Читать книгу The Times Great Irish Lives: Obituaries of Ireland’s Finest - Charles Lysaght - Страница 15

SIR JOHN POPE HENNESSY

8 OCTOBER 1891

SIR JOHN POPE HENNESSY, M.P. for North Kilkenny, died early yesterday morning at his residence, Rostellan Castle, from heart failure. Sir John, who was 59 years of age, had been suffering from anaemia, which may be traced to his long residence in tropical climates.

The death of Sir John Pope Hennessy removes a man who might have played a more important part in politics had he been differently or less brilliantly gifted. In his qualities and talents, as in his defects, he was a typical Irishman. He was quick of wit, ready in repartee, a fluent speaker, and an able debater; but the enthusiasm and the emotion which lent force and fire to his speeches led him into the adoption of extreme and impracticable views. He was one of the most independent of private members in the House of Commons. He might fairly be described as eccentric and crotchety; and the Colonial Office had reason to mistrust a subordinate who, as it might be charitably presumed, with the best intentions, was always stirring up troubles abroad and landing his chiefs in hot water. In short, we must believe that Sir John Hennessy, with a super-abundance of brain, had an unfortunate deficiency of ballast. The son of a Kerry landowner, he was born in 1834, educated at Queen’s College in his native city of Cork, and called to the Bar of the Inner Temple in 1861. His pursuit of the legal profession was somewhat perfunctory, for two years previously he had turned his attention to politics and taken his seat in the House of Commons. It must be confessed that he had the courage of his originality, for he had presented himself to the constituency of King’s County and carried the election in the novel character of a Catholic Conservative. We may presume that the clever young man was commissioned by the more worldly-wise members of his Church to prove there were possibilities of coming to an understanding with a party which had hitherto been antipathetical to them. From the first Sir John Hennessy took politics very seriously, and showed the ambition and resolution to get on. His Parliamentary record was an active one, and nowadays it would be difficult for a novice and a private member to achieve half so much. An Irish Catholic and a Conservative, he was at once patriotic and politic; and, moreover, he made sundry valuable contributions to the cause of practical philanthropy. The young member received a flattering compliment when he was formally thanked by the Roman Catholic Committee of England for his successful exertions in the Prison Ministers Act. He was thanked likewise by the Association of British Miners for useful amendments introduced in the Mines’ Regulation Bill, which showed he had carefully studied the subject. He was less practical when he urged upon the Government the propriety of making Irish paupers comfortable at home by reclaiming the swamps and the bottomless bogs. Generally he supported the Government on questions relating to the English Church Establishment; but, on the other hand, he took strong exception to the denominational system of education they had introduced in Ireland under what he declared to be the misnomer of a “national” system. Had he been content to go more quietly, and to be more amenable to party discipline, the Conservatives might have found him a useful ally, and, like the King of Moab with the recalcitrant prophet Balaam, they would willingly have promoted the protégé of the priests to great honour. As it was, they thought it prudent to give him the government of distant Labuan, the future of which seemed to be bound up with the existence of coalfields; and we suspect that it was his poverty rather than his will which reconciled him to that honourable exile. Few men have done more official travelling or seen more varied service in tropical climates. From Labuan he went to West Africa, to be transferred in the following year to the Bahamas; and after a short subsequent sojourn in the Windward Islands he governed cosmopolitan Hongkong and the semi-French island of Mauritius. We must add that Sir John Pope Hennessy’s colonial career says very little for the intelligence or discretion with which the Colonial Office exercises its patronage. He ought never to have been placed in charge of such colonies as Hongkong or the Mauritius, where the pretensions of the natives threatened to make trouble. The sympathizer with the down-trodden Catholics of West Ireland was an enthusiast with regard to the equal rights of men. And at the Mauritius, to make matters worse, that strong-willed martinet, Mr Clifford Lloyd, whose Irish antecedents associated themselves with peremptory suppression, was assigned to Sir John as Secretary and colleague. Of course, they quarrelled, like two jealous dogs, locked together in couples beyond the master’s sight and reach. The experience of Sir Hercules Robinson was called in to arbitrate. Sir John did not come very creditably out of the business, though the final decision was given in his favour. He returned to the colony, to be retired on a full pension when the term of his administration had expired. He had the satisfaction, however, of being formally congratulated by the Secretary of State on his successful administration. He might have been content to rest on his honours, and to interest his leisure with literature. But it was never in his nature to be idle. It is an affair of yesterday, and in everybody’s recollection, how he chanced to be put forward as a candidate for North Kilkenny in the very crisis of Mr Parnell’s career, and on the eve of Mr Parnell’s political collapse. When the choice was between the Protestant dictator and the priests, the choice of the devoted son of the Church could not be doubtful. With the whole influence of the Kilkenny clergy to back him, he carried the election by two to one. At that time he finally broke with the Conservative party by resigning his membership of the Carlton; but since then, owing probably to failing health, he had made no such figure in the House as formerly, and, indeed, had seldom been seen there. It only remains to say that he married a daughter of Sir H. Low, and that it was in 1880 he was created a Knight Commander of St Michael and St George. He showed his good taste by buying as his residence the picturesque and historical mansion in Youghal which had been given to Sir Walter Raleigh by his Gloriana; and, whether it were cause or effect, it was consequently appropriate that Sir John Hennessy should have published some years ago a volume on “Raleigh in Ireland, with his Letters on Irish Affairs and some Contemporary Documents.”

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