against the "Times."]

The Crimes Act was now hurried through Parliament in spite of the
strenuous opposition of the Irish party. Already the Land League had
been proclaimed as an illegal association after the issue of the "No
Rent" manifesto, but early in 1884 the Nationalists succeeded in
reviving it under the name of the National League, and Mr. Parnell was
elected its president. The year before the sum of L35,000, mostly raised
in America, had been presented to him by his admirers. After an
unsuccessful attempt to make terms with the Conservatives, in the course
of which he had a famous interview with Lord Carnarvon, the viceroy,
Parnell flung his vote--now eighty-six strong since the lowering of the
franchise--into the Liberal scale and so brought about the fall of the
short-lived first Salisbury government. Mr. Parnell nominated the
greater number of Nationalist candidates for the Irish constituencies,
and the firm hand with which he controlled his party was seen in the
promptitude with which he crushed a revolt of Healy and Biggar against
his nomination of Captain O'Shea for Galway.

Mr. Gladstone's views on the question of Home Rule had by this time
undergone a complete change, and accordingly he introduced a Home Rule
Bill which was defeated owing to the defection of a large number of
Liberal members headed by Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain. The
consequent appeal to the country (July, 1886) gave Lord Salisbury a
Unionist majority of over a hundred votes, and threw Parnell into a
close alliance with Mr. Gladstone and the portion of the Liberal party
that adhered to him. It was at this period that the _Times_ newspaper
published its series of articles entitled "Parnellism and Crime"--a
tremendous indictment against the chief Nationalist leaders, the most
startling point in which was a series of letters published in
fac-simile, one, signed by Parnell, expressing approval of Mr. Burke's
murder. After an elaborate trial (extending to one hundred and
twenty-eight days), the most sensational event in which was the
breakdown under cross-examination, and the flight and suicide at Madrid,
of Pigott, the wretched Irishman who had imposed upon the _Times_ with
forgeries, Mr. Parnell was formally cleared of the charge of having been
personally guilty of organizing outrages, but his party were declared to
have been guilty of incitements to intimidation, out of which had grown
crimes which they had failed to denounce. P