e clamour of
English Puritan moralists. O'Brien and Dillon and other leading
Irishmen were in America whilst passions were being excited and events
marching to destruction over here. "The knives were out," as one fiery
protagonist of the day rather savagely declared. It is, as I have
already inferred, now made abundantly clear that Gladstone would not
have included in his letter the famous "Nullity of Leadership" passage
if other counsels had not overborne his own better judgment.

It was this letter of Gladstone which set the ball rolling against
Parnell. Up till then the members of the Irish Party and the Irish
people were solidly and, indeed, defiantly with him. No doubt Michael
Davitt joined with such zealots as the Rev. Mr Price Hughes and W.T.
Stead in demanding the deposition of Parnell, but one need not be
uncharitable in saying that Davitt had his quarrels with Parnell--and
serious ones at that--on the Land Question and other items of the
national demand, and he was, besides, a man of impetuous temperament,
not overmuch given to counting the consequences of his actions.

Then there came the famous, or infamous, according as it be viewed,
struggle in Committee Room 15 of the House of Commons, when, by a
majority of 45 to 29, it was finally decided to declare the chair
vacant, after a battle of unusual ferocity and personal bitterness.
And now a new element of complication was added to the already
sufficiently poignant tragedy by the entry of the Irish Catholic
bishops on the scene. Hitherto they had refrained, with admirable
restraint, from interference, and they had done nothing to intensify
the agonies of the moment. It will always remain a matter for regret
that they did not avail themselves of a great opportunity, and their
own unparalleled power with the people, to mediate in the interests of
peace--whilst their mediation might still avail. But unfortunately,
with one notable exception, they united in staking the entire power of
the Church on the dethronement of Parnell. The effect was twofold. It
added fresh fury to the attacks of those who were howling for the head
of their erstwhile chieftain and who were glad to add the thunderbolts
of the Church to their own feebler weapons of assault; but the more
permanent effect, and, indeed, the more disastrous, was the doubt it
left on the minds of thousands of the best Irishmen whether there was
not some malign plot in which the Church was associated with the
b