an.

When we started the Home Rule organisation in Liverpool, we asked
Charles Russell to be chairman of our inaugural public meeting. He had
been contesting Dundalk as a Home Ruler, so we thought he was the very
man to preside at our meeting, and gave that as our reason for asking
him. He received the deputation--my friend, Alfred Crilly and
myself--with that geniality and courtesy which were so characteristic of
him. As it happened that the three of us were County Down men, who are
somewhat clannish, we soon got talking about the people "at home." He
knew both our families in Ireland, and had served his time with a
solicitor of my name in Newry, Cornelius Denvir, before he had entered
the other branch of the legal profession. We also got talking of the
barony of Lecale, which he, as well as my own people, had sprung from,
and how it had been the only Norman colony in Ulster; how many of the
descendants of De Courcy's followers were still there, as might be seen
from their names--Russells, Savages, Mandevilles. Dorrians, Denvirs, and
others, whose fathers, intermarrying with the original Celtic
population, MacCartans, Magennises, MacRorys, and so on, had become like
the Burkes, Fitzgeralds, and other Norman clans, "More Irish than the
Irish themselves."

This was all very well, and very interesting, but it did not get us our
chairman. Charles Russell was too wary, and, perhaps, too far-seeing,
who can tell? for that. It was quite true, he said, he had contested
Dundalk as a Home Ruler, and, of course, he was a Home Ruler, but he
advised us to ask Dr. Commins to be our chairman, as being so much
better known than himself. We did ask "The Doctor," and, kindly and
genial as we ever found him, he at once consented.

Nearly forty years have passed since then, and I really believe that
these two, then comparatively young men, practically made choice of
their respective after-careers on that occasion.

Dr. Commins, who, like Charles Russell, was a practising barrister on
the Northern circuit, held for some years the highest position his
fellow-countrymen could give him as President of the Home Rule
Confederation of Great Britain, and became a member of the Irish
Parliamentary Party.

Charles Russell, though always a Home Ruler and sincere lover of his
country, made a brilliant career for himself as a great lawyer and
Liberal statesman. I have often wondered since, if he had become
chairman of our meeting in 1872, and ha