here stood apart, in open and flaming disaffection,
the Protestant minority in Ireland, who were in a state of stark
terror that the Home Rule Bill of 1886 meant the end of everything for
them--the end of their brutal ascendancy and probably also the
confiscation of their property and the ruin of their social position.

Then, as on a more recent occasion, preparations for civil war were
going on in Ulster, largely of English Party manufacture, and more
with an eye to British Party purposes than because of any sincere
convictions on the rights of the ascendancy element. Still the Grand
Old Man carried on his indomitable campaign for justice to Ireland,
notwithstanding the unfortunate cleavage which had taken place in the
ranks of his own Party, and it does not require any special gift of
prevision to assert, nor is it any unwarrantable assumption on the
facts to say, that the alliance between the Liberal and Irish Parties
would inevitably have triumphed as soon as a General Election came had
not the appalling misunderstanding as to Gladstone's "Nullity of
Leadership" letter flung everything into chaos and irretrievably
ruined the hopes of Ireland for more than a generation.

And this brings me to what I regard as the greatest of Irish
tragedies--the deposition and the dethronement of Parnell under
circumstances which will remain for all time a sadness and a sorrow to
the Irish race.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Devoy, although banished, did turn up secretly in Mayo
when the Land League was being organised, and his orders were supreme
with the secret societies.]

CHAPTER II

A LEADER IS DETHRONED!

In the cabin, in the shieling, in the home of the "fattest" farmer, as
well as around the open hearth of the most lowly peasant, in town and
country, wherever there were hearts that hoped for Irish liberty and
that throbbed to the martial music of "the old cause," the name of
Parnell was revered with a devotion such as was scarcely ever rendered
to any leader who had gone before him. A halo of romance had woven
itself around his figure and all the poetry and passion of the mystic
Celtic spirit went forth to him in the homage of a great loyalty and
regard. The title of "The Uncrowned King of Ireland" was no frothy
exuberance as applied to him--for he was in truth a kingly man, robed
in dignity, panoplied in power, with a grand and haughty bearing
towards the e