I must record my firm opinion that it would not
have become the law of the land, if it had not been for the agitation with
which Irish society was convulsed."(257)

This bare table of his leading points does nothing to convey the
impression made by an extraordinarily fine performance. When the speaker
came to the findings of acquittal, to the dismissal of the infamous
charges of the forged letters, of intimacy with the Invincibles, of being
(M148) accessory to the assassinations in the Park, glowing passion in
voice and gesture reached its most powerful pitch, and the moral appeal at
its close was long remembered among the most searching words that he had
ever spoken. It was not forensic argument, it was not literature; it had
every note of true oratory--a fervid, direct and pressing call to his
hearers as "individuals, man by man, not with a responsibility diffused
and severed until it became inoperative and worthless, to place himself in
the position of the victim of this frightful outrage; to give such a
judgment as would bear the scrutiny of the heart and of the conscience of
every man when he betook himself to his chamber and was still."

The awe that impressed the House from this exhortation to repair an
enormous wrong soon passed away, and debate in both Houses went on the
regular lines of party. Everything that was found not to be proved against
the Irishmen, was assumed against them. Not proven was treated as only an
evasive form of guilty. Though the three judges found that there was no
evidence that the accused had done this thing or that, yet it was held
legitimate to argue that evidence must exist--if only it could be found.
The public were to nurse a sort of twilight conviction and keep their
minds in a limbo of beliefs that were substantial and alive--only the light
was bad.

In truth, the public did what the judges declined to do. They took
circumstances into account. The general effect of this transaction was to
promote the progress of the great unsettled controversy in Mr. Gladstone's
sense. The abstract merits of home rule were no doubt untouched, but it
made a difference to the concrete argument, whether the future leader of
an Irish parliament was a proved accomplice of the Park murderers or not.
It presented moreover the chameleon Irish case in a new and singular
colour. A squalid insurrection awoke parliament to the mischiefs and
wrongs of the Irish cultivators. Reluctantly it provided a remedy.