to be
leading his nation to victory, and who had begun to be admired and
honoured by one of the two great historic English parties.

Parnell was not only versed in the rules of parliamentary procedure,
but also a consummate master of parliamentary tactics. Soon after he
entered the House of Commons he detected its weak point, and perfected
a system of obstruction which so destroyed the efficiency of its
time-honoured modes of doing business that new sets of rules, each
more stringent than the preceding, had to be devised between 1878 and
1888. The skill with which he handled his small but well-disciplined
battalion was admirable. He was strict with individuals, requiring
absolute obedience to the party rules, but ready to gratify any
prevailing current of feeling when he saw that this could be done
without harm to the cause. More than once, when English members who
happened to be acting with him on some particular question pressed him
to keep his men quiet and let a division be taken at once, he answered
that they were doubtless right in thinking that the moment for
securing a good division had arrived, but that he must not muzzle his
followers when they wanted to have their fling. The best proof of the
tact with which he ruled a section comprising many men of brilliant
talents lies in the fact that there was no serious revolt, or movement
towards revolt, against him until the breach of 1890 between himself
and the Liberal party had led to the belief that his continued
leadership would mean defeat at the polls in Great Britain, and the
postponement, perhaps for many years, of Home Rule for Ireland.

Parnell's political views and tendencies were eagerly canvassed by
those who had studied him closely. Many, among both Englishmen and
Irishmen, held that he was at heart a Conservative, valuing strong
government and attached to the rights of property. They predicted that
if an Irish Parliament had been established, as proposed by Mr.
Gladstone in 1886, and an Irish cabinet formed to administer the
affairs of the island, Parnell would have been the inevitable and
somewhat despotic leader of the party of authority and order. His
co-operation with the agrarian agitators from 1879 onwards was in this
view merely a politic expedient to gain support for the Home Rule
campaign. For this theory there is much to be said. Though he came to
lead a revolution, and was willing, as appeared in the last few months
of his life, to appeal