THE SPLIT IN THE PARNELLITE FACTION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3759, 2 August 1883, Page 4

THE SPLIT IN THE PARNELLITE FACTION.

Mr M'Coan, M.P., has addressed the following letter, dated June 2, to Mr Parnell, announcing his withdrawal from the Irish Parliamentary party : — "Dear Mr Parnell,— Will you bo good enough to request whoever is now secretary to tho Irish Parliamentary party to withdraw my name from the list of its mem•bers ? 1 much regret tho necessity for this step : but your action in the matter of the O'Kelly incident leaves me no choice. It would, however, be affectation to conceal that iv that incident the necessity has only culminated. Both the aims and methods of the party have long ceased to be those to which I subscribed three years ago : and as I cannot conscientiously follow that development, I have for many months past increasingly felt that for me continued membership of tho party Wits becoming every day more and more impossible.— Faithfully yours, J. C. M'Coan." Mr McCoan, M.P., in a letter to the Freeman's Journal, refers to the challenge from Mr O'Kelly, M.P., and says, on the failure of his appeal to Mr Parnell to prevent another scandal to the Paruellite party, he consulted two of the most competent authorities in tho House of Commons, and on their advice he dealt with the matter as one of privilcgo insLcad of police, as his first impulse suggested. Mr McCoan proceeds; " For myself the incident obviously compels one other consequence—viz., withdrawal from the party. Both the aims and the methods of the four or five gentlemen who notoriously f orcejthe hand of Mr Parnell have long ago developed beyond the proclaimed policy of honest laud reform and Federal Homo Rule which, at the last general election, formed the programme to which I heartily subscribed. To that I remain and shall remain faithful, but witli veiled Communism ami rebellion 1 can no longer maintain even nominal relations, and I have therefore requested Mr Parnell to accept my withdrawal from his following. Tn it I leave behind men whoso private opinions I know to be as my own, but they are cowed by a fear for their seats which would bo intelligible in political adventurers, but which I feel it hard to under.-,tand in honest men. This fear Ido not share, and when the time again comes I will not shrink from asking the "honest and loyal electors of Wicklow to pass judgment on my discharge of the trust committed to me three years ago. Till then, with greater freedom, I will do my best to promote every Irish reform which honest and loyal men can want."