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CHARLES STEWART PARNELL

8 OCTOBER 1891

MR CHARLES STEWART PARNELL died at half-past 11 on Tuesday night at his residence, 10, Walsingham-terrace, Aldrington, near Brighton. The event was not, however, known locally until yesterday morning, when the news rapidly spread, causing everywhere the greatest astonishment. It had not even been known that Mr Parnell had been ill, and the suddenness of the event led to the dissemination of sensational rumours, which, so far as could be ascertained, were altogether without foundation. Neither before nor after their marriage were Mr and Mrs Parnell much known in Brighton and Hove. Walsingham-terrace, where before the marriage they occupied adjoining houses, and where they had since resided, is a lonely row of houses near the sea some two miles westward of the town. It is not, therefore, surprising that Mr Parnell’s illness should have passed unnoticed. The facts, so far as they can be ascertained, appear to be as follows:- On Thursday Mr Parnell returned from Ireland to Walsingham-terrace suffering from a severe chill. As he was not unaccustomed to similar attacks little was thought of it at the time. The following day, however, he was so much worse that he did not leave his bed. On Saturday some improvement was visible in his condition, but on Sunday he suffered a severe relapse. A Brighton doctor was sent for, and found him, it is said, in the greatest agony, suffering from acute rheumatism. According to another account, however, death is ascribed to congestion of the lungs and bronchitis. Mr Parnell was nursed by his wife and one of her daughters, who happened to be staying at the time at the house next door, still kept up by Mr Parnell. In addition to the doctor already in attendance, two other medical men were called in. Mr Parnell remained, however, in the same condition until Tuesday afternoon, when a very rapid and startling change for the worse occurred, and after lingering for some hours in pain he died, as stated, at half-past 11. With the exception of Mrs Parnell and her daughter, no relatives or immediate friends of the deceased were present. Mrs Parnell is completely overcome by this sudden and heavy blow, and yesterday absolutely refused to see any one …

Charles Stewart Parnell, the eldest son of the late John Henry Parnell, high sheriff of Wicklow in 1836, was born at Avondale, in that county, in June, 1846. His mother was Delia Tudor, daughter of Admiral Charles Stewart, of the American Navy, who, as commodore, had been conspicuous in the naval struggle with England early in the century, when the United States struggled stoutly for the palm of naval supremacy. Mr Parnell’s family had long been settled in Cheshire, and from their seat there his great uncle, Sir Henry Parnell, whose motion on the Civil List turned out the Wellington Government in 1830, and who was afterwards Secretary for War and Paymaster of the Forces under the Whigs, took his title of Lord Congleton. The Parnells belonged to the “Englishry” of Ireland; one of them, Dr Thomas Parnell, an author now best known by his poem “The Hermit,” friend of Pope and Swift, and the subject of a sympathetic biography by Goldsmith, used to bewail his clerical exile among the Irish, and, indeed, consistently neglected his duties as Archdeacon of Clogher; others, later on, during the period of Protestant ascendency were Judges, officials, and members of Parliament; Sir John Parnell, who joined with Grattan and other patriots of that day in fighting for an independence that secured a monopoly of power to their own creed and caste, was Chancellor of the Exchequer just before the Union. Sir John Parnell’s grandson was Mr John Henry Parnell, of Avondale, the father of the future chief of the Separatists, who thus inherited on the paternal side an antipathy to the Union, and on the maternal side the traditions of a bitter conflict with England. Mr Parnell nevertheless received, like many scions of the Irish landlord class, an exclusively English education at various private schools, and afterwards at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where, however, he did not take a degree, and where, it is said, he was “sent down” for some rather gross breach of academic discipline. Some surprise was expressed in Ireland when, in 1874, Mr Parnell, then high sheriff of Wicklow, came forward to oppose in the county Dublin the re-election of Colonel Taylor, who had taken office as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Disraeli Government. He stood as an advocate of Home Rule, to which many of the Irish loyalists had temporarily attached themselves in their disgust at the success of Mr Gladstone’s disestablishment policy. But Mr Parnell’s “Nationalism” proved to be of another type. If it had a sentimental origin in his family traditions, it was qualified and dominated by the cold temper and the taste for political strategy which he seems to have inherited from his American kinsfolk. Defeated by a large majority in Dublin county, he was more successful a little more than a year later when a vacancy was created in the representation of Meath by the death of John Martin, one of the “Young Ireland” party and a convict of 1848, like his brother-in-law, John Mitchel. When Mr Parnell entered the House of Commons in April, 1875, the Liberal Opposition was disorganized, the Conservative Government was both positively and negatively strong, and the Home Rule party, under Mr Butt’s leadership, was of little account. Mr Parnell immediately allied himself with Mr Biggar, who had struck out a line of his own by defying decency and the rules of Parliament, and, with more or less regular aid from Mr F. H. O’Donnell and Mr O’Connor Power, they soon made themselves a political force. How far Mr Parnell saw ahead of him at this time, what his motives were, and what secret influences were acting upon him may, perhaps, never be revealed. He found, as he believed, a method of bringing an intolerable pressure to bear upon the Imperial Parliament and the Government of the day by creating incessant disturbances and delaying all business, and he persisted in this course in spite of the protests and the denunciations of Mr Butt and the more respectable among the Irish Nationalists. To quote the triumphant language of one of his own followers, writing, almost officially, long afterwards, whereas obstructive tactics had been previously directed against particular Bills, “the obstruction which now faced Parliament intervened in every single detail of its business and not merely in contentious business, but in business that up to this time had been considered formal.” The design was boastfully avowed that, unless the Imperial Legislature agreed to grant the Irish demands as formulated by Mr Biggar and Mr Parnell, its power would be paralyzed, its time wasted, its honour and dignity dragged through the dirt. In 1877, the whole scheme of obstructive policy was disclosed and exemplified in the debates on the Prisons Bill, the Army Bill, and the South Africa Bill. Speaking on the last measure, Mr Parnell said that “as an Irishman” and one detesting “English cruelty and tyranny” he felt “a special satisfaction in preventing and thwarting the intentions of the Government.” On one occasion the House was kept sitting for 26 hours by the small band of obstructionists. The rules of the House, even when cautiously strengthened at the instance of Sir Stafford Northcote, proved entirely inadequate to control men, like Mr Parnell, undeterred by any scruples and master of all the technicalities of Parliamentary practice. Motions of suspension produced as little effect as public censure, nor was Mr Butt, though he strongly condemned the policy of exasperation and lamented the degradation of Irish politics into a “vulgar brawl,” able to stem the tide. He was deposed in the winter of 1877 by the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain, a body including most of the “advanced” wing of the Irish in England and Scotland; and though a modus vivendi was adopted in the Parliamentary party itself, and accepted by Mr Parnell, as he said, in Mr Butt’s presence, on the ground that he “was a young man and could wait,” it was felt that power had passed away from the moderates, of whom many were afraid to oppose the obstructives with a general election in sight, hoping, as the Parnellites said, to tide over the crisis and “survive till the advent of the blessed hour when the return of the Liberals to power would give them the long-desired chance of throwing off the temporary mask of national views to assume the permanent livery of English officials.” History sometimes repeats itself with curious irony, and these words are almost textually the same as those lately used by Mr Parnell of those most intimately associated with him in his campaign against Mr Butt. The Session of 1878 emphasized the cleavage; Mr Butt practically resigned the lead to the extreme faction, and both spoke and voted in favour of the foreign policy of the Government. Mr Parnell pursued his course of calculated Parliamentary violence. In 1879 Mr Butt died, a broken man, and Mr Shaw was chosen to fill his place as “Sessional Chairman” of the party. But events were playing to Mr Parnell’s hands. He had been associated with some of the Radical leaders in the attack on flogging in the Army, and he had been chosen as the first president of the Land League, which was started at Irishtown, in Mayo, a couple of weeks before Mr Butt’s death, and which embodied the ideas brought back from the United States by Mr Davitt after his provisional release from penal servitude, with three other Fenian prisoners, at the end of 1877. Mr Parnell was at the head of the “Reception Committee” which presented an address to these patriots, and the list of those associated with him contains, besides the names of Mr John Dillon and Mr Patrick Egan, those of James Carey, Daniel Curley, and J. Brady.

Up to this point there was nothing known to the public to show that Mr Parnell was not pursuing a Parliamentary agitation by irregular and censurable methods. How far he had previously allied himself with those who had other objects in view and who worked by other methods remains obscure. At any rate, he quickly entered into the policy that Mr Davitt had devised in America in co-operation with Devoy and others, and after taking counsel with the leaders of the Clan-na-Gael and of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. That policy had been originally sketched by Fintan Lalor, one of the ’48 men, and was intended to work upon the land hunger of the Irish peasantry in order to get rid of the British connexion. Davitt and Devoy brought over the revolutionary party to their views, including extremists like Ford of the Irish World, an open advocate of physical force, whether in the form of armed rebellion or of terrorist outrage. Proposals for co-operation with the Parnellites on the basis of dropping the pretence of federation and putting in its stead “a formal declaration in favour of self-government,” of giving the foremost place to the land agitation, and adopting an aggressive Parliamentary policy generally were transmitted to Ireland, and, though not formally accepted either by Mr Parnell, for the moment, or by the Irish Fenians became, in the opinion of the Special Commissioners, “the basis on which the American-Irish Nationalists afterwards lent their support to Mr Parnell and his policy.” This “new departure,” which Mr Davitt advocated as widening the field of revolutionary effort involved Mr Parnell’s adoption of a more decided line on the land question and the opening up of closer relations with his allies beyond the Atlantic. In June, 1879, therefore, a few weeks after the establishment of the Land League, and in the teeth of the denunciations of Archbishop MacHale, Mr Parnell, accompanied by Mr Davitt, addressed a League meeting at Westport, told the tenantry that they could not pay their rents in the presence of the agricultural crisis, but that they should let the landlords know they intended in any case to “hold a firm grip on their homesteads and lands.” He added that no concession obtained in Parliament would buy off his resolution to secure all, including, as Mr Davitt took care to say, the unqualified claim for national independence.

Mr Parnell’s advances to the Revolutionists in America had an immediate reward, not only in the removal of any remaining obstacles in the path of his ambition, but in the supply of the sinews of war for the work of agitation and electioneering. Mr Davitt started the Land League with money obtained out of the Skirmishing Fund, established by O’Donovan Rossa in order to strike England “anywhere she could be hurt” and then in the hands of the Clan-na-Gael chiefs. But much more was needed, and in October, 1879, Mr Parnell started with Mr Dillon for the United States. During the voyage he imparted his views to the correspondent of a New York paper, afterwards a witness before the Special Commission, and told him, among other things, that his idea of a true revolutionary movement in Ireland was that it should partake both of a constitutional and an illegal character, “using the Constitution for its own purposes, but also taking advantage of the secret combinations.” He was cordially welcomed by most of the extreme faction, and gratified them with declarations quite to their own mind. He told them that the land question must be acted upon in “some extraordinary and unusual way” to secure any good result and that “the great cause could not be won without shedding a drop of blood.” He went even beyond this point in the famous speech at Cincinnati, which he subsequently attempted to deny, but which was reported in the Irish World and was held to be proved by Sir James Hannen and his colleagues. He then said that the “ultimate goal” at which Irishmen aimed was “to destroy the last link which kept Ireland bound to England.” The American wing were perfectly satisfied, and Mr Parnell, when he was summoned back to Ireland by the news of the dissolution, felt that he could rely on their support, pecuniary and other. It was not, at first, so easy to convince the Irish Fenians – who had distrusted and abjured any form of Parliamentary action – that they ought to vote for Parnellite candidates; and one or two Parnellite meetings were disturbed by this element. But Mr Parnell’s speeches during the electoral campaign of 1880 showed them how far he was prepared to go in their direction, and how little inclined he was, to use his own phrase, “to fix the boundary to the march of a nation.” It was at the time that Mr Parnell told, with great applause, the story which became very popular on Land League platforms, of the American sympathizer who offered him “five dollars for bread and 20 dollars for lead.” The leading spokesmen and organizers of the League, Sheridan, Brennan, Boyton, and Redpath, were either known Fenians or used language going beyond that of Fenianism; and the same thing may be said of Mr Biggar, Mr O’Kelly, and Mr Matt Harris, members of Mr Parnell’s Parliamentary following. The policy which Mr Davitt, acting as the envoy of the Irish extremists, thus used Mr Parnell to carry through, was developed in the announcement of the boycotting system in the autumn of 1880. Meanwhile, the alliance had already borne fruit at the general election of that year, when Mr Parnell, aided somewhat irregularly by Mr Egan out of the exchequer of the League, was returned for three constituencies – Meath, Mayo, and the city of Cork. He decided to sit for the last, and as “the member for Cork” he has since been known. The overthrow of the Beaconsfield Government, which had appealed to the country to strengthen the Empire against Irish disorder and disloyalty, was an encouragement to the Parnellites, who had a narrow and shifting majority in the ranks of the Parliamentary party. Mr Shaw was supplanted as chairman by Mr Parnell, and an open separation between the two sections ensued. The Parnellites took their seats on the Opposition benches; the Moderate Home Rulers sat on the Ministerial side below the gangway. To the latter Mr Gladstone seemed to incline most favourably, as he showed afterwards when he proposed to make Mr Shaw one of the Chief Commissioners under the Land Act. The Liberals, though they took the opportunity of dropping the Peace Preservation Act, were not disposed to reopen the land question, and it was only under pressure that Mr Forster hastily introduced the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which was rejected in the House of Lords, and appointed the Bessborough Commission.

Mr Parnell and his party seized the opportunities afforded by the distress in Ireland and the Parliamentary situation to push on the operations of the League. The policy of boycotting had been expounded and enforced early in the year in Mr Parnell’s speech at Ennis, a few days after Lord Mountmorres’s murder, when he urged the peasantry if any man among them took an evicted farm to put the offender “into a moral Coventry by isolating him from the rest of his kind as if he were a leper of old.” This doctrine was rapidly propagated by Mr Dillon, Mr Biggar, and the organizers of the League, and in the autumn the persecution of Captain Boycott and many other persons became a public scandal. This system of acting upon those whom Mr Parnell had described as “weak and cowardly,” because they did not heartily join in the refusal to pay rent, has been pronounced on the highest judicial authority to amount to a criminal and illegal conspiracy, devised and carried out to lower the rental and selling price of land and to crush the landlords. Mr Parnell declared that he never incited to crime, but though he and his colleagues knew that boycotting and the unwritten law of the League led to outrages, wherever the organization spread, they took no effective measures to denounce and repress crime, and it is now plain that they could not do so without alienating the American support on which they were dependent. The ordinary law was shown to be powerless by the failure of the prosecution of Mr Parnell and others for conspiracy in Dublin in the opening days of 1881, when the jury disagreed, and Mr Parnell, in announcing the result to his American friends, telegraphed his thanks to the Irish World for “constant cooperation and successful support in our great cause.” But the progress of unpunished crime, in which the American-Irish brutally exulted, and the paralysis of the law compelled Mr Gladstone’s Government to act. Early in the Session of 1881 Mr Forster introduced his “Protection of Persons and Property Bill” and his “Arms Bill,” of which the former empowered the Executive to arrest and detain without trial persons reasonably suspected of crime. At the mere rumour of this Egan transferred the finances of the League to Paris. It was a part of Mr Parnell’s task, as he well knew, to fight the “coercion” measures tooth and nail, but, though he led the attack, the most critical conflicts were precipitated by the passion and imprudence of less cold-blooded politicians. We need not here recapitulate the history of that struggle, in which obstruction reached a height previously unknown, and in which the knot had to be cut for the moment by the enforcement of the inherent powers of the Chair. The Parnellite members were again and again suspended, and at length, after several weeks, both Bills were carried. Mr Parnell’s party had by this time assumed an attitude towards the Government of Mr Gladstone which was highly pleasing to the Irish World and the Nationalist organs in Ireland, but was ominous for the prospects of the Land Bill. They did not, however, venture to offer a direct and determined opposition to a measure securing great pecuniary advantages to the Irish tenants. They could not go beyond abstaining on the question of principle and denouncing the whole scheme as inadequate. Of course, if the Land Act had succeeded in accordance with Mr Gladstone’s sanguine hopes, it would have cut the ground from under Mr Parnell’s feet and deprived him of the basis of agitation on which his alliance with the Irish Extremists rested, and from which his party derived their pecuniary supplies. No sooner, therefore, had the Land Act become law than the word went forth from the offices of the League that the tenants were not to be allowed to avail themselves of it freely, but that only some “test cases” were to be put forward. The penalties of any infraction of this addition to the unwritten law were well understood, for all this while terrorism and outrage were rampant. Mr Gladstone was more indignant at the rejection of his message of peace than at the proofs, which had been long forthcoming, of the excesses of Irish lawlessness. He denounced Mr Parnell at Leeds, in impassioned language, and declared that “the resources of civilization against its enemies were not yet exhausted.” Mr Parnell replied defiantly that Mr Gladstone had before “eaten all his old words,” and predicted that these “brave words of this English Minister would be scattered as chaf f ” by the determination of the Irish to regain “their lost legislative independence.” A few days later he was arrested and imprisoned in Kilmainham with Mr Sexton, Mr O’ Brien, the editor of his organ, United Ireland, and several others. Egan, on the suggestion of Ford, at once issued a “No-Rent” manifesto; the books of the Land League were spirited out of the jurisdiction of the Irish Executive, and as a natural consequence the Land League was suppressed. But the struggle was carried on, with little substantial change, during Mr Parnell’s imprisonment. The Ladies’ League nominally took the work in hand; American money was not wanting; boycotting was rigidly enforced, and was followed, as Mr Gladstone had shown, by crime. For this state of things the incendiary journalism subsidized and imported by the Parnellites was, and long after remained, responsible. The Irish World, with its advocacy of dynamite and dagger, was used to “spread the light” among the masses, and United Ireland was scarcely behindhand. The Freeman’s Journal, which had opposed Mr Parnell’s extreme views on the Land Act, was compelled to come to heel, and the priesthood, who never loved him, as a Protestant and as a suspected ally of the Fenians, found their influence waning in presence of the despotism of the League. The secret history of all that went on during Mr Parnell’s imprisonment in Kilmainham is not yet revealed, though some light has been thrown upon it by the recent split among the Nationalists. Mr Parnell, for instance, said the other day in the last speech he delivered that “the white flag had been first hung out from Kilmainham” by Mr William O’Brien. Be that as it may, it is evident that in the spring of 1882 both the Government and the Parnellites were anxious to compromise their quarrel. Mr Gladstone was pressed by the Radicals to get rid of coercion, and the patriots were eager to be again enjoying liberty and power. Negotiations were opened through Mr O’Shea; Mr Parnell was willing to promise that Ireland should be tranquilized for the moment and in appearance – through the agency of the League; Mr Forster refusing to become a party to this sort of bargain with those who had organized a system of lawless terrorism, resigned; Lord Spencer and Lord Frederick Cavendish went to Ireland as envoys of a policy of concession, including a Bill for wiping out arrears of rent. How long Mr Parnell would have continued to give a quid pro quo for this can only be guessed at. A few days after the ratification of what became known as the Kilmainham Treaty, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr Burke were murdered in the Phoenix Park by persons then unknown. Mr Parnell expressed his horror of the crime in the House of Commons, but refused to admit that it was a reason for the Coercion Bill immediately introduced by Sir William Harcourt. This change of policy was forced upon Mr Gladstone by the imperious demands of public opinion, which was exasperated by the defiant attitude of the Irish party. The forces of obstruction, however, were for the moment broken by the shock. The Coercion Act became law, and was at the outset vigorously administered by Lord Spencer and Mr Trevelyan, who were, in consequence, attacked with the most infamous calumnies by United Ireland and other Parnellite organs. The authors of several wicked crimes were brought to justice in Ireland in spite of the clamour of the Parnellites against Judges and jurymen, and early in 1883 the invincible conspiracy, which had compassed the deaths of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr Burke, was exposed by the evidence of the informer, James Carey. Mr Forster made this the occasion of a powerful attack on Mr Parnell in the House of Commons, telling the story of the Kilmainham negotiations in the light of later disclosures, and pointing out that the language used without rebuke in Mr Parnell’s organs and by his followers plainly sowed the seed of crime. Mr Parnell’s callous defiance of the voice of public opinion shocked even those inclined to make allowance for him. Radical sympathy was withdrawn from him, while there was about this time also a widening breach with the Irish-Americans, who did not wish to have outrage even condemned by implication, and who were entering upon the dynamite campaign. Nevertheless, Mr Parnell’s hold on his own party was unshaken; from time to time there were movements of revolt; he had to speak scornfully once of “Papist rats.” Mr Dwyer Gray, Mr O’Connor Power, Mr F. H. O’Donnell, and Mr Healy at different times tried to thwart him, but he swept all opposition away, and reduced his critics to subjection or drove them out of public life. The Land League was allowed to revive under the name of the National League, and, operating more cautiously on the old lines, secured Mr Parnell’s power. It was evident that the extension of the franchise would give Mr Parnell the power of nominating the representatives of three-fourths of Ireland. The priesthood, trembling for their influence, came round to him. But he was unable to induce the Government either to repeal the Coercion Act or to tamper with the land question. It was when the Franchise Bill was introduced that Mr Parnell’s influence over the Government was first manifested. He insisted that Ireland should be included in the Bill and that the number of the Irish representatives should not be diminished, and on both points he prevailed. Meanwhile the alliance with the American-Irish had been renewed. The Clan-na-Gael captured the Land League in the United States, and in view of the elections in Great Britain funds were provided, Egan being now a member of the organization. Simultaneously a more active policy was adopted at home. As soon as the passage of the Franchise Bill had been made sure the Parnellites joined with the Conservatives to defeat Mr Gladstone. Towards the weak Salisbury Administration that followed Mr Parnell showed, during the electoral period, a benevolent neutrality, acting on the principle he had laid down several years before in Cork – “Don’t be afraid to let in the Tory, but put out the Whig.” He judged that he would be thus more likely to hold the balance of power in the new Parliament, and Mr Gladstone held the same opinion when he asked for a Liberal majority strong enough to vote down Conservatives and Parnellites together. In an address to the Irish electors on the eve of the struggle the Parnellites fiercely denounced the Liberal party and its leader. Mr Parnell had even amused Lord Carnarvon at a critical time with a deceptive negotiation.

The issue of the contest left Mr Gladstone’s forces just balanced by those of the Conservatives and Parnellites combined. He at once resolved to secure the latter by an offer of Home Rule, though he had up to that time professed his devotion to the Union, and though nine-tenths of his followers had pledged themselves to it. His overtures were, of course, welcomed, though without a too trustful effusiveness, by Mr Parnell; the Conservative Government was overthrown on a side issue; Mr Gladstone came into power and introduced his Home Rule Bill. Much was made of Mr Parnell’s unqualified acceptance of that measure. It now appears that he objected to several points in it, being, no doubt, aware of the view taken of it by his American allies, but he did not press his objections, fearing, as he said since, that the insistence on further concessions would deprive Mr Gladstone of other colleagues and break up the Government. Mr Parnell’s temporary forbearance, which had no element of finality in it, did not save the Bill. In the Parliament of 1886 his numerical forces were nearly the same as those he previously commanded, but he was now allied with a greatly enfeebled Gladstonian Opposition. It was necessary to affect the most scrupulous constitutionalism, and for a time Mr Parnell played the part well. The Irish-Americans took the cue from him, and were willing to wait. Dynamite outrages had ceased. But the necessities of the case urged him to insist on reopening the Irish land question, and in Ireland the National League continued to work on the old system. Boycotting and its attendant incidents increased, and, during Mr Parnell’s temporary withdrawal from active politics, Mr Dillon and Mr O’Brien committed the party to the Plan of Campaign, which involved a pitched battle with the Executive and the law. The introduction of the Crimes Bill was the direct result of this policy, which Mr Parnell privately condemned. His opposition to the Bill was of the familiar kind. But the tactics of obstruction which were then pursued were overshadowed in the public eye by the controversy on “Parnellism and Crime” that arose in our own columns. Seeing that the alliance between Mr Parnell and the Gladstonian Opposition was growing closer and closer, that it was employed to obstruct the Executive Government and to set at naught the law, and that the success of Home Rule would deliver over Ireland to a faction tainted by association with Ford and Sheridan, we thought it right to call public attention to some salient episodes in Mr Parnell’s career and to draw certain inferences from them. We also conceived it to be our duty to publish some documentary evidence that came into our hands, of the authenticity of which we were honestly convinced, and which seemed to us perfectly consistent with what was proved and notorious. Mr Parnell gave a comprehensive denial to all our charges and inferences, including the alleged letter apologizing to some extremist ally for denouncing the Phoenix Park murders in the House of Commons. He did not, however, accept our challenge or bring an action against The Times, nor was it till more than a year later, after Mr O’Donnell had raised the question by some futile proceedings, that he demanded a Parliamentary inquiry into the statements made on our behalf by the Attorney-General. We need not here recite the story of the appointment of the Special Commission and its result. The evidence of Richard Pigott broke down, and with it the letters on which we had in part relied, and Mr Parnell’s political allies claimed for him a complete acquittal. But the Report of the Commissioners showed that, though some other charges against Mr Parnell were dismissed as unproved, the most important contentions of The Times were fully established. The origin and objects of the criminal conspiracy were placed beyond doubt; the association for the purposes of that conspiracy with the Irish-American revolutionists was most clearly made manifest, as well as the reckless persistence in boycotting and in the circulation of inflammatory writings after it was known in what those practices ended. Nor was it without significance that a confession was extorted from Mr Parnell that he might very possibly have made a deliberately false statement for the purpose of deceiving the House of Commons. Indeed, on more than one point where Mr Parnell’s sworn testimony had to be weighed against that of other witnesses – as in the case of Mr Ives and Major Le Caron – the Commissioners rejected it. Nevertheless, the Gladstonians went out of their way to affirm their unshaken belief in the stainless honour of Mr Parnell, to accept him as the model of a Constitutional statesman, and to base upon his assurances their confidence that a Home Rule settlement would be a safe and lasting one. Mr Parnell received the honorary freedom of the city of Edinburgh. He was entertained at dinner by the Eighty Club; Mr Gladstone appeared on the same platform with him; his speeches were welcomed at Gladstonian gatherings in the provinces as eagerly as those of the patriarchal leader himself; and, finally, he was the late Premier’s guest at Hawarden Castle, where the details of the revised Home Rule scheme, which has never been disclosed even to the National Liberal Federation, was discussed confidentially as between two potentates of co-equal authority.

But a cruel disappointment was in store for credulous souls. Mr O’Shea, whose intervention had brought about the Kilmainham Treaty, instituted proceedings against Mr Parnell in the Divorce Court. It was denied up to the last that there was any ground for these proceedings; it was predicted that they would never come to an issue. But when, after protracted and intentional delays, the case came on in November last, it was found that there was no defence. The adultery was formally proved and was not denied, nor was it possible to explain away its treachery and grossness. The public mind was shocked at the disclosure; but those who were best entitled to speak were strangely silent. Mr Gladstone said nothing; the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Ireland said nothing; Mr Justin M’Carthy, Mr Healy, and the rest of the Parliamentary party hastened to Dublin to proclaim, at the Leinster-hall, their unwavering fidelity to Mr Parnell. Mr Dillon and Mr O’Brien telegraphed their approval from America. On the opening day of the Session Mr Parnell was re-elected leader. Meanwhile the Nonconformist conscience had awakened, and Mr Gladstone responded to its remonstrances. His letter turned the majority round, and, after a violent conflict in Committee Room No. 15, Mr Parnell was deposed by the very men who had elected him. He refused to recognize his deposition, and has fought a daring, but a losing, battle in Ireland ever since. The declaration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy against him, however, sealed his doom. The clergy have worked against him as they never worked in politics before. Mr Dillon and Mr O’Brien have taken the same side. He has been defeated in North Kilkenny, North Sligo, and Carlow, and though he has been battling fiercely down to a few days ago, the ground has been visibly slipping away from him. Even his marriage with Mrs O’Shea, the only reparation for his sin, has been turned against him in a Roman Catholic country, and was the excuse for the defection of the Freeman’s Journal. It is not surprising that a feeble constitution should have broken down under such a load of obloquy and disappointment.

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