serious and formal attempt was ever made on either side to prevent
the liberal unionists from hardening into a separate species. When they
became accomplices in coercion, they cut off the chances of re-union.
Coercion was the key to the new situation. Just as at the beginning of
1886, the announcement of it by the tory government marked the parting of
the ways, so was it now.

II

We must now with reasonable cheerfulness turn our faces back towards
Ireland. On the day of his return from (M131) Ireland (August 17, 1886)
Mr. Parnell told me that he was quite sure that rents could not be paid in
the coming winter, and if the country was to be kept quiet, the government
would have to do something. He hoped that they would do something;
otherwise there would be disturbance, and that he did not want. He had
made up his mind that his interests would be best served by a quiet
winter. For one thing he knew that disturbance would be followed by
coercion, and he knew and often said that of course strong coercion must
always in the long run win the day, little as the victory might be worth.
For another thing he apprehended that disturbance might frighten away his
new political allies in Great Britain, and destroy the combination which
he had so dexterously built up. This was now a dominant element with him.
He desired definitely that the next stage of his movement should be in the
largest sense political and not agrarian. He brought two or three sets of
proposals in this sense before the House, and finally produced a Tenants
Relief bill. It was not brilliantly framed. For in truth it is not in
human nature, either Irish or any other, to labour the framing of a bill
which has no chance of being seriously considered.

The golden secret of Irish government was always to begin by trying to
find all possible points for disagreement with anything that Mr. Parnell
said or proposed, instead of seeking whether what he said or proposed
might not furnish a basis for agreement. The conciliatory tone was soon
over, and the Parnell bill was thrown out. The Irish secretary denounced
it as permanently upsetting the settlement of 1881, as giving a death-blow
to purchase, and as produced without the proof of any real grounds for a
general reduction in judicial rents. Whatever else he did, said Sir
Michael Hicks Beach, he would never agree to govern Ireland by a policy of
blackmail.(224)

A serious movement followed the failure of the gover