1019 Donald Macfarlane

Constituency : County  Carlow  1880-5 ( Home  Rule  League  ),  Argyllshire   1885-6 , 1892-5

Donald  was  one  of  three  Liberals  contesting  Argyllshire  after  the  retirement  of  Sir  Colin  Campbell. He  defeated  the  official  Liberal  and  allied  himself  with  the  Crofters  Party.

Donald  was  the  son  of  a  Scottish  magistrate. He  became  an  East  India  merchant  with  interests  in  tea  and  indigo. He  was  an  early  amateur  photographer.  He  was  a   recent  convert  to   Catholicism  and  first  elected  to  Parliament  under  Home  Rule  colours  although  he  was  fairly  moderate  as  far  as  Irish  home  rule  was  concerned.  He  came  to  Scotland   to  support  Roderick  McDonald  in  the  Ross-shire  by-election  of  1884. When  Carlow  lost  one  of  its  members  he  moved  across  to  Scotland.

Donald  proposed  an  amendment  to  the  Queen's  Speech  in  1886  highlighting  the  condition  of  the  population  in  the  highlands  and  islands.

In  1886  Donald  was  the  only  Liberal  candidate  but  was  defeated  by  the  Conservative  in  a  campaign  dominated  by  anti-Catholicism  with  Donald  attacked  by  Presbyterian  clergy  and  in  Gaelic  poems . He  narrowly  won  the  seat  back  in  1892  but  lost  it  again  in  1895.

Donald  was  knighted  in  1894.

He  died  in  1904  aged  73.