Chapter V: Breach With Mr. Parnell. (1890-1891) (1)

Fortuna vitrea est,—tum quum splendet frangitur.—PUBLIL. SYRUS.
Brittle like glass is fortune,—bright as light, and then the
crash.

I

It would have been a miracle if the sight of all the methods of coercion, along with the ignominy of the forged letters, had not worked with strong effect upon the public mind. Distrust began to creep at a very rapid pace even into the ministerial ranks. The tory member for a large northern borough rose to resent “the inexpedient treatment of the Irishmen from a party point of view,” to protest against the ’straining and stretching of the law’ by the resident magistrates, to declare his opinion that these gentlemen were not qualified to exercise the jurisdiction entrusted to them, “and to denounce the folly of making English law unpopular in Ireland, and provoking the leaders of the Irish people by illegal and unconstitutional acts.”(266) These sentiments were notoriously shared to the full by many who sat around him. Nobody in those days, discredited as he was with his party, had a keener scent for the drift of popular feeling than Lord Randolph Churchill, and he publicly proclaimed that this sending of Irish members of parliament to prison in such numbers was a feature which he did not like. Further, he said that the fact of the government not thinking it safe for public meetings of any sort to be held, excited painful feelings in English minds.(267) All this was after the system had been in operation for two years. Even strong unionist organs in the Irish press could not stand it.(268) They declared that if (M150) the Irish, government wished to make the coercive system appear as odious as possible, they would act just as they were acting. They could only explain all these doings, not by “wrong-headedness or imbecility,” but by a strange theory that there must be deliberate treachery among the government agents.

Before the end of the year 1889 the electoral signs were unmistakable. Fifty-three bye-elections had been contested since the beginning of the parliament. The net result was the gain of one seat for ministers and of nine to the opposition. The Irish secretary with characteristic candour never denied the formidable extent of these victories, though he mourned over the evils that such temporary successes might entail, and was convinced that they would prove to be dearly bought.(269) A year later the tide still flowed on; the net gain of the opposition rose to eleven. In 1886 seventy-seven constituencies were represented by forty-seven unionists and thirty liberals. By the beginning of October in 1890 the unionist members in the same constituencies had sunk to thirty-six, and the liberals had risen to forty-one. Then came the most significant election of all.

There had been for some months a lull in Ireland. Government claimed the credit of it for coercion; their adversaries set it down partly to the operation of the Land Act, partly to the natural tendency in such agitations to fluctuate or to wear themselves out, and most of all to the strengthened reliance on the sincerity of the English liberals. Suddenly the country was amazed towards the middle of September by news that proceedings under the Coercion Act had been instituted against two nationalist leaders, and others. Even strong adherents of the government and their policy were deeply dismayed, when they saw that after three years of it, the dreary work was to begin over again. The proceedings seemed to be stamped in every aspect as impolitic. In a few days the two leaders would have been on their way to America, leaving a half-empty war chest behind them and the flame of agitation burning low. As the offences charged had been going on for six months, there was clearly no pressing emergency.

A critical bye-election was close at hand at the moment in the Eccles division of Lancashire. The polling took place four days after a vehement defence of his policy by Mr. Balfour at Newcastle. The liberal candidate at Eccles expressly declared from his election address onwards, that the great issue on which he fought was the alternative between conciliation and coercion. Each candidate increased the party vote, the tory by rather more than one hundred, the liberal by nearly six hundred. For the first time the seat was wrested from the tories, and the liberal triumphed by a substantial majority.(270) This was the latest gauge of the failure of the Irish policy to conquer public approval, the last indication of the direction in which the currents of public opinion were steadily moving.(271) Then all at once a blinding sandstorm swept the ground.

II

One of those events now occurred that with their stern irony so mock the statesman’s foresight, and shatter political designs in their most prosperous hour. As a mightier figure than Mr. Parnell remorsefully said on a grander stage, a hundred years before, cases sometimes befall in the history of nations where private fault is public disaster.

At the end of 1889, the Irish leader had been made a party in a suit for divorce. He betrayed no trace in his demeanour, either to his friends or to the House, of embarrassment at the position. His earliest appearance after the evil news, was in the debate on the first night of the session (February 11, ’90), upon a motion about the publication of the forged letter. Some twenty of (M151) his followers being absent, he wished the discussion to be prolonged into another sitting. Closely as it might be supposed to concern him, he listened to none of the debate. He had a sincere contempt for speeches in themselves, and was wont to set down most of them to vanity. A message was sent that he should come upstairs and speak. After some indolent remonstrance, he came. His speech was admirable; firm without emphasis, penetrating, dignified, freezing, and unanswerable. Neither now nor on any later occasion did his air of composure in public or in private give way.

Mr. Gladstone was at Hawarden, wide awake to the possibility of peril. To Mr. Arnold Morley he wrote on November 4:—“I fear a thundercloud is about to burst over Parnell’s head, and I suppose it will end the career of a man in many respects invaluable.” On the 13th he was told by the present writer that there were grounds for an impression that Mr. Parnell would emerge as triumphantly from the new charge, as he had emerged from the obloquy of the forged letters. The case was opened two days later, and enough came out upon the first day of the proceedings to point to an adverse result. A Sunday intervened, and Mr. Gladstone’s self-command under storm-clouds may be seen in a letter written on that day to me:—

_Nov. 16, 1890._—1. It is, after all, a thunder-clap about
Parnell. Will he ask for the Chiltern Hundreds? He cannot continue
to lead? What could he mean by his language to you? The Pope has
now clearly got a commandment under which to pull him up. It
surely cannot have been always thus; for he represented his
diocese in the church synod. 2. I thank you for your kind scruple,
but in the country my Sundays are habitually and largely invaded.
3. Query, whether if a bye-seat were open and chanced to have a
large Irish vote W—— might not be a good man there. 4. I do not
think my Mem. is worth circulating but perhaps you would send it
to Spencer. I sent a copy to Harcourt. 5. [A small parliamentary
point, not related to the Parnell affair, nor otherwise
significant.] 6. Most warmly do I agree with you about the Scott
_Journal_. How one loves him. 7. Some day I hope to inflict on you
a talk about Homer and Homerology (as I call it).

The court pronounced a condemnatory decree on Monday, November 17th. Parliament was appointed to meet on Tuesday, the 25th. There was only a week for Irish and English to resolve what effect this condemnation should have upon Mr. Parnell’s position as leader of one and ally of the other. Mr. Parnell wrote the ordinary letter to his parliamentary followers. The first impulses of Mr. Gladstone are indicated in a letter to me on the day after the decree:—

_Nov. 18, 1890._—Many thanks for your letter. I had noticed the
Parnell circular, not without misgiving. I read in the _P. M. G._
this morning a noteworthy article in the _Daily Telegraph_,(272)
or rather from it, with which I very much agree. But I think it
plain that we have nothing to say and nothing to do in the matter.
The party is as distinct from us as that of Smith or Hartington. I
own to some surprise at the apparent facility with which the R. C.
bishops and clergy appear to take the continued leadership, but
they may have tried the ground and found it would not _bear_. It
is the Irish parliamentary party, and that alone to which we have
to look....

Such were Mr. Gladstone’s thoughts when the stroke first fell.

III

In England and Scotland loud voices were speedily lifted up. Some treated the offence itself as an inexpiable disqualification. Others argued that, even if the offence could be passed over as lying outside of politics, it (M152) had been surrounded by incidents of squalor and deceit that betrayed a character in which no trust could ever be placed again. In some English quarters all this was expressed with a strident arrogance that set Irishmen on fire. It is ridiculous, if we remember what space Mr. Parnell filled in Irish imagination and feeling, how popular, how mysterious, how invincible he had been, to blame them because in the first moment of shock and bewilderment they did not instantly plant themselves in the judgment seat, always so easily ascended by Englishmen with little at stake. The politicians in Dublin did not hesitate. A great meeting was held at Leinster Hall in Dublin on the Thursday (November 20th). The result was easy to foresee. Not a whisper of revolt was heard. The chief nationalist newspaper stood firm for Mr. Parnell’s continuance. At least one ecclesiastic of commanding influence was supposed to be among the journal’s most ardent prompters. It has since been stated that the bishops were in fact forging bolts of commination. No lurid premonitory fork or sheet flashed on the horizon, no rumble of the coming thunders reached the public ear.

Three days after the decree in the court, the great English liberal organization chanced to hold its annual meeting at Sheffield (November 20-21). In reply to a request of mine as to his views upon our position, Mr. Gladstone wrote to me as follows:—

_Nov. 19, 1890._—Your appeal as to your meeting of to-morrow gives
matter for thought. I feel (1) that the Irish have abstractedly a
right to decide the question; (2) that on account of Parnell’s
enormous services—he has done for home rule something like what
Cobden did for free trade, set the argument on its legs—they are
in a position of immense difficulty; (3) that we, the liberal
party as a whole, and especially we its leaders, have for the
moment nothing to say to it, that we must be passive, must wait
and watch. But I again and again say to myself, I say I mean in
the interior and silent forum, “It’ll na dee.” I should not be
surprised if there were to be rather painful manifestations in the
House on Tuesday. It is yet to be seen what our Nonconformist
friends, such a man as ——, for example, or such a man as —— will
say.... If I recollect right, Southey’s _Life of Nelson_ was in my
early days published and circulated by the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge. It would be curious to look back upon it and
see how the biographer treats his narrative at the tender points.
What I have said under figure 3 applies to me beyond all others,
and notwithstanding my prognostications I shall maintain an
extreme reserve in a position where I can do no good (in the
present tense), and might by indiscretion do much harm. You will
doubtless communicate with Harcourt and confidential friends only
as to anything in this letter. The thing, one can see, is not a
_res judicata_. It may ripen fast. Thus far, there is a total want
of moral support from this side to the Irish judgment.

A fierce current was soon perceived to be running. All the elements so powerful for high enthusiasm, but hazardous where an occasion demands circumspection, were in full blast. The deep instinct for domestic order was awake. Many were even violently and irrationally impatient that Mr. Gladstone had not peremptorily renounced the alliance on the very morrow of the decree. As if, Mr. Gladstone himself used to say, it could be the duty of any party leader to take into his hands the intolerable burden of exercising the rigours of inquisition and private censorship over every man with whom what he judged the highest public expediency might draw him to co-operate. As if, moreover, it could be the duty of Mr. Gladstone to hurry headlong into action, without giving Mr. Parnell time or chance of taking such action of his own as might make intervention unnecessary. Why was it to be assumed that Mr. Parnell would not recognise the facts of the situation? “I determined,” said Mr. Gladstone “to watch the state of feeling in this country. I made no public declaration, but the country made up its mind. I was in some degree like the soothsayer Shakespeare introduces into one of his plays. He says, ‘I do not make the facts; I only foresee them.’ I did not foresee the facts even; they were present before me.”(273)

(M153) The facts were plain, and Mr. Gladstone was keenly alive to the full purport of every one of them. Men, in whose hearts religion and morals held the first place, were strongly joined by men accustomed to settle political action by political considerations. Platform-men united with pulpit-men in swelling the whirlwind. Electoral calculation and moral faithfulness were held for once to point the same way. The report from every quarter, every letter to a member from a constituent, all was in one sense. Some, as I have said, pressed the point that the misconduct itself made co-operation impossible; others urged the impossibility of relying upon political understandings with one to whom habitual duplicity was believed to have been brought home. We may set what value we choose upon such arguments. Undoubtedly they would have proscribed some of the most important and admired figures in the supreme doings of modern Europe. Undoubtedly some who have fallen into shift and deceit in this particular relation, have yet been true as steel in all else. For a man’s character is a strangely fitted mosaic, and it is unsafe to assume that all his traits are of one piece, or inseparable in fact because they ought to be inseparable by logic. But people were in no humour for casuistry, and whether all this be sophistry or sense, the volume of hostile judgment and obstinate intention could neither be mistaken, nor be wisely breasted if home rule was to be saved in Great Britain.

Mr. Gladstone remained at Hawarden during the week. To Mr. Arnold Morley he wrote (Nov. 23): “I have a bundle of letters every morning on the Parnell business, and the bundles increase. My own opinion has been the same from the first, and I conceive that the time for action has now come. All my correspondents are in unison.” Every post-bag was heavy with admonitions, of greater cogency than such epistles sometimes possess; and a voluminous bundle of letters still at Hawarden bears witness to the emotions of the time. Sir William Harcourt and I, who had taken part in the proceedings at Sheffield, made our reports. The acute manager of the liberal party came to announce that three of our candidates had bolted already, that more were sure to follow, and that this indispensable commodity in elections would become scarcer than ever. Of the general party opinion, there could be no shadow of doubt. It was no application of special rigour because Mr. Parnell was an Irishman. Any English politician of his rank would have fared the same or worse, and retirement, temporary or for ever, would have been inevitable. Temporary withdrawal, said some; permanent withdrawal, said others; but for withdrawal of some sort, almost all were inexorable.

IV

Mr. Gladstone did not reach London until the afternoon of Monday, November 24. Parliament was to assemble on the next day. Three members of the cabinet of 1886, and the chief whip of the party,(274) met him in the library of Lord Rendel’s house at Carlton Gardens. The issue before the liberal leaders was a plain one. It was no question of the right of the nationalists to choose their own chief. It was no question of inflicting political ostracism on a particular kind of moral delinquency. The question was whether the present continuance of the Irish leadership with the silent assent of the British leaders, did not involve decisive abstention at the polls on the day when Irish policy could once more be submitted to the electors of Great Britain? At the best the standing difficulties even to sanguine eyes, and under circumstances that had seemed so promising, were still formidable. What chance was there if this new burden were superadded? Only one conclusion was possible upon the state of facts, and even those among persons responsible for this decision who were most earnestly concerned in the success of the Irish policy, reviewing all the circumstances of the dilemma, deliberately hold to this day that though a catastrophe followed, a worse catastrophe was avoided. It is one of the commonest of all secrets of cheap misjudgment in human affairs, to start by assuming that there is always some good way out of a bad case. Alas for us all, this is not so. Situations arise alike (M154) for individuals, for parties, and for states, from which no good way out exists, but only choice between bad way and worse. Here was one of those situations. The mischiefs that followed the course actually taken, we see; then, as is the wont of human kind, we ignore the mischiefs that as surely awaited any other.

Mr. Gladstone always steadfastly resisted every call to express an opinion of his own that the delinquency itself had made Mr. Parnell unfit and impossible. It was vain to tell him that the party would expect such a declaration, or that his reputation required that he should found his action on moral censure all his own. “What!” he cried, “because a man is what is called leader of a party, does that constitute him a censor and a judge of faith and morals? I will not accept it. It would make life intolerable.” He adhered tenaciously to political ground. “I have been for four years,” Mr. Gladstone justly argued, “endeavouring to persuade voters to support Irish autonomy. Now the voter says to me, ‘If a certain thing happens—namely, the retention of the Irish leadership in its present hands—I will not support Irish autonomy.’ How can I go on with the work? We laboriously rolled the great stone up to the top of the hill, and now it topples down to the bottom again, unless Mr. Parnell sees fit to go.” From the point of view of Irish policy this was absolutely unanswerable. It would have been just as unanswerable, even if all the dire confusion that afterwards came to pass had then been actually in sight. Its force was wholly independent, and necessarily so, of any intention that might be formed by Mr. Parnell.

As for that intention, let us turn to him for a moment. Who could dream that a man so resolute in facing facts as Mr. Parnell, would expect all to go on as before? Substantial people in Ireland who were preparing to come round to home rule at the prospect of a liberal victory in Great Britain, would assuredly be frightened back. Belfast would be more resolute than ever. A man might estimate as he pleased either the nonconformist conscience in England, or the catholic conscience in Ireland. But the most cynical of mere calculators,—and I should be slow to say that this was Mr. Parnell,—could not fall a prey to such a hallucination as to suppose that a scandal so frightfully public, so impossible for even the most mild-eyed charity to pretend not to see, and which political passion was so interested in keeping in full blaze, would instantly drop out of the mind of two of the most religious communities in the world; or that either of these communities could tolerate without effective protest so impenitent an affront as the unruffled continuity of the stained leadership. All this was independent of anything that Mr. Gladstone might do or might not do. The liberal leaders had a right to assume that the case must be as obvious to Mr. Parnell as it was to everybody else, and unless loyalty and good faith have no place in political alliances, they had a right to look for his spontaneous action. Was unlimited consideration due from them to him and none from him to them?

The result of the consultation was the decisive letter addressed to me by Mr. Gladstone, its purport to be by me communicated to Mr. Parnell. As any one may see, its language was courteous and considerate. Not an accent was left that could touch the pride of one who was known to be as proud a man as ever lived. It did no more than state an unquestionable fact, with an inevitable inference. It was not written in view of publication, for that it was hoped would be unnecessary. It was written with the expectation of finding the personage concerned in his usual rational frame of mind, and with the intention of informing him of what it was right that he should know. The same evening Mr. McCarthy was placed in possession of Mr. Gladstone’s views, to be laid before Mr. Parnell at the earliest moment.

_1 Carlton Gardens, Nov. 24, 1890._—MY DEAR MORLEY.—Having arrived
at a certain conclusion with regard to the continuance, at the
present moment, of Mr. Parnell’s leadership of the Irish party, I
have seen Mr. McCarthy on my arrival in town, and have inquired
from him whether I was likely to receive from Mr. Parnell himself
any communication on the subject. Mr. McCarthy replied that he was
unable to give me any information on the subject. I mentioned to
him that in 1882, after the terrible murder in the Phœnix Park,
Mr. Parnell, although totally removed from any idea of
responsibility, had spontaneously written to me, and offered to
take the Chiltern Hundreds, an offer much to his honour but one
which I thought it my duty to decline.

While clinging to the hope of a communication from Mr. Parnell, to
whomsoever addressed, I thought it necessary, viewing the
arrangements for the commencement of the session to-morrow, to
acquaint Mr. McCarthy with the conclusion at which, after using
all the means of observation and reflection in my power, I had
myself arrived. It was that notwithstanding the splendid services
rendered by Mr. Parnell to his country, his continuance at the
present moment in the leadership would be productive of
consequences disastrous in the highest degree to the cause of
Ireland. I think I may be warranted in asking you so far to expand
the conclusion I have given above, as to add that the continuance
I speak of would not only place many hearty and effective friends
of the Irish cause in a position of great embarrassment, but would
render my retention of the leadership of the liberal party, based
as it has been mainly upon the prosecution of the Irish cause,
almost a nullity. This explanation of my views I begged Mr.
McCarthy to regard as confidential, and not intended for his
colleagues generally, if he found that Mr. Parnell contemplated
spontaneous action; but I also begged that he would make known to
the Irish party, at their meeting to-morrow afternoon, that such
was my conclusion, if he should find that Mr. Parnell had not in
contemplation any step of the nature indicated. I now write to
you, in case Mr. McCarthy should be unable to communicate with Mr.
Parnell, as I understand you may possibly have an opening
to-morrow through another channel. Should you have such an
opening, I beg you to make known to Mr. Parnell the conclusion
itself, which I have stated in the earlier part of this letter. I
have thought it best to put it in terms simple and direct, much as
I should have desired had it lain within my power, to alleviate
the painful nature of the situation. As respects the manner of
conveying what my public duty has made it an obligation to say, I
rely entirely on your good feeling, tact, and judgment.—Believe me
sincerely yours, W. E. GLADSTONE.

No direct communication had been possible, though every effort to open it was made. Indirect information had been received. Mr. Parnell’s purpose was reported to have shifted during the week since the decree. On the Wednesday he had been at his stiffest, proudest, and coldest, bent on holding on at all cost. He thought he saw a way of getting something done for Ireland; the Irish people had given him a commission; he should stand to it, so long as ever they asked him. On the Friday, however (Nov. 21), he appeared, so I had been told, to be shaken in his resolution. He had bethought him that the government might possibly seize the moment for a dissolution; that if there were an immediate election, the government would under the circumstances be not unlikely to win; if so, Mr. Gladstone might be thrown for four or five years into opposition; in other words, that powerful man’s part in the great international transaction would be at an end. In this mood he declared himself alive to the peril and the grave responsibility of taking any course that could lead to consequences so formidable. That was the last authentic news that reached us. His Irish colleagues had no news at all. After this glimpse the curtain had fallen, and all oracles fell dumb.

If Mr. Gladstone’s decision was to have the anticipated effect, Mr. Parnell must be made aware of it before the meeting of the Irish party (Nov. 25). This according to custom was to be held at two o’clock in the afternoon, to choose their chairman for the session. Before the choice was made, both the leader and his political friends should know the view and the purpose that prevailed in the camp of their allies. Mr. Parnell kept himself invisible and inaccessible alike to English and Irish friends until a few minutes before the meeting. The Irish member who had seen Mr. Gladstone the previous evening, at the last moment was able to deliver the message that had been confided to him. Mr. Parnell replied that he should stand to his guns. The other members of the Irish party came together, and, wholly ignorant of the attitude taken by Mr. Gladstone, promptly and with hardly a word of discussion re-elected their leader to his usual post. The gravity of the unfortunate error (M155) committed in the failure to communicate the private message to the whole of the nationalist members, with or without Mr. Parnell’s leave, lay in the fact that it magnified and distorted Mr. Gladstone’s later intervention into a humiliating public ultimatum. The following note, made at the time, describes the fortunes of Mr. Gladstone’s letter:—

_Nov. 25._—I had taken the usual means of sending a message to Mr.
Parnell, to the effect that Mr. Gladstone was coming to town on
the following day, and that I should almost certainly have a
communication to make to Mr. Parnell on Tuesday morning. It was
agreed at my interview with his emissary on Sunday night (November
23) that I should be informed by eleven on Tuesday forenoon where
I should see him. I laid special stress on my seeing him before
the party met. At half-past eleven, or a little later, on that day
I received a telegram from the emissary that he could not reach
his friend.(275) I had no difficulty in interpreting this. It
meant that Mr. Parnell had made up his mind to fight it out,
whatever line we might adopt; that he guessed that my wish to see
him must from his point of view mean mischief; and that he would
secure his re-election as chairman before the secret was out. Mr.
McCarthy was at this hour also entirely in the dark, and so were
all the other members of the Irish party supposed to be much in
Mr. Parnell’s confidence. When I reached the House a little after
three, the lobby was alive with the bustle and animation usual at
the opening of a session, and Mr. Parnell was in the thick of it,
talking to a group of his friends. He came forward with much
cordiality. “I am very sorry,” he said, “that I could not make an
appointment, but the truth is I did not get your message until I
came down to the House, and then it was too late.” I asked him to
come round with me to Mr. Gladstone’s room. As we went along the
corridor he informed me in a casual way that the party had again
elected him chairman. When we reached the sunless little room, I
told him I was sorry to hear that the election was over, for I had
a communication to make to him which might, as I hoped, still make
a difference. I then read out to him Mr. Gladstone’s letter. As he
listened, I knew the look on his face quite well enough to see
that he was obdurate. The conversation did not last long. He said
the feeling against him was a storm in a teacup, and would soon
pass. I replied that he might know Ireland, but he did not half
know England; that it was much more than a storm in a teacup; that
if he set British feeling at defiance and brazened it out, it
would be ruin to home rule at the election; that if he did not
withdraw for a time, the storm would not pass; that if he withdrew
from the actual leadership now as a concession due to public
feeling in this country, this need not prevent him from again
taking the helm when new circumstances might demand his presence;
that he could very well treat his re-election as a public vote of
confidence by his party; that, having secured this, he would
suffer no loss of dignity or authority by a longer or shorter
period of retirement. I reminded him that for two years he had
been practically absent from active leadership. He answered, in
his slow dry way, that he must look to the future; that he had
made up his mind to stick to the House of Commons and to his
present position in his party, until he was convinced, and he
would not soon be convinced, that it was impossible to obtain home
rule from a British parliament; that if he gave up the leadership
for a time, he should never return to it; that if he once let go,
it was all over. There was the usual iteration on both sides in a
conversation of the kind, but this is the substance of what
passed. His manner throughout was perfectly cool and quiet, and
his unresonant voice was unshaken. He was paler than usual, and
now and then a wintry smile passed over his face. I saw that
nothing would be gained by further parley, so I rose and he
somewhat slowly did the same. “Of course,” he said, as I held the
door open for him to leave, “Mr. Gladstone will have to attack me.
I shall expect that. He will have a right to do that.” So we
parted.

I waited for Mr. Gladstone, who arrived in a few minutes. It was
now four o’clock. “Well?” he asked eagerly the moment the door was
closed, and without taking off cape or hat. “Have you seen him?”
“He is obdurate,” said I. I told him shortly what had passed. He
stood at the table, dumb for some instants, looking at me as if he
could not believe what I had said. Then he burst out that we must
at once publish his letter to me; at once, that very afternoon. I
said, “’Tis too late now.” “Oh, no,” said he, “the _Pall Mall_
will bring it out in a special edition.” “Well, but,” I persisted,
“we ought really to consider it a little.” Reluctantly he yielded,
and we went into the House. Harcourt presently joined us on the
bench, and we told him the news. It was by and by decided that the
letter should be immediately published. Mr. Gladstone thought that
I should at once inform Mr. Parnell of this. There he was at that
moment, pleasant and smiling, in his usual place on the Irish
bench. I went into our lobby, and sent somebody to bring him out.
Out he came, and we took three or four turns in the lobby. I told
him that it was thought right, under the new circumstances, to
send the letter to the press. “Yes,” he said amicably, as if it
were no particular concern of his, “I think Mr. Gladstone will be
quite right to do that; it will put him straight with his party.”

The debate on the address had meanwhile been running its course. Mr. Gladstone had made his speech. One of the newspapers afterwards described the liberals as wearing pre-occupied countenances. “We were pre-occupied with a vengeance,” said Mr. Gladstone, “and even while I was speaking I could not help thinking to myself, Here am I talking about Portugal and about Armenia, while every single creature in the House is absorbed in one thing only, and that is an uncommonly long distance from either Armenia or Portugal.” News of the letter, which had been sent to the reporters about eight o’clock, swiftly spread. Members hurried to ex-ministers in the dining-room to ask if the story of the letter were true. The lobbies were seized by one of those strange and violent fevers to which on such occasions the House of Commons is liable. Unlike the clamour of the Stock Exchange or a continental Chamber, there is little noise, but the perturbation is profound. Men pace the corridors in couples and trios, or flit from one knot to another, listening to an oracle of the moment modestly retailing a rumour false on the face of it, or evolving monstrous hypotheses to explain incredible occurrences. This, however, was no common crisis of lobby or gallery.

One party quickly felt that, for them at least, it was an affair of life or death. It was no wonder that the Irish members were stirred to the very depths. For five years they had worked on English platforms, made active friendships with English and Scottish liberals in parliament and out of it, been taught to expect from their aid and alliance that deliverance which without allies must remain out of reach and out of sight; above all, for nearly five years they had been taught to count on the puissant voice and strong right arm of the leader of all the forces of British liberalism.

They suddenly learned that if they took a certain step in respect of the leadership of their own party, the alliance was broken off, the most powerful of Englishmen could help them no more, and that all the dreary and desperate marches since 1880 were to be faced once again in a blind and endless campaign, against the very party to whose friendship they had been taught to look for strength, encouragement, and victory. Well might they recoil. More astounded still, they learned at the same time that they had already taken the momentous step in the dark, and that the knowledge of what they were doing, the pregnant meanings and the tremendous consequences of it, had been carefully concealed from them. Never were consternation, panic, distraction, and resentment better justified.

The Irishmen were anxious to meet at once. Their leader sat moodily in the smoking-room downstairs. His faculty of concentrated vision had by this time revealed to him the certainty of a struggle, and its intensity. He knew in minute detail every element of peril both at Westminster and in Ireland. A few days before, he mentioned to the present writer his suspicion of designs on foot in ecclesiastical quarters, though he declared that he had no fear of them. He may have surmised that the demonstration at the Leinster Hall was superficial and impulsive. On the other hand, his confidence in the foundations of his dictatorship was unshaken. This being so, if deliberate calculation were the universal mainspring of every statesman’s action—as it assuredly is not nor can ever be—he would have spontaneously withdrawn for a season, in the (M156) assurance that if signs of disorganisation were to appear among his followers, his prompt return from Elba would be instantly demanded in Ireland, whether or no it were acquiesced in by the leaders and main army of liberals in England. That would have been both politic and decent, even if we conceive his mind to have been working in another direction. He may, for instance, have believed that the scandal had destroyed the chances of a liberal victory at the election, whether he stayed or withdrew. Why should he surrender his position in Ireland and over contending factions in America, in reliance upon an English party to which, as he was well aware, he had just dealt a smashing blow? These speculations, however, upon the thoughts that may have been slowly moving through his mind, are hardly worth pursuing. Unluckily, the stubborn impulses of defiance that came naturally to his temperament were aroused to their most violent pitch and swept all calculations of policy aside. He now proceeded passionately to dash into the dust the whole fabric of policy which he had with such infinite sagacity, patience, skill, and energy devised and reared.

Two short private memoranda from his own hand on this transaction, I find among Mr. Gladstone’s papers. He read them to me at the time, and they illustrate his habitual practice of shaping and clearing his thought and recollection by committal to black and white:—

_Nov. 26, 1890._—Since the month of December 1885 my whole
political life has been governed by a supreme regard to the Irish
question. For every day, I may say, of these five, we have been
engaged in laboriously rolling up hill the stone of Sisyphus. Mr.
Parnell’s decision of yesterday means that the stone is to break
away from us and roll down again to the bottom of the hill. I
cannot recall the years which have elapsed. It was daring,
perhaps, to begin, at the age I had then attained, a process which
it was obvious must be a prolonged one.

Simply to recommence it now, when I am within a very few weeks of
the age at which Lord Palmerston, the marvel of parliamentary
longevity, succumbed, and to contemplate my accompanying the cause
of home rule to its probable triumph a rather long course of years
hence, would be more than daring; it would be presumptuous. My
views must be guided by rational probabilities, and they exclude
any such anticipation. My statement, therefore, that my leadership
would, under the contemplated decision of Mr. Parnell, be almost a
nullity, is a moderate statement of the case. I have been
endeavouring during all these years to reason with the voters of
the kingdom, and when the voter now tells me that he cannot give a
vote for making the Mr. Parnell of to-day the ruler of Irish
affairs under British sanction, I do not know how to answer him,
and I have yet to ask myself formally the question what under
those circumstances is to be done. I must claim entire and
absolute liberty to answer that question as I may think right.

_Nov. 28, 1890._—The few following words afford a key to my
proceedings in the painful business of the Irish leadership.

It was at first my expectation, and afterwards my desire, that Mr.
Parnell would retire by a perfectly spontaneous act. As the
likelihood of such a course became less and less, while time ran
on, and the evidences of coming disaster were accumulated, I
thought it would be best that he should be impelled to withdraw,
but by an influence conveyed to him, at least, from within the
limits of his own party. I therefore begged Mr. Justin McCarthy to
acquaint Mr. Parnell of what I thought as to the consequences of
his continuance; I also gave explanations of my meaning, including
a reference to myself; and I begged that my message to Mr. Parnell
might be made known to the Irish party, in the absence of a
spontaneous retirement.

This was on Monday afternoon. But there was no certainty either of
finding Mr. Parnell, or of an impression on him through one of his
own followers. I therefore wrote the letter to Mr. Morley, as a
more delicate form of proceeding than a direct communication from
myself, but also as a stronger measure than that taken through Mr.
McCarthy, because it was more full, and because, as it was in
writing, it admitted of the ulterior step of immediate
publication. Mr. Morley could not find Mr. Parnell until after the
first meeting of the Irish party on Monday. When we found that Mr.
McCarthy’s representation had had no effect, that the Irish party
had not been informed, and that Mr. Morley’s making known the
material parts of my letter was likewise without result, it at
once was decided to publish the letter; just too late for the
_Pall Mall Gazette_, it was given for publication to the morning
papers, and during the evening it became known in the lobbies of
the House.

V

Mr. Parnell took up his new ground in a long manifesto to the Irish people (November 29). It was free of rhetoric and ornament, but the draught was skilfully brewed. He charged Mr. Gladstone with having revealed to him during his visit at Hawarden in the previous December, that in a future scheme of home rule the Irish members would be cut down from 103 to 32, land was to be withdrawn from the competency of the Irish legislature, and the control of the constabulary would be reserved to the Imperial authority for an indefinite period, though Ireland would have to find the money all the time. This perfidious truncation of self-government by Mr. Gladstone was matched by an attempt on my part as his lieutenant only a few days before, to seduce the Irish party into accepting places in a liberal government, and this gross bribe of mine was accompanied by a despairing avowal that the hapless evicted tenants must be flung overboard. In other words, the English leaders intended to play Ireland false, and Mr. Parnell stood between his country and betrayal. Such a story was unluckily no new one in Irish history since the union. On that theme Mr. Parnell played many adroit variations during the eventful days that followed. Throw me to the English wolves if you like, he said, but at any rate make sure that real home rule and not its shadow is to be your price, and that they mean to pay it. This was to awaken the spectre of old suspicions, and to bring to life again those forces of violence and desperation which it had been the very crown of his policy to exorcise.

The reply on the Hawarden episode was prompt. Mr. Gladstone asserted that the whole discussion was one of those informal exchanges of view which go to all political action, and in which men feel the ground and discover the leanings of one another’s minds. No single proposal was made, no proposition was mentioned to which a binding assent was sought. Points of possible improvement in the bill of 1886 were named as having arisen in Mr. Gladstone’s mind, or been suggested by others, but no positive conclusions were asked for or were expected or were possible. Mr. Parnell quite agreed that the real difficulty lay in finding the best form in which Irish representation should be retained at Westminster, but both saw the wisdom and necessity of leaving deliberation free until the time should come for taking practical steps. He offered no serious objection on any point; much less did he say that they augured any disappointment of Irish aspirations. Apart from this denial, men asked themselves how it was that if Mr. Parnell knew that the cause was already betrayed, he yet for a year kept the black secret to himself, and blew Mr. Gladstone’s praise with as loud a trumpet as before?(276) As for my own guilty attempt at corruption in proposing an absorption of the Irish party in English politics by means of office and emolument, I denied it with reasonable emphasis at the time, and it does not concern us here, nor in fact anywhere else.

VI

We now come to what was in its day the famous story of Committee Room Fifteen, so called from the chamber in which the next act of this dismal play went on.(277) The proceedings between the leader and his party were watched with an eagerness that has never been surpassed in this kingdom or in America. They were protracted, intense, dramatic, and the issue for a time hung in poignant doubt. The party interest of the scene was supreme, for if the Irishmen should rally to their chief, then the English alliance was at an end, Mr. Gladstone would virtually close (M157) his illustrious career, the rent in the liberal ranks might be repaired, and leading men and important sections would all group themselves afresh. “Let us all keep quiet,” said one important unionist, “we may now have to revise our positions.” Either way, the serpent of faction would raise its head in Ireland, and the strong life of organised and concentrated nationalism would perish in its coils. The personal interest was as vivid as the political,—the spectacle of a man of infinite boldness, determination, astuteness, and resource, with the will and pride of Lucifer, at bay with fortune and challenging a malignant star. Some talked of the famous Ninth Thermidor, when Robespierre fought inch by inch the fierce struggle that ended in his ruin. Others talked of the old mad discord of Zealot and Herodian in face of the Roman before the walls of Jerusalem. The great veteran of English politics looked on, wrathful and astounded at a preternatural perversity for which sixty years of public life could furnish him no parallel. The sage public looked on, some with the same interest that would in ancient days have made them relish a combat of gladiators; others with glee at the mortification of political opponents; others again with honest disgust at what threatened to be the ignoble rout of a beneficent policy.

It was the fashion for the moment in fastidious reactionary quarters to speak of the actors in this ordeal as “a hustling group of yelling rowdies.” Seldom have terms so censorious been more misplaced. All depends upon the point of view. Men on a raft in a boiling sea have something to think of besides deportment and the graces of serenity. As a matter of fact, even hostile judges then and since agreed that no case was ever better opened within the walls of Westminster than in the three speeches made on the first day by Mr. Sexton and Mr. Healy on the one side, and Mr. Redmond on the other. In gravity, dignity, acute perception, and that good faith which is the soul of real as distinct from spurious debate, the parliamentary critic recognises them as all of the first order. So for the most part things continued. It was not until a protracted game had gone beyond limits of reason and patience, that words sometimes flamed high. Experience of national assemblies gives no reason to suppose that a body of French, German, Spanish, Italian, or even of English, Scotch, Welsh, or American politicians placed in circumstances of equal excitement, arising from an incident in itself at once so squalid and so provocative, would have borne the strain with any more self-control.

Mr. Parnell presided, frigid, severe, and lofty, “as if,” said one present, “it were we who had gone astray, and he were sitting there to judge us.” Six members were absent in America, including Mr. Dillon and Mr. O’Brien, two of the most important of all after Mr. Parnell himself. The attitude of this pair was felt to be a decisive element. At first, under the same impulse as moved the Leinster Hall meeting, they allowed their sense of past achievement to close their eyes; they took for granted the impossible, that religious Britain and religious Ireland would blot what had happened out of their thoughts; and so they stood for Mr. Parnell’s leadership. The grim facts of the case were rapidly borne in upon them. The defiant manifesto convinced them that the leadership could not be continued. Travelling from Cincinnati to Chicago, they read it, made up their minds, and telegraphed to anxious colleagues in London. They spoke with warmth of Mr. Parnell’s services, but protested against his unreasonable charges of servility to liberal wirepullers; they described the “endeavours to fasten the responsibility for what had happened upon Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley” as reckless and unjust; and they foresaw in the position of isolation, discredit, and international ill-feeling which Mr. Parnell had now created, nothing but ruin for the cause. This deliverance from such a quarter (November 30) showed that either abdication or deposition was inevitable.

The day after Mr. Parnell’s manifesto, the bishops came out of their shells. Cardinal Manning had more than once written most urgently to the Irish prelates the moment the decree was known, that Parnell could not be upheld in London, and that no political expediency could outweigh the moral sense. He knew well enough that the bishops in (M158) Ireland were in a very difficult strait, but insisted “that plain and prompt speech was safest.” It was now a case, he said to Mr. Gladstone (November 29), of _res ad triarios_, and it was time for the Irish clergy to speak out from the housetops. He had also written to Rome. “Did I not tell you,” said Mr. Gladstone when he gave me this letter to read, “that the Pope would now have one of the ten commandments on his side?” “We have been slow to act,” Dr. Walsh telegraphed to one of the Irish members (November 30), “trusting that the party will act manfully. Our considerate silence and reserve are being dishonestly misinterpreted.” “All sorry for Parnell,” telegraphed Dr. Croke, the Archbishop of Cashel—a manly and patriotic Irishman if ever one was—“but still, in God’s name, let him retire quietly and with good grace from the leadership. If he does so, the Irish party will be kept together, the honourable alliance with Gladstonian liberals maintained, success at general election secured, home rule certain. If he does not retire, alliance will be dissolved, election lost, Irish party seriously damaged if not wholly broken up, home rule indefinitely postponed, coercion perpetuated, evicted tenants hopelessly crushed, and the public conscience outraged. Manifesto flat and otherwise discreditable.” This was emphatic enough, but many of the flock had already committed themselves before the pastors spoke. To Dr. Croke, Mr. Gladstone wrote (Dec. 2): “We in England seem to have done our part within our lines, and what remains is for Ireland itself. I am as unwilling as Mr. Parnell himself could be, to offer an interference from without, for no one stands more stoutly than I do for the independence of the Irish national party as well as for its unity.”