no longer have the charm of
free consent, nor be regulated by the counsels of prudent statesmanship.

The defeat of the Liberals had been primarily due to the revolt on the
part of the radical section over the question of whether a new Coercion
Bill should be introduced. In the light of this fact special importance
was attached to the declaration, made in the House of Lords, as to the
Irish policy of the Government, the more so because in an unprecedented
manner not the Premier but the Viceroy was the spokesman. He began by a
repudiation of coercion, with which he declared the recent
enfranchisement of the Irish people would not be consistent. "My Lords,"
he went on to say, speaking of the general question, "I do not believe
that with honesty and singlemindedness of purpose on the one side, and
with the willingness of the Irish people on the other, it is hopeless to
look for some satisfactory solution of this terrible question. My
Lords, these I believe to be the opinions and views of my colleagues."

A further step in securing Irish support occurred at the end of July,
and perhaps of all the strange events which have occurred in the
government of Ireland it is the strangest. Lord Carnarvon solicited
through one of his colleagues, and obtained, an interview with Mr.
Parnell, and the circumstances under which this occurred between the
Queen's Lord Lieutenant and the leader to whom men attributed treason
and condoning assassinations is perhaps the most curious part of the
whole story.

The meeting took place at the very end of the London season, not in the
Houses of Parliament nor in a club of which one or other of the parties
was a member, but in an empty house in Grosvenor Square, from which all
the servants had gone away. It is a piquant feature of the event,
shrouded as it was with all these circumstances of mystery, that the
gentleman who was in the secret and offered his house for the meeting
was no other than that rigid Imperialist, Col. Sir Howard Vincent, who
had only the year before retired from the Criminal Investigation
Department at Scotland Yard. When the occurrence of this interview
became known, nearly a year later, Mr. Parnell declared--and the fact
was never denied by Lord Carnarvon--that the latter had pronounced
himself in favour of an Irish Parliament with the power of protecting
Irish industries. The insistence by the Viceroy that he spoke only for
himself appeared to the Irish leader to be mere f