tipperary village on St Patrick's Day 1917, two local policemen who attended it, on leaving had barely got beyond the porch when they fell dead riddled with bullets. The shooting of policemen, armed and unarmed, on duty and off duty, by night or day, went on, and no person was ever made amenable. Then the policy advanced to a further stage-the shooting of civilians engaged in Government service-the shooting of persons suspected of giving information, and the intimidation of UNIVERSITY MARY

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the Press and of the people. These acts of violence were followed by attacks on outlying police barracks-destruction of property and general espionage. The attempted murder of Lord French startled the whole world. Flying columns of rebels began to operate all over the country, and as no discipline could stand the strain on the police, the Government decided to reinforce them by bringing over officers and men of the British army-the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries. The book denounces in unmeasured language the proceedings of these forces, but the unaccustomed method of fighting adopted against them was almost enough to unhinge the minds of any men. It was a strange experiment made in the strangest of times, but that should have led the authorities to insist that the control of the force should have been of the strictest character, and it certainly was not, as the men frequently got out of hand. At length the weary Government, on Dec. 6, 1921, signed the Treaty which has fundamentally altered the relations of these islands. Many were relieved at the news of the Treaty, but there was one great man to whom it was and is loathsome and horrible-Lord Carson. In dealing with him the book exhausts the language of eulogy. Sir James writes that his political success was not so much an intellectual success as a character success. His speeches were the reflexion of his own nature, simple, direct, honest. Finesse was not in his armoury, nor was expediency his polestar. Then follows a fine Tacitean phrase, 'he was a political success because he was not a politician at all.' Lord Carson's so-called treasonable action in the North meets with the writer's strongest condemnation. He asks how far Carson and his colleagues are to be held responsible for the 1916 rebellion. It is simply incredible that any person acquainted with the state of things in Ireland would believe, that if there had been no preparation for resistance in the Norththe German-instigated outbreak in 1916 would never have taken place. Treason felony it may have been according to law, but what was Ulster to do? It was proposed to expel her people out of the British system of freedom in which they had been born and to put them under the control of a hostile power. Was it morally wrong for them to say they would not recognise