LETTERS TO TIIE EDITOR.
WHY MR. FORSTER RESIGNED.
[To THE EDTPOR OF TEE "BrzorsToa."1 Sut,—As a rule, the public are apt to take their impressions of what passes in Parliament from the leading articles of the papers they read rather than from a perusal of Members' speeches. It has thus come to be believed that Mr. Forster resigned office because his colleagues insisted on making a bargain with Mr. Parnell as a condition of his release from prison, while Mr. Forster would not release him on any con- dition. The facts are precisely the contrary. It was Mr. Forster who wished to come to an understanding with Mr. Parnell and other leading suspects. It was Mr. Forster's colleagues who refused to have any bargaining. Here are Mr. Forster's own words, as reported in the Times of May 5,1882, in the speech in which he explained the cause of his resignation :—" There are three conditions, either of which I should regard as a fair ground for releasing them." The conditions were, " a public promise on their part; Ireland quiet; or the acquisition of fresh powers
by the Government. I am told that hopes are held out to us that there will be a change on the part of himself [Parnell] and his colleagues But what I want is an avowal of a change, a promise to help the Government, if the Government do something, an undertaking to uphold the Government in enforcing the law."
On a subsequent occasion Mr. Forster declared that he " was not very exigeant in his demands" on Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and O'Kelly, as a condition of their release. " As I should be very sorry," he said, "to say anything disrespectful of those gentlemen, I was willing to take their word." The difference between Mr. Forster and his colleagues is, therefore, reduced to this. He thought, as did his colleagues, that "if they [i.e., Mr. Parnell and his two friends] could be released with safety, they ought to be released." His guarantee for safety was either
Ireland pacified; or a public confession of wrong-doing, coupled with a promise of good behaviour for the future on the part of Mr. Parnell and his friends ; or the passing of the Prevention of Crimes Act. On obtaining of any one of these conditions, Mr. Forster was willing to open the doors of Kilmainham Prison.
Mr. Forster's colleagues, on the other hand, decided that they ought to let out Mr. Parnell and his friends without any understanding or condition whatsoever, the moment they received authentic information that Mr. Parnell and his friends were favourable to the policy of putting down the outrages. To have kept them in prison till Ireland was " quiet " was an absurd impossibility, for they must have been released in any case within five months, by the lapse of Mr. Forster's Coercion Act. To have exacted a humiliating confession of sins and a promise of good-conduct in future would have been to destroy Mr. Parnell's influence for good, if he were ever so anxious to put down crime. And to have kept him and his friends in prison till the Prevention of Crimes Act became law would practically have been to keep them in prison till they must have been let out in any case by the expiration of the power to imprison them. How much wiser was the conduct of the Government, as explained by Lord Hartington in the same de- bate ! " There was no understanding whatever," he said, with Mr. Parnell, or any of the Land-leaguers. But " when the moment arrived when we could no longer say that their con- tinued imprisonment was required for the safety of the country, then we were not only justified, but absolutely compelled to agree to their release,"—surely a nobler and wiser policy than a haggling over impracticable conditions. And it is a policy which has been amply vindicated by events. It is a lurid proof of the utter inefficiency of Mr. Forster's Coercion Act and its administration that he let out of prison James Carey, Mr. Sheridan, and Mr. M'Cafferty, the triumvirate who, according to Carey's evidence, organised the Phcenix Park murders.
Anybody who will take the trouble to read the whole debate will see that the above statement is an accurate summary of the facts. There was absolutely no connection between the Arrears Act and Mr. Parnell's release. No promise of any kind was exacted or given on either side. The Government made up its mind and announced its intention to pass the Arrears Act be- • fore the Kilmainham negotiations were thought of.—I am, Sir,
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