ition of isolation, discredit, and international ill-feeling which
Mr. Parnell had now created, nothing but ruin for the cause. This
deliverance from such a quarter (November 30) showed that either
abdication or deposition was inevitable.

The day after Mr. Parnell's manifesto, the bishops came out of their
shells. Cardinal Manning had more than once written most urgently to the
Irish prelates the moment the decree was known, that Parnell could not be
upheld in London, and that no political expediency could outweigh the
moral sense. He knew well enough that the bishops in (M158) Ireland were
in a very difficult strait, but insisted "that plain and prompt speech was
safest." It was now a case, he said to Mr. Gladstone (November 29), of
_res ad triarios_, and it was time for the Irish clergy to speak out from
the housetops. He had also written to Rome. "Did I not tell you," said Mr.
Gladstone when he gave me this letter to read, "that the Pope would now
have one of the ten commandments on his side?" "We have been slow to act,"
Dr. Walsh telegraphed to one of the Irish members (November 30), "trusting
that the party will act manfully. Our considerate silence and reserve are
being dishonestly misinterpreted." "All sorry for Parnell," telegraphed
Dr. Croke, the Archbishop of Cashel--a manly and patriotic Irishman if ever
one was--"but still, in God's name, let him retire quietly and with good
grace from the leadership. If he does so, the Irish party will be kept
together, the honourable alliance with Gladstonian liberals maintained,
success at general election secured, home rule certain. If he does not
retire, alliance will be dissolved, election lost, Irish party seriously
damaged if not wholly broken up, home rule indefinitely postponed,
coercion perpetuated, evicted tenants hopelessly crushed, and the public
conscience outraged. Manifesto flat and otherwise discreditable." This was
emphatic enough, but many of the flock had already committed themselves
before the pastors spoke. To Dr. Croke, Mr. Gladstone wrote (Dec. 2): "We
in England seem to have done our part within our lines, and what remains
is for Ireland itself. I am as unwilling as Mr. Parnell himself could be,
to offer an interference from without, for no one stands more stoutly than
I do for the independence of the Irish national party as well as for its
unity."

A couple of days later (Dec. 2) a division was taken in Room Fifteen upon
a motion made in Mr. Parne