person, who had audience of great
Trades' Union gatherings, he was observed with some interest by the late
Parliament, busy with speculations on the character of the new
Electorate. But, if his parliamentary work had been slight, he had
considerable literary reputation, and had taken an active part, in the
press, in discussions on the Irish question. The apologist of Danton,
the champion of the Jacobin Club, he was the one English political
writer who believed himself able to find in the throes of the French
Revolution valuable examples of public policy. The figures of that
terrible convulsion did not attract him so much by their range of human
passion, by the largeness of the space they filled in a great drama of
humanity. It was their fanaticism which inspired him. Their capacity to
combine, with the perpetration of atrocious crimes, an ardent apostolate
of abstract ideals, had for him a vivid fascination. A gentle critic of
Robespierre, he could see in the execution of Marie Antoinette traces of
discriminating statesmanship. Entering on political work with such
dispositions, he was early attracted to the seething cauldron of Mr.
Gladstone's Irish policy. Having satisfied himself that Ireland was in a
state of revolution, he regarded murder and robbery as necessary
incidents. When an unfortunate lady driving in the evening along a
country road was shot dead beside her husband, whose only offence was
that of being a landlord, the public were lectured for the inconsequence
of their indignation. On the Dublin conspirators, who were watching to
murder Mr. Forster, were not lost the lessons which Mr. Morley had been
preaching on the vileness of the permanent officials at the Castle. They
determined to murder Mr. Burke, and in killing him slew his companion
also; and Mr. Morley deprecatingly reminded his readers, that the death
of Lord Frederick Cavendish was 'almost an accident.' With these
professed opinions, it was easy for him to acknowledge what Mr.
Gladstone might have hesitated to confess, that Mr. Parnell and the
National League were the true expression of 'the general sense of the
Irish people.'

The Nationalist party had long recognised the value of his aid in
Parliament. They felt the truth of the saying, that he was 'Mr. Parnell
in an Englishman's skin,' and consequently enjoying more freedom of
action, able, on occasion, to do more service for the National League in
a Parnellite Cabinet than Mr. Parnell himsel