LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MR. GLADSTONE AND MR. PARNELL.
[TO THE EDITOR Or THE " SPROTATOR."] Sin,—Knowing, as I do, your old affection for Mr. Gladstone,. and your scrupulous fairness as to his aims and motives, and taking also into account the high moral tone of your paper,.
it is with great pain and astonishment, though in silence, that I have observed the line you have taken all along as to the fall of Mr. Parnell. But the concluding half of your article, in the Spectator of April 15th, entitled " Banquo's Ghost,' obliges me to utter a protest.
I do not care to go into the matter of Mr. Gladstone's. encounter with Mr. Chamberlain on the night of April 10th„ further than to say that, having myself been present at the great speech in Leeds on October 7th, 1881 (not in 1882, as you appear to think), I can assert that it was most un- doubtedly directed against Mr. Parnell,—first, for defying the Land Act, and secondly, for inciting the Irish people to. lawlessness and violence. Certainly this indictment included those whom Mr. Parnell led ; but not by name, and simply as Mr. Parnell's subordinates.
Mr. Gladstone's course of action for the last twelve years with regard to Mr. Parnell has really nothing mysterious about it. It was expressed pithily by himself once, in 1886- or 1887, in private conversation, on being asked how he could now be acting with a man he had once imprisoned. He replied,—" I looked him up in 1881 because he was wrong. I act with him now because he is right. I should lock him up again if I thought he deserved it." What is indeed mysterious is not Mr. Gladstone's line of action, but Mr. Parnell's. No one who closely observed the course of events between 1882' and 1886, can doubt that Mr. Parnell did adopt a new and a "moderating" line from the time he emerged from prison in May, 1882. In the light of subsequent history, it is impossible to guess what his motives were. For most cer- tainly, when his disgrace came, he did his utmost by every- thing he said, wrote, and did, to pull down the edifice he had for five years been assisting to raise. But the fact remains- that during those five years his work was directed to the allaying of race hatreds, to the creation of a Parliamentary party, and to the development of a constitutional demand for self-government throughout Ireland.
You introduce, of course, an element of confusion into your article by speaking of Mr. Gladstone's Leeds speech as the " thunderbolt of 1882," and thus making him stultify himself by his description of Mr. Parnell's influence as " a moderating force" after that year. The "thunderbolt" was launched in 1881.
As to the events of November, 1890, you make insinuations- which are unworthy of you. You imply that the divorce suit (I presume you mean its result) had no effect upon any one at first but the " Nonconformists." It is true that certain leadineNonconformist papers were among the first to speak ; but there was no section of the Liberal Party which did not almost simultaneously take the same line. That the Spectator, of all journals, should hold the opinion that no notice should have been taken of the verdict by the leader of the Liberal Party, is indeed astounding. What would have been the out- cry—the justifiable and righteous outcry-s-of all parties, had Mr. Gladstone adopted such a course P Mr. Parnell's disgrace was a heavy blow to the cause of Home- • rule, and no one was more conscious of this than Mr. Gladstone.. One would have supposed that you, Sir, would have been the first to understand that upon the revival of such painful memories in the form of Mr. Chamberlain's attack, Mr. Gladstone -should have been anxious to speak gently of the " lost leader" now that the grave has closed over him. As to Mr. Glad- stone being "conquered and fascinated by " Mr. Parnell, it is you, Sir, who are conquered and fascinated by your own delu- sions in the matter. Mr. Gladstone was (not "conquered," but) convinced as to Home-rule from no " fascination" for Mr. Parnell (with whom he had no intimate relations, and not more than five private interviews during the whole of the five years), but by the simple prosaic fact that a constitutional demand for it had been made for the first time, and for the 'first time backed by the immense majority of Irish repre- [We differ in tote from our correspondent. Between 1882 and 1890 Mr. Parnell was not, in our opinion, a moderating force at all. He was throughout that time the defender, as he had been the original instigator, of the boycotting policy. He never even uttered so much as a moral condemnation of the .outrages, but only spoke of them as impolitic. Impolicy was the ground, and the only ground, on which he disapproved the "Plan of Campaign." Mr. Gladstone himself re- peatedly apologised both for boycotting and the " Plan of 'Campaign" after he had allied himself with Mr. Parnell, and that is what we referred to, and shall always regard, as evidence of that most unnatural fascination exerted over a great statesman by a selfish and unscrupulous politician. Why should we have thought Mr. Parnell any the worse after 1890 than we thought him before 1890 P The immoralities of his political career were just as visible before as after the trial which revealed the immoralities of his private life.—ED. ,Spectator.]
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