ame to realise the magnitude of the inquiry, its
vast expense, its interminable length, its unfathomable uncertainties. On
the day appointed for the second reading of the bill appointing the
commission (July 23), some other subject kept the business back until
seven o'clock. Towards six, Mr. Parnell who was to open the debate on his
own side, came to an English friend, to ask whether there would be time
for him to go away for an hour; he wished to examine some new furnace for
assaying purposes, the existence of gold in Wicklow being one of his fixed
ideas. So steady was the composure of this extraordinary man. The English
friend grimly remarked to him that it would perhaps be rather safer not to
lose sight of the furnace in which at any moment his own assaying might
begin. His speech on this critical occasion was not one of his best.
Indifference to his audience often made him meagre, though he was scarcely
ever other than clear, and in this debate there was only one effective
point which it was necessary for him to press. The real issue was whether
the reference to the judges should be limited or unlimited; should be a
fishing inquiry at large into the history of an agrarian agitation ten
years old, or an examination into definite and specified charges against
named members of parliament. The minister, in moving the second reading,
no longer left it to the Irish members to accept or reject; it now rested,
he said, with the House to decide. It became evident that the acuter
members of the majority, fully awakened to the opportunities for
destroying the Irishmen which an unlimited inquisition might furnish, had
made up their minds that no limit should be set to the scope of the
inquisition. Boldly they tramped through a thick jungle of fallacy and
inconsistency. They had never ceased to insist, and they insisted now,
that Mr. Parnell ought to have gone into a court of law. Yet they fought
as hard as they could against every proposal for making the procedure of
the commission like the procedure of a law court. In a court there would
have been a specific indictment. Here a specific indictment was what they
most positively refused, and for it they substituted a roving inquiry,
which is exactly what a court never undertakes. They first argued that
nothing but a commission was available to test the charges against members
of parliament. Then, when they had bethought themselves of further
objects, they argued round that it was un