In the Corn Exchange, Mr. Parnell spoke after a very
moderate and almost apologetic address from the chairman, Lord Aberdeen, and he too adopted a tone of apology for some of the earlier proceedings of the Land League. "The movement of the Land League was undoubtedly to some extent a turbulent movement," but "you must take a popular movement as a whole, you must judge it by the circumstances, and by what it led to." "If there was anything to be regretted, anything to be avoided in the movement, you have to go back and blame the originators of the movement, the hereditary legislators who deliberately in 1880, in the face of the warning of Mr. Forster and of all who knew the state of Ireland only too well, shut the door of the Constitution in the face of the Irish people, and bade them rely on their own resources rather than on anything they could hope for or expect from Parlia- ment." That, as Mr. Parnell explained, referred to the rejec- tion of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill by the House of Lords. But he did not explain that he himself did all he could to weaken Mr. Forster's hands, partly by overbidding him, partly by announcing his indifference to the Bill when his bids were rejected by the Government, and before the Bill went to the House of Lords. Probably Mr. Parnell was never so well pleased with the House of Lords as when they rejected that Bill. He himself struck at it first. They only gave it the coup de grace.
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