The effect of Mr. Gladstone’s speech of April 8, 1886, introducing his Home Rule Bill, upon the Irish in America was simply intoxicating.  They saw him, as in a vision, repeating for the benefit of Ireland at Dublin, on a grander scale, the impressive scene of his surrender in 1858 at Corfu of the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands to Greece.

Upon thousands also of Americans, interested more or less intelligently in British affairs, but neither familiar, nor caring to be, with the details of the political situation in Great Britain, this appearance of the British Premier, as the champion of Home Rule for Ireland, denouncing the “baseness and blackguardism” of Pitt and his accomplices, the framers of the Union of 1800, naturally produced a very profound impression.  What might be almost called a “tidal wave” of sympathy with the Irish National League, and with him as its ally, made itself felt throughout the United States.  Had I witnessed the drama from the far-off auditorium in New York, I might doubtless have shared the conviction of so many of my countrymen that we were about to behold the consummation tunefully anticipated so many years ago by John Quincy Adams, and—­

    “Proud of herself, victorious over fate,
     See Erin rise, an independent state.”

The moment seemed propitious for a resolute forward move in America of Mr. Henry George, and the other American believers in the doctrine of “the land for the people.”  It would have been more propitious had not the political managers of the Irish party, misapprehending to the last moment the drift of things in the British Parliament, and counting firmly upon a victory for Mr. Gladstone, either at Westminster or at the polls, insisted upon holding a great convention of the Irish in America at Chicago in August 1886.  A proposition to do this had been made in the spring of 1885, and put off, in judicious deference to the disgust which many independent Americans of both parties then felt at the course pursued by Mr. Parnell’s friends, Mr. Egan and Mr. Sullivan in 1884, when these leaders openly led the Irish with drums beating and green flags flying out of the Democratic into the Republican camp.

As it was, however, Mr. Gladstone having gone out of power a second time, on the second day of June in 1886, the non-parliamentary and real leader in Ireland of the Irish revolutionary movement, Mr. Davitt, came overtly to the front, and crossed the Atlantic to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm at the Convention appointed to be held in Chicago on the 18th of August.

In New York he found Mr. Henry George quietly preparing to put the emotions of the moment to profit at the municipal election which was to occur in that city in November, and Dr. M’Glynn more enamoured than ever of the doctrine of “the land for the people,” and more defiant than ever of the Propaganda and of his ecclesiastical superiors.  It was resolved that Mr. George should come forward as a candidate for the mayoralty in November, and Dr. M’Glynn determined to take the field in support of him.