In January 1886 I returned to Europe, and going on a visit into Yorkshire, there met a prominent Irish Nationalist, who told me that he had come into the north of England expressly to regiment the Irish voters, and throw their votes for the Conservative candidates, on the ground that it was necessary to make the Liberals fully understand their power.  He had fully expected in this way to elect a Conservative member for the city of York.  Great was his chagrin, therefore, when he found the Liberal candidate returned.  Upon investigation he discovered, as he told me, that the catastrophe was due to the activity of a local Irish priest, who was a devoted Fenian, utterly opposed to the Parliamentary programme, and who had exerted his authority over the local Irish to bring them to the polls for the Liberal candidate.

Sir Frederick Milner, Bart., the defeated Conservative candidate for York, afterwards told me that the local priest referred to here was a most excellent man, and that so far from playing the part thus ascribed to him, he took the trouble, as a matter of fair dealing, to see his parishioners on the morning of the election and warn them against believing a pamphlet which was sedulously circulated among the Irish voters on the night before the polling, with a message to the effect that Sir Frederick despised the Irish, and wanted nothing to do with them or their votes.  Sir Frederick has no doubt, from his knowledge of what occurred during the canvass, that direct instructions were sent by Mr. Parnell or his agents to the Irish voters in York to throw their votes against the Radical candidates.  These latter brought down a Home Rule lecturer to counteract the effect of these instructions, and the pamphlet above referred to was an eleventh-hour blow in the same interest.  It was successful; the Irish votes, some 500 in number, being polled early in the morning under the impression produced by it.  The moral of this incident would seem to be, not that there was any real understanding in 1885 between the Parnellites and the English Conservatives at all, but simply that the English Radical wirepullers are more alert and active than either the Irish Parnellites or the English Conservatives.  It is interesting, too, as it illustrates the deep dread and distrust of the “Fenians” in which the Parnellites habitually go.

NOTE E.

THE “BOYCOTT” AT MILTOWN-MALBAY.

(Vol. i. p. 209.)

Father White of Miltown-Malbay, taking exception to the statement made by me, upon the authority of Colonel Turner, that he was “the moving spirit” of the local “boycott” of policemen and soldiers at that place, addressed a note to Colonel Turner on the 5th of September, in which he desired to know whether Colonel Turner, had given me grounds for making this statement.  To this note Colonel Turner tells me he returned at once the following reply, which he kindly forwards to me for publication:—­