From the time we began to work together in the Home Rule movement I should say that Timothy Healy had not left his native place, Bantry, more than a couple of years.

He is related to the Sullivan family, the connection being still closer from the fact that his wife is a daughter of our veteran poet, T.D.  Sullivan, for whom I have always had the warmest admiration.

Like myself, Healy had a leaning towards journalism, and we had a common ground in our admiration of the “Nation” newspaper, not only the “Nation” of O’Connell and the Young Irelanders, but of the Sullivans.

Nothing, therefore, could be more congenial to him than to fill the post of London letter writer to that paper.

He made his mark at once, as being a worthy scholar of the “Nation” school, both past and present, and no one recognised this more quickly than Charles Stewart Parnell.  It was no doubt this appreciation that prompted the new Irish leader to ask Tim Healy to become his private secretary.

Parnell possessed in a remarkable degree a gift which was of great service to him during his political career as the successor of Isaac Butt.  This was the faculty of weighing up the special qualities of the various members of the Irish Party and using them accordingly.  Without attempting for a moment to underrate Parnell as a great leader of men, I must say that there were members of the Party far abler in many respects than he was, and, no doubt, in looking around for someone to supply the qualities in which he, himself, was wanting, he could see that Healy was the very man for his purpose.

When he was in America he wired to Tim offering him the post, which offer was at once accepted, and, in the shortest possible time, Parnell’s new secretary had crossed the Atlantic, and was by his side ready to be put in harness at once.  It was an excellent combination, and there can be no doubt but that, during the time that the connection existed between them, Parnell owed much towards the successful carrying on of the national struggle to his young secretary’s inspiration.

Michael Davitt, in his “Fall of Feudalism,” pays a high tribute to Healy’s splendid service in connection with Gladstone’s Land Act.  Undoubtedly his was the credit for what became known as the “Healy Clause,” which provided that no rent should be payable for land on improvements made by the tenant himself or his immediate predecessor.  Not only was this credit conceded to him of being the author of this clause by distinguished fellow-countrymen like Michael Davitt and Lord Russell of Killowen, but by Mr. Gladstone himself.

As I have referred to the opinions expressed on Healy in Michael Davitt’s book, perhaps I may be forgiven if I go out of my way somewhat in referring to another passage in the same book, in which he pays a well-deserved tribute to a noble Irishman, Patrick Ford, of the New York “Irish World,” with which, in common with Irish Nationalists the world over, I cordially agree.  There are some men whom you may never have seen in the flesh, but whom you feel, through correspondence with them and in other ways, that you know none the less thoroughly all the same.  Such a man is Patrick Ford.  It is nearly forty years since I first made his acquaintance, and the years that have passed have only increased my regard for him.