J. G. Swift MacNeill

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John Gordon Swift MacNeill
Vanity Fair in 1902.
Member of Parliament
for South Donegal
In office
1887–1918
Preceded byBernard Kelly
Succeeded byPeter J. Ward
Personal details
Born(1849-03-11)11 March 1849
Died24 August 1926(1926-08-24) (aged 77)
Political partyIrish Parliamentary Party
Other political
affiliations		Home Rule League

John Gordon Swift MacNeill (11 March 1849 – 24 August 1926) was an

Queen's Counsel
) (later KC) in 1893.

Life

MacNeill was from a

Irish Bar in 1875.[1]
He never married.

As a Professor of Law at the

Willie Redmond
.

On his own account, MacNeill had been from his earliest years "enthusiastic in support of the restoration of the old Irish Parliament". He joined the Home Government Association and its successor the

Unionist candidate, and not by the Parnellites. At the subsequent four general elections he was returned unopposed, but in 1918 he was deselected as Irish Party candidate in favour of John T. Donovan, who in turn lost the seat to Sinn Féin
.

MacNeill had a formidable mastery of Parliamentary procedure and was a member of the Committee of Privileges from 1908. He devised procedural tactics which enabled the Irish Party to defeat an attempt by the

Home Rule for Ireland, many of his efforts were devoted to improving the governance of the United Kingdom. It was his motion to disallow the votes of directors of the Mombasa railway which resulted in the defeat of the Unionist government in 1892. He claimed the credit for establishing the principle that the position of Minister of the Crown is incompatible with directorship of a public company. In 1906, after much effort, he also obtained the abolition of flogging in the Royal Navy
.

Like the rest of the Irish Party, MacNeill supported the cause of Britain and her

Titles Deprivation (Enemies) Act 1917
.

MacNeill had some eccentricities.

Cecil Rhodes in 1887–88 which led to the latter's donation of £10,000 to the Irish Party and to the election of James Rochfort Maguire
to Parliament.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Some sources have 1876.
  2. ^ Maume 1999, p.73
  3. ^ MacNeill 1925, p.236

Selected publications

  • The Irish Parliament: What it was and what it did, London and New York, Cassell, 1885
  • English Interference with Irish Industries, London and New York, Cassell, 1886
  • How the Union was Carried, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, 1887
  • Titled Corruption; the sordid origin of some Irish peerages, London, T. F. Unwin, 1894
  • The Constitutional and Parliamentary History of Ireland till the Union, Dublin, Talbot Press, 1917
  • Studies in the Constitution of the Irish Free State, Dublin, Talbot Press, 1925
  • What I Have Seen and Heard, London, Arrowsmith, 1925

Other sources

  • Irish Independent, 25 August 1926
  • Patrick Maume, The Long Gestation: Irish Nationalist Life 1891–1918, Dublin, Gill & Macmillan; New York, St Martin's Press, 1999
  • Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 'J. G. Swift MacNeill (1845–1926), politician and jurist', by S. L. Gwynn, revised by Alan O'Day
  • The Times, 25 August 1926
  • Brian M. Walker (ed.), Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801–1922, Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, 1978
  • Who Was Who 1916–1928

External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for South Donegal
1887 – 1918 		Succeeded by
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