PARNELL CHARLES STEWART Autograph Manuscript Signed draft of

Sale 2376 - Lot 72

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Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000

A DEFIANT PARNELL APPEALS TO IRISH-AMERICANS FOR SUPPORT PARNELL, CHARLES STEWART. Autograph Manuscript Signed, draft of his "To the Irish People of America," with numerous emendations throughout, beginning "Fellow Countrymen, In 1880 and subsequent years you assisted me . . . to create the great movement of the Land League and to found an independ[e]nt Irish Parliamentary Party." 1 3/4 pages, folio, written on the first and terminal pages of a single folded sheet; mounted to a larger board with marked brittling overall, 3-inch tear at upper edge with minor loss, band of moderate toning along center vertical fold (but text still legible). (TFC) Np, [March 1891]

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". . . At the instant when victory seemed near and certain, the hasty & meddlesome interference of English politicians in the complete organization of our Party and movement, aided by a panic amongst some young and new recruits, and eagerly seconded by a few mal-contents [sic] office-seekers and envious persons who had crept into our ranks, has temporarily destroyed the unity of our forces . . . .
"It now becomes my task to restore unity and reconstruct our movement . . . . Fortune has revealed the danger and given space for this reconstitution before the general election, and the disclosure thus brought about of the insufficiency of Mrs. Gladstone's proposed solution to secure the legitimate liberty happiness and prosperity of your brothers and sisters in Ireland was also timely and all important. . . . With a confidence even greater than in 1880 I appeal to you once more to assist me in quelling this mutiny and disloyalty to Ireland . . . even though it be our last effort to win the freedom, and prosperity of our Nation by Constitutional means."
Parnell (1846-1891) founded the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1874 and helped build the Anglo-American movement advocating Irish home rule. The coherence of his party dissipated when, in November 1890, Parnell's adultery became public after Captain William O'Shea sued for divorce. After this revelation, William Gladstone, with whose Liberal party Parnell had formed an alliance, declared that Parnell should depart from the IPP. This he declined to do. On March 14, 1891, the New York Times published an editorial critical of Parnell's manifesto, recently transmitted by cable, entitled "To the Irish People of America," especially its characterizations of dissent within the party as "mutiny" and of Gladstone's Home Rule bill as insufficient.