classes, when he had ascertained their perfect sincerity, his instructions would be gratuitous, or formed upon such a scale as should conduce to their temporal and eternal interests." Some time later I read a report of the "Conditional Immortality Association," where the Doctor was surrounded by zealous supporters; but he failed somehow, I suppose, to practice "the inexorable Scriptural conditions," for two or three years later I read of his death in the newspapers.
Soon after my arrival in Ireland, my old friends, the leading priests of the Tenant League, renewed their request that I would go into Parliament. I went on a visit to Father Peter O'Reilly, at Kingscourt, and he gathered our old comrades around us. I was informed that Mr. Ennis, one of the members for Meath, was willing to resign his seat in my favour. I told them my objection to Butt's policy, but they thought that an additional reason for adopting their proposal: it was only in Parliament I could watch effectually over the safety of the Irish cause, and if Mr. Butt, who was in ill-health, died, the cause might be lost for want of a leader. It was proposed that I should be invited to a public dinner, and a requisition be presented to me in two or three months from the date of our Conference. These proposals naturally reached the League, and Mr. Butt was extremely unwilling that I should come into Parliament without joining that body. After I left Ireland certain Irish members employed themselves in alarming my friends with the disastrous consequences of an election in which the League was ignored. The Kingscourt priests wrote me a generous and sympathetic letter, arguing that I should meet this difficulty by consenting to join the League, and accept its programme.[1] They described the success which had attended the movement, the change from long apathy to hope and enthusiasm, and the good which they believed I could effect by falling in with the will of the people. And they added that Mr. Ennis, having been elected to support the League, now considered himself prohibited from resigning in favour of any candidate who would not do the same. It was hard to resist such an appeal, but it had
- ↑ This letter was signed by Father Peter O'Reilly and Father Tormey, with the concurrence of Father Tom O'Shea, of Callan, to whom it was submitted.
