essary and justifiable--hence the
second procession. The chief objections to the action of the official
committee were that, while all honour was to be paid to the memory of
O'Connell as the Liberator of his Catholic fellow-countrymen, his
services as the champion of the political freedom of the Irish people
were being kept in the background. Also--and that was why the Amnesty
Association for the release of political prisoners took the initiative
in the protest against the action of the Centenary Committee--because,
on a great national occasion like this, the very existence of the
martyrs for freedom, who were suffering in English prisons, appeared to
be forgotten. Such forgetfulness was considered at the least highly
inappropriate.

There was much indignation, too, that Lord O'Hagan should have been
chosen to speak the panegyric on O'Connell, seeing that he had actually
sentenced some of those very prisoners.

The Irish organisation in Great Britain sympathised with these views,
and the various branches sending contingents showed their feelings by
throwing in their part with the Amnesty Association.

The contingent from Great Britain was, on the proposition of Mr. Patrick
Egan, given the place of honour in front of the amnesty procession
which, on the morning of the Centenary celebration, the 6th of August,
1875, started from Beresford Place, near the Custom House. The banners
of the three Liverpool branches were a picturesque feature in the
procession, as also was the Sarsfield Band, a body of fine young
Liverpool Irishmen who headed our contingent.

CHAPTER XV.

HOME RULE IN LOCAL ELECTIONS--PARNELL SUCCEEDS BUTT AS PRESIDENT OF THE
IRISH ORGANISATION IN GREAT BRITAIN.

It was at the Liverpool Municipal Elections of 1875 that we first
introduced the question of Home Rule into local politics. When we were
holding our inaugural meeting to establish the Home Rule organisation in
the town, we could not get any of our Irish public men to take the
chair. The reason was that these had not been elected as Irishmen but as
Liberals. As a matter of fact, we had in Dr. Commins a man immensely
superior to any of them. But we thought that men who had been elected to
public positions mainly by Irish votes should not refuse to identify
themselves with the national movement, and to help it by whatever
influence they possessed. We therefore decided to _make_ some public
men. In Scotland and Vauxhall Wards we had a clear