of the Empire. Many of those who hitherto had been adherents of Gladstone went over to the ranks of his opponents, calling themselves "Liberal Unionists."

The Irish Party and the British Home Rulers fought well, but the force of the coalition against them was too strong. On June 7th the motion for the Second Reading was to be voted on. The moving eloquence of the speech with which Gladstone closed the debate could not avert disaster. Only 275 supported the measure, while 393 opposed it--the Home Rule Bill was lost. Before the end of the month, the

defeated Minister dissolved Parliament.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE PERPETUAL COERCION BILL. THE

CONSERVATIVES IN POWER

The Conservative Government: "The Plan of Campaign": The Perpetual Coercion Bill.-The General Election of 1886 was fought in Ireland, as that of 1885 had been, almost solely on the question of Home Rule, and with results practically similar. Eighty-six members of the Nationalist party were returned. Conservatives and Liberal-Unionists together gained but seventeen seats. With no uncertain voice Ireland had made known her desire.

In England, while the main issue was the same, the result was very different. The mass of the English people had long been accustomed to regard the Irish as semi-barbarians, enslaved by their priests and filled with unreasoning hatred of England, who would be sure to employ any new powers given them to bring about the destruction of the British Empire. These ideas were fostered by the Unionists, who well understood the art of appealing to the prejudices of the millions of ignorant men on whom the Franchise Act of 1884 had conferred the vote. The Unionist majority was over 100. Lord Salisbury became Prime Minister.

What policy the new Government would pursue with regard to Ireland was uncertain. Against Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill they were undoubtedly pledged, but that this pledge implied disapproval of any scheme of Irish self-government was far from clear. The same was the case in regard to Land Legislation. They had rejected Gladstone's scheme. Were they prepared to bring in one of their own?

The Government showed no desire to move in the direction of either of the measures desired. The need for some additions to the previous Land Acts was pressing, owing to the great number of tenants whose rents were in arrears, and the consequent increase in evictions. Certain members of the Irish Party devised a scheme to which they gave the name of "The Plan of Campaign." If a landlord refused to accept from a tenant the rent which had been decided by a committee of the tenants themselves to be reasonable, nothing was paid him, but the reduced rent was placed in the hands of the committee, from whom the landlord could obtain it when he was disposed to concede the tenant's demands. The whole of the money from each estate thus lodged formed

a fund, which was used to support evicted tenants and to pay any law expenses incurred.

Parnell had not been consulted regarding " The Plan of Campaign," and did not at all approve of it. It certainly, he saw, placed in the hands of the tenantry a power which could not but be at times abused—that of being judges in their own case. Still, he was unable to check the movement, except at the cost of arousing ill-feeling against himself, not only amongst the people, but in the ranks of his own Parliamentary followers.

The "Plan of Campaign " was extensively adopted, and it resulted in some good certainly, but perhaps in more evil. One of its evil effects was the introduction by the Government of a new Coercion Bill (March, 1887). At the time of its introduction there was little crime in Ireland, and outrages were few, much fewer than they had been in 1885, when the party now in power had declined to renew the Crimes' Bill, yet that measure was less drastic than that which they now proposed, and moreover was only temporary, while this was to be perpetual!

Only by this feature and by its severity was the new piece of legislation differentiated from very numerous predecessors. Of the eighty-six years which had elapsed since the legislative Union, only thirteen had been unmarked by some special repressive enactment for Ireland. None of the Acts had effected any good worth mentioning.

Lord Salisbury's Government, however, persevered. The Perpetual Coercion Bill was introduced in March (1887), and, in spite of all the efforts of Irish Nationalists and English Home Rulers, in spite, too, of the proved inaccuracy of many of the statements made in order to show the "lawless "condition of Ireland, it passed by a majority of eighty-seven in July.

Working of the Coercion Act: The Mitchelstown Affray.-By the powers vested in the Lord Lieutenant under the new Act, the Irish Land League was suppressed, its meetings forbidden, and its papers seized. Some of the prosecutions were absurd in the extreme. A boy of ten was summoned for whistling a tune called " Harvey Duff" in the street, with such a threatening air as to " intimidate " a magistrate. An Italian organ-grinder who had taught his monkey to draw a little toy pistol and fire it in the air, was prosecuted under the Arms' Act, and the weapon confiscated. Unfortunately, there was a more tragic side. At a political meeting held in Mitchelstown (Co. Cork) a Government note-taker tried to force his way through a crowd of some 8,000 people. This he failed to do, although no hostility was displayed towards him, as the people were tightly packed and could not move. The police who accompanied the note-taker began to use their batons on the heads of the crowd, who retorted with their sticks. Finally the police retreated

to their barracks and fired from the windows, killing three men.

it not for the priests and a small band of soldiers, who happened to be in the town, and whose officer drew a cordon between the contending parties, many more lives would have been sacrificed, and not improbably the whole body of police been massacred.

The jails were filled with persons indicted for breaches of the new regulations. At one time or other a great number of the Home Rule Members were incarcerated, usually for utterances in political speeches. Still the country became neither more quiet nor more contented; much less more loyal. From the celebrations in honour of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, Ireland stood aloof, feeling that she had little reason to rejoice. As time went on, bringing no improvement, the faith of the English people in the virtues of Coercion became less-Gladstone denounced the proceedings of the police at Mitchelstown; English societies sent resolutions of sympathy to the political prisoners in Irish jails.

The Papal Rescript: "Parnellism and Crime": "The Times " Commission. It now struck the Government authorities that the power of Rome might be enlisted on their side. Negotiations were opened with the Pope (Leo XIII) through some secret agent, and as a result, a Papal Rescript appeared in April, 1888, condemning the methods of the "Plan of Campaign" and the practice of boycotting, as immoral, unjustifiable, and incompatible with the laws of Christian charity. This pronouncement produced little effect. Now, as in the days of O'Connell, the Irish Catholics refused to accept Vatican dictates in affairs other than spiritual.

The increasing friendliness of a large section of the English Liberals with Parnell and his followers was a source of no little annoyance to the Conservatives of the Old School. Their organ was The Times, a newspaper which had always shown itself virulently anti-Irish. During the time that the Coercion Bill was before Parliament, that is to say in the spring of 1887, The Times had published, under the title of "Parnellism and Crime," a series of articles in which it endeavoured to connect the Irish Parliamentary Party, at least indirectly, with the perpetration of outrages in Ireland. On the very day that the Bill was to be read for the second time, it printed what purported to be a letter written by Parnell himself to a friend, in which he excused himself for his public condemnation of the Phoenix Park murders, as being a necessary piece of policy, but added that, in his opinion, Mr. Burke, at least, had got no more than he deserved." That same day Parnell himself, speaking in the House of Commons, declared the letter to be a forgery. The Times however, insisted on its authenticity, and was pretty generally believed. Other letters were produced or stated to exist.

At first Parnell did not appear inclined to take much notice of the

affair, but finally he applied (July, 1888) for a Parliamentary inquiry. His request was granted, and the Commission began its sittings in October 1888, and continued them for over a year.

It was not long before, by the aid chiefly of Michael Davitt, the true origin of the letters became known to Parnell. The agent of The Times had, it appeared, bought them for the sum of £2,500 from a certain Richard Pigott, who had formerly been the proprietor of an Irish paper of extreme views, but who had got into pecuniary difficulties, and had lived for years by the writing of begging letters and kindred devices. Pigott was known to be a man of low character and in desperate straits for money. The story which he told of the manner in which the letters had come into his possession was improbable to the verge of absurdity. The letters themselves were not convincing; they contained mistakes in spelling unlikely to be made by any man of education. All these circumstances should have made those acting for The Times at least wait for some proof of authenticity, but this they did not do. When (February, 1889) Pigott was placed in the witness-box, his story did not long withstand the cross examination of Sir Charles Russell. His confusion, his contradictory statements, soon made the true state of the case apparent. Finally, during an adjournment, he betook himself to the house of Mr. Labouchere, a leading Liberal journalist, and there, in the presence of a witness, made a full confession of his guilt, telling how he had forged the letters, copying, so far as he could, the handwriting of Parnell and of Egan, Secretary of the League. The confession was written out by Labouchere and signed by Pigott. The wretched forger fled to the Continent; a warrant was issued for his arrest, but he shot himself in an hotel in Madrid (March, 188).

The Commission continued its sitting for several months.

Early in 1890 it issued its report, exonerated "Parnell and the other respondents" from the charge made against them of complicity with the Phoenix Park murders or connection with the Invincibles. It added, however, that they did "enter into a conspiracy by a system of coercion and intimidation to promote an agrarian agitation against the payment of agricultural rents." That they had done this was scarcely denied or deniable, and their acquittal on the other charge was regarded as practically a complete victory. That it was so regarded in England was evident from the enthusiastic reception accorded to Parnell in the House of Commons on his first appearance there after the verdict had been made public. Against The Times he threatened an action for libel, which the proprietors settled out of court by the payment of £5,000.