certain ecclesiastical
dignitaries included by virtue of their office in the upper or protective
branch. All questions of this kind, however, interested him much less than
finance. Into financial issues he threw himself with extraordinary energy,
and he fought for better terms with a keenness and tenacity that almost
baffled the mighty expert with whom he was matched. They only met once
during the weeks of the preparation of the bill, though the indirect
communication was constant. Here is my scanty note of the meeting:--

_April 5._--Mr. Parnell came to my room at the House at 8.30, and
we talked for two hours. At 10.30 I went to Mr. Gladstone next
door, and told him how things stood. He asked me to open the
points of discussion, and into my room we went. He shook hands
cordially with Mr. Parnell, and sat down between him and me. We at
once got to work. P. extraordinarily close, tenacious, and sharp.
It was all finance. At midnight, Mr. Gladstone rose in his chair
and said, "I fear I must go; I cannot sit as late as I used to
do." "Very clever, very clever," he muttered to me as I held open
the door of his room for him. I returned to Parnell, who went on
repeating his points in his impenetrable way, until the policeman
mercifully came to say the House was up.

Mr. Gladstone's own note must also be transcribed:--

_April 5._--Wrote to Lord Spencer. The Queen and ministers. Four
hours on the matter for my speech. 1-1/2 hours with Welby and
Hamilton on the figures. Saw Lord Spencer, Mr. Morley, Mr. A. M.
H. of C., 5-8. Dined at Sir Thomas May's.

1-1/2 hours with Morley and Parnell on the root of the matter;
rather too late for me, 10-1/2-12. A hard day. (_Diary._)

On more than one financial point the conflict went perilously near to
breaking down the whole operation. "If we do not get a right budget," said
Mr. Parnell, "all will go wrong from the very first hour." To the last he
held out that the just proportion of Irish contribution to the imperial
fund was not one-fourteenth or one-fifteenth, but a twentieth or
twenty-first part. He insisted all the more strongly on his own more
liberal fraction, as a partial compensation for their surrender of fiscal
liberty and the right to impose customs duties. Even an hour or two before
the bill was actually to be unfolded to the House, he hurried to the Irish
office in what was for him rather an