Mr. Parnell deprecated giving to the Irish Parliament any power
of meddling in Imperial concerns, such as the Irish Parliament of 1782 possessed. That be thought a very dangerous power, which he was quite willing to exchange for an Irish Administration dependent on the Irish Parliament. He was very contemptuous on the subject of the Orangemen's threats ; but at the same time took care to intimate that if they acted on those threats, it would be the British power which must interfere to reduce the Orangemen to obedience. He repeated his former account of the Compensation for Disturb- ance Bill of 1880 and the Land Act of 1881, carefully con- cealing the part played by the Irish Members in displaying their indifference to the former measure in its latest stage, and their strenuous efforts to defeat the hitter when Mr. Gladstone (who was not at that time, in Mr. Parnell's eyes, what he is now, "the greatest statesman of the age ") urged it on Parlia- ment, though without actually voting against it. And he broke out into his usual burst of wrath when treating of the Special Commission, the only occasion at Nottingham on which his temper betrayed him. In general, his speech was ostentatiously conciliatory,—indeed, at times almost obse- quious,—to England.
Previous page
