MacVEAGH, Jeremiah. M.P. Home Rule in a Nutshell. A pocket book for Speakers and Electors. With introduction by Right Hon. Winston S. Churchill, M.P. First Lord of the Admiralty.

Third edition, revised and enlarged. London: The Daily Chronicle. Dublin: Sealy Bryers, [1911]. 16mo. pp. 92. Printed stapled wrappers. Some browning to edges, corners dog-eared. A good working copy. Extremely rare.

COPAC locates the Cambridge and QUB copies only.
Jeremiah McVeagh (1870/73-1932) Irish nationalist politician and Member of Parliament was the son of Thomas McVeagh, ship owner, and was educated at St. Malachy’s College, Belfast, and at the Royal University of Ireland.
He was correspondent for the London-based Daily News in Donegal during the 1888 Plan of Campaign; his highly descriptive articles were reprinted and circulated and gave English readers a sympathetic understanding of the campaign, since MacVeagh was a nationalist and a member of the Gaelic League and Belfast Young Ireland society. In the 1890s he moved to London, where he was active in the Irish National League of Great Britain.
He was first elected as the Irish Parliamentary Party MP for the South Down constituency at the 19 February 1902 by-election, and was again re-elected at the 1906, January 1910, December 1910 and 1918 general elections, and served until 1922 as member of the Nationalist Party.
In his introduction Winston Churchill states: “The facts and arguments collected in this brief epitome deserve the attention of fair-minded and patriotic English men. They represent in a temperate and compendious form the appeal of an Irishman for the grant of an Irish Parliament, and thus express once more what has been the persistent and consistent desire of the great majority of the Irish people ever since the Act of Union more than a hundred years ago. We in Great Britain, however, are called upon to examine this appeal from a British and from an Imperial point of view. Its sincerity is beyond dispute. We should naturally wish to accede to it. But can we wisely and safely do so? How will Irish Home Rule affect the unity of the British Empire and the integrity of the United Kingdom? How will it touch the fortunes of the British race? Will it strengthen Great Britain in the modern world? Is it on the true lines of Imperial development? Will it make us more secure from dangers, and better able to overcome them in the hour of need? If the answers to these questions are unfavourable, the British people might well be forced in these stern and unrestful times to return a negative answer. But if they are favourable, what a sorry part will a man have played who out of carelessness, prejudice, or partisanship is guilty of obstructing a settlement ...”

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