ard words, the
suspensions, the imprisonments--all mechanically acquiesced in by the
ministerial majority--had engendered both bitterness and contempt. The
Irishmen did not conceal the satisfaction with which they saw the defeat
of some of those liberals who had openly gloated over their arrests and
all the rest of their humiliations. Mr. Gladstone, it is true, had laid a
heavy and chastening hand upon them. Yet, even when the struggle had been
fiercest, with the quick intuition of a people long oppressed, they
detected a note of half-sympathetic passion which convinced them that he
would be their friend if he could, and would help them when he might.

Mr. Parnell was not open to impressions of this order. He had a long
memory for injuries, and he had by no means satisfied himself that the
same injuries might not recur. As soon as the general election was over,
he had at once set to work upon the result. Whatever might be right for
others, his line of tactics was plain--to ascertain from which of the two
English parties he was most likely to obtain the response that he desired
to the Irish demand, and then to concert the procedure best fitted to
place that party in power. He was at first not sure whether Lord Salisbury
would renounce the Irish alliance after it had served the double purpose
of ousting the liberals from office, and then reducing their numbers at
the election. He seems also to have counted upon further communications
with Lord Carnarvon, and this expectation was made known to Mr. Gladstone,
who expressed his satisfaction at the news, though it was also made known
to him that Mr. Parnell doubted (M102) Lord Carnarvon's power to carry out
his unquestionably favourable dispositions. He at the same time very
naturally did his best to get some light as to Mr. Gladstone's own frame
of mind. If neither party would offer a solution of the problem of Irish
government, Mr. Parnell would prefer to keep the tories in office, as they
would at least work out gradually a solution of the problems of Irish
land. To all these indirect communications Mr. Gladstone's consistent
reply was that Mr. Parnell's immediate business was with the government of
the day, first, because only the government could handle the matter;
second, because a tory government with the aid that it would receive from
liberals, might most certainly, safely, and quickly settle it. He declined
to go beyond the ground already publicly taken by him, unless