DILLON, John Blake (1814-1866), of 51 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin and Druid Lodge, Killiney, co. Dublin

During the 1840s Dillon rose to prominence as an Irish nationalist politician and journalist, helping to launch the Nation in 1842, and taking a leading role in the Irish Confederation from 1847. He participated in the Young Ireland insurrection of 1848, after which he fled to New York, where he prospered as a lawyer and remained aloof from Irish politics.1For a summary of his early political career, see B. O’Cathaoir, ‘Dillon, John Blake’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, iii. 302-3; for a fuller study, see idem., John Dillon: Young Irelander (1990). Having been offered an amnesty in 1855, he was persuaded by his wife to return to Ireland the following year. He resumed his legal practice in Dublin but eschewed politics until, having served on the O’Connell Statue Committee in 1862, he was induced to stand for the Dublin corporation, being elected alderman for Wood Quay ward in July 1863.2Freeman’s Journal, 30 Dec. 1862, 12 Feb. 1863, 28 July 1863, 17 Sept. 1866. That year, Dillon made a special study of the financial relations of England and Ireland for the corporation, concluding that Ireland was too heavily taxed in proportion to her resources. He believed that ‘nearly ten millions sterling’ went out of the country annually ‘to enrich England without there being the slightest return to Ireland’, and argued that this levying of taxes did not conform to the provisions of the Treaty of Union.3S. Ball (ed.), Dublin Castle and the First Home Rule Crisis: The Political Journal of Sir George Fottrell, 1884-1887 (2008), 165; Freeman’s Journal, 12 Feb. 1863; J.B. Dillon, Report on the State of the Public Accounts between Ireland and Great Britain (1863, published 1882); PP 1865 (330) xii. 1.

By now a constitutional nationalist, and an ardent, though liberal, Catholic, Dillon helped to found the National Association in December 1864, becoming its leading lay member and first secretary.4Freeman’s Journal, 30 Dec. 1864; B. O’Cathaoir, ‘Dillon, John Blake’, Oxford DNB, xvi. 216-7. Speaking at its inaugural meeting on 21 February 1865, he set out the Association’s objectives respecting land, education and religion, proving himself a strong advocate of disestablishment of the Irish Church.5Freeman’s Journal, 21 Feb. 1865; J.A. Hamilton, ‘Dillon, John Blake’, DNB, v. 988-9. A few days later he returned to Tipperary for the first time since the insurrection of 1848, admitting to being ‘less impulsive and enthusiastic than he was then’, in order to endorse the Association’s candidate, Charles Moore, and to sustain what he regarded as ‘the close, intimate, and indissoluble union of the Irish priesthood and the Irish people’.6Freeman’s Journal, 25 Feb. 1865. Having received more than a dozen invitations from Irish constituencies, he was himself returned for the county without expense at the 1865 general election, pledging ‘strict adherence’ to the Association’s programme in the face of organised Fenian opposition.7Freeman’s Journal, 11, 27 July 1865; Hansard, 17 Feb. 1866, vol. 181, c. 702.

Dillon was a constant attendee at Westminster, but, appearing ‘to regard his first session in Parliament as a sort of apprenticeship’, sat on just one select committee.8Freeman’s Journal, 17, 18 Sept. 1866. He served on the inquiry into the drainage and navigation of the River Shannon: PP 1866 (213) xi. 617. Although considered ‘immovable in principle’, he was a pragmatic politician and entered the Commons committed ‘to the pursuit of practical measures’, adopting what he took ‘to be the cardinal truth in politics – namely, that the advantage which is attainable is the advantage to be pursued’.9Freeman’s Journal, 19, 21 Sept. 1866. A practised speaker, his contributions to debate were relatively few but usually effective, being delivered without ostentation and with ‘an honesty of purpose … more eloquent than rhetoric’, and his earnestness and sincerity were said to have been appreciated by the House.10Freeman’s Journal, 21 Sept. 1866. His parliamentary speeches were considered ‘bold and original, his great natural eloquence being tempered by the desire to serve the cause he advocated rather than to make a brilliant display of his undoubted oratorical powers’: Freeman’s Journal, 18 Sept. 1866, quoting Cork Examiner. His first speech was made in support of John Bright’s opposition to the suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland, 17 Feb. 1866, when he declared himself ‘a most formidable enemy’ of Fenianism, but urged the House to acknowledge that its force was ‘derived from the general disaffection of the Irish people arising from the misgovernment of the country’.11Freeman’s Journal, 21 Sept. 1866; Hansard, 17 Feb. 1866, vol. 181, cc. 701-4. That March he also opposed Disraeli’s amendment to the parliamentary oaths bill, describing it as ‘needlessly offensive’ to Catholics.12Hansard, 15 Mar. 1866, vol. 182, cc. 292-3.

Having given evidence to the select committee on the Tenure and Improvement of Land (Ireland) Act in May 1865, in which he emphasised ‘the immediacy with which the Irish people continued to feel their historic dispossession’ and the central role which the land question (and security of tenure in particular) continued to play in Irish electoral politics, he was credited with responsibility for the ‘great advance’ made in the tenant’s cause the following session.13PP 1865 (402) xi. 341 [93-129]; E.D. Steele, Irish Land and British Politics: Tenant-right and nationality 1865-1870 (1974), 19, 34, 54. He laboured assiduously to help frame reforms acceptable to the government, and, in March 1866, minutely explained the clauses of John Francis Maguire’s proposed bill regarding landlord-tenant relations, persuading the National Association that it conferred ‘most important rights on the occupiers of land’.14Freeman’s Journal, 17 Sept., 21 Mar. 1866. Instinctively accommodating, Dillon argued that the Liberal government’s subsequent bill was required merely ‘for the dishonest minority’ of landlords who were yet ‘still numerous enough to shake the confidence of the body of tenantry, and to paralyze the industry of the country’, and thus helped ‘to reverse the presumption in law that the tenant’s improvements were his landlord’s property’.15Hansard, 17 May 1866, vol. 183, cc. 1097-1102; O’Cathaoir, ‘Dillon, John Blake’, Dictionary of Irish Biography.

Regarded as both prudent and magnanimous, Dillon was widely respected and said to have been trusted by the Irish hierarchy ‘more than any other politician since O’Connell’.16Freeman’s Journal, 16, 19 Sept. 1866; The Times, 20 Sept. 1866. Though he advocated ‘substantial self-government for Ireland’, he sought this through a policy of ‘firm moderation’ and risked unpopularity in his constituency by continuing to denounce Fenianism.17Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 110; Freeman’s Journal, 16, 18 Sept. 1866. After coming to the conclusion in August 1866 ‘that there was nothing more remarkable about Fenianism than its sudden collapse’, he opposed the continuance of the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act, arguing that ‘the history of Ireland showed that the people could not be dragooned into quietude by such measures’.18Hansard, 2 Aug. 1866, vol. 184, cc. 1969-71.

As ‘an ardent advocate of Reform for England as well as for Ireland’, Dillon endeavoured ‘to bring about a cordial understanding and union’ between English and Irish Liberals, thus helping to pave the way for the era of Gladstonian reform.19Freeman’s Journal, 18 Sept. 1866. He persuaded radicals within the Liberal party such as John Bright and William Forster to support Irish land and church reforms, though failed, by his own admission, to persuade them of the case for denominational education.20O’Cathaoir, ‘Dillon, John’, Oxford DNB; Freeman’s Journal, 21 Mar. 1866. His last public action was to arrange for the reception of John Bright in Dublin, and it was anticipated that Dillon might, being a trusted, persuasive and conciliatory politician, be capable of cementing ‘the Irish representatives into a compact united mass’.21Freeman’s Journal, 5, 16, 17 Sept. 1866. However, despite having been in good health, he rapidly succumbed to the effects of cholera and died at his residence in Killiney, county Dublin in September 1866. He was buried at Glasnevin cemetery, his funeral being attended by ‘men of the highest social standing and of every shade of political and religious belief’.22Freeman’s Journal, 18 Sept. 1866. His death was considered ‘a great shock to the public mind’ in England, and an event ‘of no ordinary importance to Ireland’, where it was regarded as the greatest loss to national political life since the death of O’Connell.23The Times, 18 Sept. 1866; Freeman’s Journal, 19, 21 Sept. 1866. Dillon was succeeded by his son, John, a leading figure at Westminister for nearly forty years, who led the Irish Parliamentary party in 1900-18.