its
extravagance, partly because it was in substance stale, the thing missed
fire.

On the day on which the division was to be taken on the second reading of
the Coercion bill, a more formidable bolt was shot. On that morning (April
18th, 1887), there appeared in the newspaper, with all the fascination of
facsimile, a letter alleged to be written by Mr. Parnell. It was dated
nine days after the murders in the Phoenix Park, and purported to be an
apology, presumably to some violent confederate, for having as a matter of
expediency openly condemned the murders, though in truth the writer
thought that one of the murdered men deserved his fate.(244) Special point
was given to the letter by a terrible charge, somewhat obliquely but still
unmistakably made, in an article five or six weeks before, that Mr.
Parnell closely consorted with the leading Invincibles when he was
released on parole in April 1882; that he probably learned from them what
they were about; and that he recognised the murders in the Phoenix Park as
their handiwork.(245) The significance of the letter therefore was that,
knowing the bloody deed to be theirs, he wrote for his own safety to
qualify, recall, and make a humble apology for the condemnation which he
had thought it politic publicly to pronounce. The town was thrown into a
great ferment. At the political clubs and in the lobbies, all was
complacent jubilation on the one side, and consternation on the other.
Even people with whom politics were a minor interest were shocked by such
an exposure of the grievous depravity of man.

Mr. Parnell did not speak until one o'clock in the morning, immediately
before the division on the second reading of the bill. He began amid the
deepest silence. His denial was scornful but explicit. The letter, he
said, was an audacious fabrication. It is fair to admit that the
ministerialists were not without some excuse of a sort for the incredulous
laughter with which they received this repudiation. They put their trust
in the most serious, the most powerful, the most responsible, newspaper in
the world; greatest in resources, in authority, in universal renown.
Neglect of any possible precaution against fraud and forgery in a document
to be used for the purpose of blasting a great political opponent would be
culpable in no common degree. Of this neglect people can hardly be blamed
for thinking that the men of business, men of the world, and men of honour
who were masters o