ssed 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.

VI.

We now come to close quarters.

Dr. Corrigan, as I have said, had become the Archbishop of New York in
October 1885. The Irish-American Convention met at Chicago, Mr. Davitt
dominating its proceedings by his courageous and outspoken support of
his defeated Parliamentary allies in England. The candidacy of Mr. Henry
George had