nemies of his people--in all things a worthy chieftain of
a noble race. The one and only time in life I saw him was when he was
a broken and a hunted man and when the pallor of death was upon his
cheeks, but even then I was impressed by the majesty of his bearing,
the dignity of his poise, the indescribably magnetic glance of his
wondrous eyes, and the lineaments of power in every gesture, every
tone and every movement. He awed and he attracted at the same time. He
stood strikingly out from all others at that meeting at Tralee, where
I was one of a deputation from Killarney who presented him with an
address of loyalty and confidence, which, by the way, I, as a youthful
journalist starting on my own adventurous career, had drafted. It was
one of his last public appearances, and the pity of it all that it
should be so, when we now know, with the fuller light and knowledge
that has been thrown upon that bitterest chapter of our tribulations,
that with the display of a little more reason and a juster
accommodation of temper, Parnell might have been saved for his
country, and the whole history of Ireland since then--if not, indeed,
of the world--changed for the better. But these are vain regrets and
it avails not to indulge them, though it is permissible to say that
the desertion of Parnell brought its own swift retribution to the
people for whom he had laboured so potently and well.

I have read all the authentic literature I could lay hold of bearing
upon the Parnell imbroglio, and it leaves me with the firm conviction
that if there had not been an almost unbelievable concatenation of
errors and misunderstandings and stupid blunderings, Parnell need
never have been sacrificed. And the fact stands out with clearness
that the passage in Gladstone's "Nullity of Leadership" letter, which
was the root cause of all the trouble that followed, would never have
been published were it not that the political hacks, through motives
of party expediency, insisted on its inclusion. That plant of tender
growth--the English Nonconformist conscience--it was that decreed the
fall of the mighty Irish leader.

It is only in recent years that the full facts of what happened during
what is known as "The Parnell Split" have been made public, and these
facts make it quite clear that neither during the Divorce Court
proceedings nor subsequently had Parnell had a fair fighting chance.
Let it be remembered that no leader was ever pursued by such mal