restitution of Grattan’s Parliament. But no man has the right to fix the boundary to the march of a
nation.”
61
As argued by the historian F.S.L. Lyons, “The calculated ambiguity of these sentences
needs no stressing. To some of those who heard or read him he seemed to have left the road to
full independence wide open. To others, although their knowledge of Grattan’s parliament might
be rusty, the phrases in which he described it sounded agreeably constitutional and that could not
be bad.”
62
Along with appeals to the British constitution, Nationalists also legitimated their claims
in the language of British liberalism. Home Rule, in this framing, was justified by Britain’s
failure to act justly in Ireland. In an 1885 speech in Dublin, for example, Parnell explained he
“had done [his] utmost…to direct the minds of the people to a constitutional issue, but if the
constitution was forbidden to them it would not have been their fault if constitutional
methods…failed.”
63
More bluntly, he charged Britain with being a “good liberal on the
Continent and a bad liberal at home.”
64
Evidence suggests these legitimation strategies were critical in ensuring the divisibility of
Home Rule in 1886. Republicans, for instance, had rejected earlier attempts to work with the
Nationalists. Even though an alliance was in their interest, they viewed earlier Nationalists as
wholly illegitimate representatives of Ireland’s claims.
65
With the creation of new social ties and
the adoption of an ambiguous legitimation strategy, however, Nationalists convinced
Republicans to accept Home Rule.
Nationalist legitimation strategies swayed Liberals as well. It may be tempting to explain
the coalition between Nationalists and Liberals as a simple alignment of preferences: both
61
Times, 22 January 1885. Grattan’s Parliament was the Irish legislature dissolved by the Act of Union.
62
Lyons 1977, 261.
63
The Nation, 5 September 5 1885.
64
Hammond 1964, 120.
65
See Lyons 1977, 86l; and O’Day 1998, 45.
Convention