1890]

IRISH LAND PURCHASE

Acts which he refused yesterday." On December 2 he moved as an amendment that the House should decline to pledge the credit of the country to the scheme proposed by the Bill as being alike unsafe to the Imperial Exchequer and unjust to the Irish occupier. The incident is thus described :

Dec. 2nd. Down to House by noon, and working at my speech on Amendment. Just before rising at 3.55 A. Morley (Chief Whip) told me Mr. G. would support if words indicated in his writing were inserted.1 Agreed. Spoke with general acceptance to a good House for perhaps 35 minutes.

:

The gist of the speech is shown by its quotation of a statement made by an official of the Land Commission, viz. :—“I conclude from my examination of these cases, that the contracts entered into were obtained by intimidation and under influence, and that they were entered into 'under duress.' Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain followed, the former expressing his admiration of the great ability which Ellis had shown in his treatment of a difficult and complicated question. The debate which ensued ranged over the whole question of Land Purchase in Ireland and resulted-For the amendment 173, against 245. The Irish voted for.

The year 1891 opened darkly in more senses than one. Fog was prevalent. On one occasion he notes that no cabs were available, and he was obliged to walk the whole of the way to his home in a great storm. With his tendency to asthma this was a rather severe strain. At the same time the anxiety about his son's health continued, and it was arranged that the latter 1 Mr. Gladstone's added words were :-" and it is not proposed by the Bill to invest any Irish authority with control over the transaction."

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should not go on with his preparations for his final examination, but should leave Cambridge at Whitsuntide and travel instead. Entries in the diary show that Ellis's own health was far from good at the time. In spite of this drawback he gave all the help he could to Sir Joseph Pease's motion against the Indian opium traffic, and in April brought forward a motion himself declaring that a large reduction of licensed houses in England is desirable, and that Local Authorities should be entrusted with further powers of control, both over their number and hours of opening. He watched the Committee stage of the Irish Land Bill closely, and spoke nineteen times upon it. Comparatively few English members cared to follow its intricacies. An entry of May 26 runs : "Lord Elcho moved adjournments over the Derby in a very clever speech. My spirit was stirred within me at the scandal of adjourning for a horse race after so many reminders in the House of the uncertainty of life, and in view of the serious nature of the duties we met to perform. Rose once, but failed to catch the Speaker's eye."

In the first year of the next Parliament he led the opposition to the adjournment for the race day, and carried a majority of 112 against, thus ending the practice. Mr. John Morley seconded and Mr. H. J. Wilson supported the resolution.

On Sunday, May 31, both parents were hastily summoned to Cambridge, only to find that their son had already passed away before their arrival. The two brothers, thus removed at the dawn of manhood, were very different in disposition. The elder was singularly mature in mind and judgment, with strong scientific tastes and knowledge; the younger was of a very sociable disposition, with a winning personality

1891]

DEATH OF SECOND SON

and considerable ability, whose tastes made him an ideal companion to his father in his political work. He was buried, like his brother, in the peaceful little churchyard at Scalby.

For two months there is no entry in the diary. On August 20, John John Ellis wrote to his friend Mr. Hind: "The words you quote of Lowell's are true enough in a sense. But day by day impresses me more and more with the sense that what we term death is only the portal. This world of sense is very transient, although it is so difficult at times to get our thoughts apart from it. In my best moments the environment of flesh seems to me the veil which hides the true realities from our ken."

But little application to public duties was possible for the remainder of the session, though some Committee work was attended to and finished. A A good Bible Society meeting at Scalby and Anti-Opium meeting at Scarborough are mentioned with satisfaction.

On December 18 he took his family and his sister from Leicester to Switzerland for the Christmas holidays when the complete change of scenery and surroundings helped to restore health and strength. He found great pleasure in long tramps up the steep mountain paths, to be followed after lunch in the sunshine by a swift toboggan run homewards.

The diary records December 19. "I shall not soon forget the ride from Bâle to Lucerne in the breaking morning light, as I stood outside the car and watched the day dawn and the shadows flee away. Lucerne beyond our expectation in beauty. Pilatus and the Rigi a scene of dazzling purity. Christmas Day wondrously helped us, there being none of the bitterness I feared."

25th. Our

CHAPTER VII

COMMITTEE WORK

THE best form of English disinterestedness does not confine its operations to the borders of the British Isles.

Its attention is attracted by distress in any form in any place. Criticism is often directed against the extreme position to which this motive compels, when the philanthropist is apparently engrossed with anything and everything which is not concerned with his own home, people, or country. But extreme positions are rarely to be defended with success, and John Ellis was in this sense no extremist. His sobriety of temperament and sense of duty combined to render him proof against the sway of sentimentalism, but he was not unresponsive to the claims of the greater world. Thus early in 1892 he made strenuous efforts to add to the fund being raised in and around Scarborough for the relief of the sufferers from famine in Russia. He took the leading part in the local committee, and his diary testifies to the ungrudging manner in which he devoted his time to the cause.

Another question of a similar nature also engrossed his attention, and as usual when he believed there was a wrong to be redressed his sympathies were quickly aroused. The Salvation Army had in the 'nineties

1892]

SALVATION ARMY

become a recognised force in the country, but in the process of expansion was arousing the opposition and encountering the obstacles that so often harass a progressive movement. In December, 1891, the authorities at Eastbourne, having forbidden the Army to hold meetings on the beach, took proceedings in the Central Criminal Court. The defendants were found guilty of unlawful assembly but acquitted of a charge of conspiracy. In January, the members of the Army resumed their services and were roughly handled by the crowd, the police being present in numbers insufficient to maintain order or afford adequate protection. Towards the end of the month the Court for Crown Cases Reserved decided that the conviction for unlawful assembly could not be upheld, and strengthened by this decision the open-air meetings continued with increased fervour.

This attitude and the success of the Salvation Army's action in the Courts provoked still more a section of the townspeople, who were very largely on the side of the Town authorities, and the conduct of a rough element drawn from the poorer parts of Eastbourne grew more and more unrestrained. Disgraceful scenes took place on the sea-front, and the men and women Salvationists suffered considerable ill-usage in a spirit of martyrdom. Ellis went down for a Sunday and was much stirred by what he saw. So much did he sympathise with the

Army" on account of the treatment to which they had been subjected that when the local authorities summoned the "officers" for obstruction, he went again as a voluntary witness for the defence. His testimony, however, was not needed, as the magistrate dismissed the charge without calling for the defendants' evidence. The matter was brought before the House