an Irishman who did not allow moral authority to the
Act of Union. In my opinion the Englishman has far more cause to blush for
the means by which that Act was obtained." As it happened, on the only
occasion on which Mr. Gladstone paid the Commission a visit, he had found
the attorney general cross-examining a leading Irish member, and this
passage of arms on the Act of Union between counsel and witness then
occurred.

The second finding of censure was that the Irish members incited to
intimidation by speeches, knowing that intimidation led to crime. The
third was that they never placed themselves on the side of law and order;
they did not assist the administration, and did not denounce the party of
physical force. As if this, said Mr. Gladstone, had not been the subject
of incessant discussion and denunciation in parliament at the time ten
years ago, and yet no vote of condemnation was passed upon the Irish
members then. On the contrary, the tory party, knowing all these charges,
associated with them for purposes of votes and divisions; climbed into
office on Mr. Parnell's shoulders; and through the viceroy with the
concurrence of the prime minister, took Mr. Parnell into counsel upon the
devising of a plan for Irish government. Was parliament now to affirm and
record a finding that it had scrupulously abstained from ever making its
own, and without regard to the counter-allegation that more crime and
worse crime was prevented by agitation? It was the duty of parliament to
look at the whole of the facts of the great crisis of 1880-1--to the
distress, to the rejection of the Compensation bill, to the growth of
evictions, to the prevalence of excessive rents. The judges expressly shut
out this comprehensive survey. But the House was not a body with a limited
commission; it was a body of statesmen, legislators, politicians, bound to
look at the whole range of circumstances, and guilty of misprision of
justice if they failed so to do. "Suppose I am told," he said in notable
and mournful words, "that without the agitation Ireland would never have
had the Land Act of 1881, are you prepared to deny that? I hear no
challenges upon that statement, for I think it is generally and deeply
felt that without the agitation the Land Act would not have been passed.
As the man responsible more than any other for the Act of 1881--as the man
whose duty it was to consider that question day and night during nearly
the whole of that session--