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Updated: June 6, 2025
It is a singular fact that although since the general election there have been no less than ten by-elections in Ireland, of which only two were in "safe" Unionist seats, in no single instance have the advocates of the policy of abstention from attendance from Westminster had the courage to go to the polls with a candidate of their own.
Newspapers are, as a rule, busy enough about what happens even in quite obscure constituencies during by-elections. If ours had been one of those occasional contests the subject of public lying, Lalage's portrait and the story of the two bands men would have been quite familiar to all readers. During a general election very few details of particular campaigns can be printed.
And when I speak of the importance to the Opposition of by-elections, let me also remind you that never before have by-electoral victories been so important, not only to a great Party, but to a great trade.
Bonar Law pointed out that the results of by-elections, if realised in the same proportion all over the country, would have given a substantial Unionist majority in the House of Commons.
It was a most necessary and salutary lesson for the Lords that they should be shown, in as clear and pronounced a way as possible, that the Constitution provided a check against their attempt at despotism, just as the marked disapproval of the electorate, as shown, for instance, in the remarkable series of by-elections in 1903-1905, or by a reverse at a general election, is the check provided against the arbitrary or unpopular action of any Government.
The New Brunswick frontier, as well as Canada, was disturbed by the threatened Fenian invasion, so that the question of defence was apposite and of vital importance. Presently a change of sentiment began to show itself in the province, and the shaky Cabinet began to totter from resignations and disagreements. By-elections followed and supporters of federation were returned.
The matter was pressed to a decision in appeals against candidates returned in two federal by-elections, in Chambly and Charlevoix, and in one provincial election, in Bonaventure. In these instances the proof of open partisanship and open use of ecclesiastical pressure was overwhelming. 'The candidate who spoke last Sunday, declared one priest in Chambly, 'called himself a moderate Liberal.
A fierce outcry ran through the Labour world in Great Britain; by-elections were in progress, and Government was angrily challenged with having one law for the rich and another for the poor, one law for Labour and another for the Unionist party. To this pressure Government yielded, and Mr. Larkin was liberated after a few days in jail.
War being thus inevitable, the humane man will rejoice that by one of those brilliant discoveries, so simple when they are explained, war in the future is going to be rendered equally satisfactory to victor and to vanquished. In by-elections, as a witty writer has pointed out, there are no defeats only victories and moral victories. The idea seems to have caught on.
Our friends were being elected and our enemies, including that worst type of enemy, the false friend and the so-called Liberal afraid of his own principles, were being rejected at by-elections in a manner that foreshadowed a great gain to suffrage forces at the General Election.
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