Ireland Since Parnell | Page 8

hope in every honest Irish heart that a way out might be
found which would not involve our incomparable leader in further
humiliations. But alas for our hopes! The hemlock had to be drained to
the last bitter drop. Meanwhile Parnell never rested day or night. He
rushed from one end of the country to the other, addressing meetings,
fighting elections, stimulating his followers, answering his defamers
and all the time exhausting the scant reserves of strength that were left
him.
Considering all the causes of his downfall in the light of later events the
alliance of the Irish Party with English Liberalism was, in my judgment,
the primary factor. Were it not for this entanglement or obligation--call
it what you will--the Gladstone letter would never have been written.
And even that letter was no sufficient justification for throwing Parnell
overboard. If it were a question of the defeat of the Home Rule cause
and the withdrawal of Mr Gladstone from the leadership of the Liberal
Party, something may be said for it, but the words actually used by Mr
Gladstone were: "The continuance of Parnell's leadership would render
my retention of the leadership of the Liberal Party almost a nullity." Be
it observed, Gladstone did not say he was going to retire from
leadership; nor did he say he was going to abandon Home Rule--to
forsake a principle founded on justice and for which he had divided the

Liberal Party and risked his own reputation as a statesman.
To think that Gladstone meant this is not alone inconceivable, but
preposterous. And, indeed, it has been recently made abundantly clear
in Lord Morley's book of personal reminiscences that the Parnell Split
need never have taken place at all had steps been taken by any
responsible body of intermediaries to obtain Gladstone's real views. We
now know it for absolute fact that Gladstone had had actually struck
out of his letter as prepared by him for publication the fatal and fateful
passage and that it was only reinserted at Mr John Morley's dictation.
Mr Morley's own narrative of the circumstances deserves quotation:
"At 8 to dinner in Stratton Street. I sat next to Granville and next to him
was Mr G. We were all gay enough and as unlike as possible to a
marooned crew. Towards the end of the feast Mr G. handed to me, at
the back of Granville's chair, the draft of the famous letter in an
unsealed envelope. While he read the Queen's speech to the rest I
perused and reperused the letter. Granville also read it. I said to Mr G.
across Granville: 'But you have not put in the very thing that would be
most likely of all things to move him,' referring to the statement in the
original draft, that Parnell's retention would mean the nullity of
Gladstone's leadership. Harcourt again regretted that it was addressed
to me and not to P. and agreed with me that it ought to be strengthened
as I had indicated if it was meant really to affect P.'s mind. Mr G. rose,
went to the writing-table and with me standing by wrote, on a sheet of
Arnold M.'s grey paper, the important insertion. I marked then and
there under his eyes the point at which the insertion was to be made and
put the whole into my pocket. Nobody else besides H. was consulted
about it, or saw it."
Thus the fate of a great man and, to a very considerable extent also, the
destiny of an ancient nation was decided by one of those unaccountable
mischances which are the weapons of Fate in an inscrutable world. I
think that to-day Ireland generally mourns it that Parnell should ever
have been deposed in obedience to a British mandate--or perhaps, as
those who conscientiously opposed Mr Parnell at the time might prefer
to term it, because of their fidelity to a compact honestly entered into

with the Liberal Party--an alliance which they no doubt believed to be
essential to the grant of Home Rule.
We have since learned, through much travail and disappointment, what
little faith can be reposed in the most emphatic pledges of British
Parties or leaders, and we had been wiser in 1890 if we had taken sides
with Parnell against the whole world had the need arisen. As it was,
fought on front and flank, with the thunders of the Church, and the
ribaldry of malicious tongues to scatter their venomed darts abroad,
Parnell was a doomed man. Not that he lacked indomitable courage or
loyal support. But his frail body was not equal to the demands of the
undaunted spirit upon it, and so he went to his grave broken but not
beaten--great even in that last desperate stand he had made for his own
position,