n this matter from the three persons in the House of
Commons with whom on this point he took counsel.

II

The prudent decision against bringing a fierce political controversy
before an English judge and jury was in a few months brought to nought,
from motives that have remained obscure, and with results that nobody
could foresee. The next act in the drama was the institution of
proceedings for libel against the _Times_ in November 1887, by an Irishman
who had formerly sat in parliament as a political follower of Mr. Parnell.
The newspaper met him by denying that the articles on _Parnellism and
Crime_ related to him. It went on to plead that the statements in the
articles were true in substance and in fact. The action was tried before
Lord Coleridge in July 1888, and the newspaper was represented by the
advocate who happened to be the principal law officer of the crown. The
plaintiff's counsel picked out certain passages, said that his client was
one of the persons intended to be libelled, and claimed damages. He was
held to have made an undoubted _prima facie_ case on the two libels in
which he had been specifically named. This gave the enemy his chance. The
attorney general, speaking for three days, opened the whole case for the
newspaper; repeated and enlarged upon the charges and allegations in its
articles; stated the facts which he proposed to give in evidence; sought
to establish that the fac-simile letter was really signed by Mr. Parnell;
and finally put forward other letters, now produced for the first time,
which carried complicity and connivance to a further point. These charges
he said that he should prove. On the third day he entirely changed his
tack. Having launched this mass of criminating imputation, he then
suddenly bethought him, so he said, of the hardships which his course
would entail upon the Irishmen, and asked that in that action he should
not be called upon to prove anything at all. The Irishmen and their leader
remained under a load of odium that the law officer of the crown had cast
upon them, and declined to substantiate.

The production of this further batch of letters stirred Mr. Parnell from
his usual impassiveness. His former determination to sit still was shaken.
The day after the attorney general's speech, he came to the present writer
to say that he thought of sending a paragraph to the newspapers that
night, with an announcement of his intention to bring an action against
the