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The Green Bag,
THE STORY OF THE PARNELL COMMISSION. NOW that the dust and heat created by the Parnell Commission have some what subsided, and with Mr. Gladstone's retirement from public life men's thoughts are beginning to turn, with a sense of relief, to a reconstruction of parties and to the birth and realization of new political ideas, it may be possible to tell the story of the Parnell Commission, without bitterness or exaggeration. During the stormy years of Irish agrarian discontent that followed the defeat of the Beaconsfield ministry, and Mr. Gladstone's accession to power, in 1880, both Mr. Gladstone himself and his Home Secre tary (Sir William Harcourt) and Irish Secretary (Mr. W. E. Forster) repeatedly characterized the Irish nationalist move ment in terms which implied that it was intimately associated with, if not pro ductive of, and, in any event, largely re sponsible for, the crimes that devastated Irish society. Thus Mr. Gladstone de scribed Mr. Parnell as the grand apostle of the doctrine of public plunder, and his party as marching through rapine to the disin tegration of the Empire. Sir William Har court stated that they were " steeped to the lips in treason"; and Mr. Forster denounced in no measured terms their silence while outrages of the worst kind were being per petrated in the Emerald Isle, in alleged furtherance of the nationalist movement. These accusations reached their greatest volume and deepest intensity immediately after the foul murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish (the Duke of Devonshire's brother and then Chief Secretary for Ire land), and Mr. Burke, the permanent under-secretary at Dublin Castle, by the Phoenix Park conspirators. In 1885, Mr. Gladstone's Government were defeated on their budget, and after a brief interregnum
under Lord Salisbury's premiership, there was an appeal to the country, with the result that the two great parties in the State — the Liberals and the Conservatives — were almost equally represented in the House of Commons, so that the Irish members practically enjoyed the casting vote. Under these circumstances, Lord Salisbury did not resign office, Parliament was re-opened, and the Government an nounced in the Queen's speech their in tention of strengthening the criminal law in Ireland by the enactment of another (so called) "Coercion" Bill. Immediately an amendment was moved to the address by Mr. Jesse Collings, regretting that no men tion had been made in the Queen's speech of allotments for agricultural laborers; on this "three acres and a cow" question, as it has been facetiously styled, the Irish members voted against the Government, and the Salisbury ministry ceased to exist. Speculation was rife as to the nature of the consideration which had 'moved' from the Liberal opposition to the Irish members in order to secure their support, but nothing was known for some time. At length an enterprising Conservative newspaper an nounced that Mr. Gladstone had became a Home Ruler. The suggestion was promptly denied by the official organs of the party; but when Parliament reassem bled the rumor was speedily verified; and the Home Rule Bill of 1886 was produced. It was defeated in the House of Commons by a majority of about thirty. There was a fresh dissolution of Parliament and Lord Salisbury was returned to power and to the double offices of Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary (for which last position he pos sesses almost unique qualification) with a majority of nearly one hundred. The post of Chief Secretary for Ireland fell to Sir
