Irish Nationalist politician, the son of John Blake Dillon (1816–1866), who sat in parliament for Tipperary, and was one of the leaders of “Young Ireland.” John Dillon was educated at the Roman Catholic university of Dublin, and afterwards studied medicine. He entered parliament in 1880 as member for Tipperary, and was at first an ardent supporter of C. S. Parnell. In August he delivered a speech on the Land League at Kildare which was characterized as “wicked and cowardly” by W. E. Forster; he advocated boycotting, and was arrested in May 1881 under the Coercion Act, and again after two months of freedom in October. In 1883 he resigned his seat for reasons of health, but was returned unopposed in 1885 for East Mayo, which he continued to represent. He was one of the prime movers in the famous “plan of campaign,” which provided that the tenant should pay his rent to the National League instead of the landlord, and in case of eviction be supported by the general fund. Mr. Dillon was compelled by the court of queen’s bench on the 14th of December 1886 to find securities for good behaviour, but two days later he was arrested while receiving rents on Lord Clanricarde’s estates. In this instance the jury disagreed, but in June 1888 under the provisions of the new Criminal Law Procedure Bill he was condemned to six months’ imprisonment. He was, however, released in September, and in the spring of 1889 sailed for Australia and New Zealand, where he collected funds for the Nationalist party. On his return to Ireland he was again arrested, but, being allowed bail, sailed to America, and failed to appear at the trial. He returned to Ireland by way of Boulogne, where he and Mr. W. O’Brien held long and indecisive conferences with Parnell. They surrendered to the police in February, and on their release from Galway gaol in July declared their opposition to Parnell. After the expulsion of Mr. T. M. Healy and others from the Irish National Federation, Mr. Dillon became the chairman (Feb. 1896). His early friendship with Mr. O’Brien gave place to considerable hostility, but the various sections of the party were ostensibly reconciled in 1900 under the leadership of Mr. Redmond. In the autumn of 1896 he arranged a convention of the Irish race, which included 2,000 delegates from various parts of the world. In 1897 Mr. Dillon opposed in the House the Address to Queen Victoria on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee, on the ground that her reign had not been a blessing to Ireland, and he showed the same uncompromising attitude in 1901 when a grant to Lord Roberts was under discussion, accusing him of “systematized inhumanity.” He was suspended on the 20th of March for violent language addressed to Mr. Chamberlain. He married in 1895 Elizabeth (d. 1907), daughter of Lord justice J. C. Mathew.
The Irish members endeavoured unsuccessfully to censure the conduct of the Speaker in regard to the suspension of Mr. Dillon on March 20, 1902. He was prominent that year in Parliament in his attacks on the Government for the revival of the Crimes Act, and in the following year he helped forward Mr. Wyndham’s Land Purchase Act. For several subsequent years he played a comparatively subordinate part both in Ireland and in Parliament; but in 1909 he appeared as a leading apologist of cattle-driving, telling the House of Commons that the grazing system in Ireland had become an abomination. He aided the parliamentary progress of the Home Rule bill mainly by a judicious silence. In the years before the World War he had been very critical both of the increased naval preparations, which he said were the result of a bogus naval scare, and of Sir Edward Grey’s policy in Egypt and Morocco. But he followed his leader, Mr. Redmond, in urging Ireland to take her share in the war against Germany, and spoke at the meeting in the Dublin Mansion House on September 25, 1914, when the platform was occupied by the Lord Mayor, the Lord Lieutenant, Mr. Asquith (Prime Minister), the Chief Secretary, and Mr. Redmond. In Parliament, however, he showed himself opposed to compulsory service and the setting up of a Munitions department; and after the Dublin rebellion he said he was proud of the rebels, accused the Government of washing out the word Nationalist in a sea of blood, and declared that Sir John Maxwell’s system of military rule had done more to spread disaffection in Ireland than all the organizers of Sinn Fein. He did not show himself very sympathetic or hopeful in regard to the various suggestions of Mr. Lloyd George for settling the Irish question. In July 1918, as Mr. Redmond’s successor in the leadership of his party, he brought forward a motion that the Irish policy of the Government was inconsistent with the principles for which the Allies were carrying on the war, advised calling in President Wilson to settle the question, and bitterly denounced what he called the outrageous coercive system in force in Ireland. But the violence of his language did not save him from the vengeance of Sinn Fein who now dominated that country; he, along with almost the whole of the Constitutional Nationalist party, lost his seat at the general election of December 1918. See also “On the Death of Gladstone.”
