"The surest way to prevent seditions is to take away the matter of them."—LORD BACON.  
 
 
Through the whole of 1880 Parnell was determinedly organizing the Land League throughout Ireland, and during the winter, doubtless encouraged by the enormous distress that prevailed over the whole country, the force and power of the League grew with a rapidity that surpassed even the expectations of Parnell and his party. All through the vacation Parnell and his followers held meetings in carefully calculated areas of Ireland, and in his speeches Parnell explained the meaning and wide-reaching scope of the League's agitation, i.e. that tenant farmers were to trust in their own combination alone and "should give no faith to the promises of the English Ministers."
 
During the early session that year Parnell had introduced a Bill called "Suspension of Ejectments Bill," and this first pressed upon the House the necessity of dealing with the Irish landlord troubles. Parnell's party urged this Bill with so united a front that Mr. Gladstone was obliged to consider the main substance of it, and he agreed to insert a clause in the "Relief of Distress Bill" which would deal with impending evictions of Irish tenants. But the Speaker of the House held that the interpolation of such a clause would not be "in order," and the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. Forster) then, by Mr. Gladstone's direction, brought in his "Disturbances Bill," {79} which was to all practical purposes Parnell's Bill under another name.
 
In the course of the debate on this Bill Mr. Gladstone himself said that "in the circumstances of distress prevalent in Ireland (at that time) a sentence of eviction is the equivalent of a sentence of death." These absolutely true words of Gladstone's were used by Parnell very many times during his Land League tours both in speeches and privately, and many times he added—as so often he did to me at home—bitter comment upon the apathy of the English Government, upon the curious insensibility of the English law-makers, who knew these things to be true in Ireland and yet were content to go on in their policy of drift, unless forced into action by those who saw the appalling reality of the distress among the Irish poor that was so comfortably deplored in London.
 
In this connexion Parnell used to say that the fundamental failure in the English government of Ireland was: First, the complete inability of the Ministers in power to realize anything that was not before their eyes; and, secondly, their cast-iron conviction that Ireland was the one country of the world that was to be understood and governed by those to whom she was little but a name.
 
In all this time of trouble and eviction Parnell went backwards and forwards between England (Eltham) and Ireland as occasion required, and so successful were his efforts in spreading the agitation and linking up the League that the Government became uneasy as to the outcome of this new menace to landlordism. Finally Parnell and fourteen of his followers were put on trial, charged with "conspiracy to impoverish landlords." Parnell, of course, went over to Ireland for these "State trials," but he considered the whole thing such a farce, in that it was {80} an impotent effort of the Government to intimidate him, that he could not take it seriously in any way. No jury (in Ireland) would agree to convict him he was well aware, and he attended the trials chiefly, he said, for the "look of the thing," and to give the support of his presence to his colleagues. Incidentally he told me on one occasion that he had considerably hurried the jury when he was very anxious to catch a train in time for the night mail to England (Eltham) by "willing" them to agree (to disagree) without the long discussion of local politics with which all self-respecting Irish jurors beguile the weary ways of law. He observed that here, in the question of how far an unconscious agent can be "willed" into a desired action, he had discovered another and most entrancing study for us when we had more time to go into it thoroughly.
 
Talking of the Land League's procedure against the interests of the Irish landlords, I may, I think, here pertinently remind those who have, among so many other accusations, brought against Parnell the charge of self-seeking in regard to money matters, that Parnell himself was an Irish landlord and of very considerable estates, and that this land campaign (really, of course, directed against eviction), meant, to all practical purposes, the loss of his rents, and that not only for a time, as in other cases, but, with the very generous interpretation put upon his wishes by the "Chief's" tenants, for all time—or rather for all his lifetime. Captain O'Shea also had certain estates in Ireland, and naturally, not being in sympathy with Parnell's policy, but being at heart a thorough Whig and a strong advocate for Mr. Shaw, the ex-leader of the Irish party, he was furious at the League's anti-landlord work, and refused to have any hand in it. He considered {81} that hapless as was the plight of those who had to pay in rent the money they did not possess, that of the landlord whose rent was his all was but little to be preferred.
 
During this period the stories of the evictions brought home to me by Parnell himself made my heart sick, and often he sat far into the night at Eltham speaking in that low, broken monotone, that with him always betokened intense feeling strongly held in check, of the terrible cruelty of some of the things done in the name of justice in unhappy Ireland. How old people, and sometimes those sick beyond recovery, women with the children they had borne but a few hours before, little children naked as they had come into the world, all thrust out from the little squalid cabins which were all they had for home, thrust out on the roadside to perish, or to live as they could. I in my English ignorance used to say: "Why did they not go into the workhouse or to neighbours?" and Parnell would look wonderingly at me as he told me that for the most part such places were few and far between in Ireland, and "neighbours," good as they were to each other, were in the same trouble. There were instances where a wife would beg, and with none effect, that the bailiffs and police should wait but the little half-hour that her dying husband drew his last breath; and where a husband carried his wife from her bed to the "shelter" of the rainswept moor that their child might be born out of the sight of the soldiers deputed to guard the officials who had been sent to pull their home about their ears. And, remembering these and so many other tales of some of the 50,000 evictions that he afterwards calculated had taken place in Ireland, I have never wondered at the implacable hatred of England that can never really die out of the Irish heart.
 
{82}
On December 4th, 1880, he wrote to me from Dublin:
 
I was exceedingly pleased to receive your letters; to say the truth, I have been quite homesick since leaving Eltham, and news from you seems like news from home.
 
The Court refused our application to-day for a postponement of the trial (of the Land League), but this we expected, and it does not much signify, as it turns out that we need not necessarily attend the trial unless absolutely directed to do so by the Court.
 
You will also be pleased to hear that the special jury panel, of which we obtained a copy last night, is of such a character as in the opinion of competent judges to give us every chance of a disagreement by the jury in their verdict, but we cannot, of course, form an absolute conclusion until the jury has been sworn, when we shall be able to tell pretty certainly one way or the other.
 
Since writing Captain O'Shea it does not look as if I could get further away from Ireland than London, as Paris is inconvenient from its distance.
 
I have no letter from him yet in reply to mine.
 
 
And again on the 9th:—
 
I returned from Waterford last night, and shall probably get through all necessary work here by Saturday evening so as to enable me to start for London on Sunday morning. I do not know how long I can remain in London, but shall run down and see you on Monday, and perhaps my plans will be more fixed by that time.
 
I have decided not to attend any more meetings until after the opening of Parliament, as everything now can go on without me.
 
Kindly inform Captain O'Shea that the meeting of Irish members will be in Dublin on the 4th January.
 
 
 
On December 12th of that year Mr. Parnell wrote from Avondale to say that the jury panel was to be struck on the following Monday for the prosecution of the Land League.
 
{83}
... And it will be necessary for me to see it before giving final directions.
 
I have consequently postponed my departure till Monday evening.
 
I have come here to arrange my papers and find a number which I should not like to destroy, and which I should not like the Government to get hold of in the event of their searching my house in the troublous times which appear before us. May I leave them at Eltham?
 
 
 
And the next day:—
 
I have just received a note from Healy, who is to be tried at Cork on Thursday, saying that his counsel thinks it of the utmost importance I should be present.
 
This is very hard lines on me, as I had looked forward to a little rest in London before my own trial commences; but I do not see how it can be helped, as Healy's is the first of the State trials, and it is of the utmost importance to secure an acquittal and not merely a disagreement. I shall leave Cork on Thursday night and arrive in London Friday evening, and shall call to see you at Eltham Saturday. Your letters, one directed here and the others to Morrison's, reached me in due course, and I hope to hear from you again very soon.
 
 
 
Parnell, now, always made my house his headquarters in England, and on his return from Ireland after the trials came down at once as soon as he had ascertained that I was alone.
 
There were times when he wished to keep quiet and let no one know where he was; and, as it became known to the Government that Mr. Parnell frequented my house a good deal, it was somewhat difficult to avoid the detectives who were employed to watch his comings and goings.
 
On one occasion in 1880 he was informed privately that his arrest for "sedition" was being urged upon the Government, and that it would be well to go abroad for a short time. I think his enigmatic reply, "I will {84} disappear for a few weeks," must have puzzled his informant. He came down to me at night, and when I answered his signal at my sitting-room window, and let him in, he told me with a deprecating smile that I must hide him for a few weeks. As I sat watching him eat the supper I always had ready for him at 3 a.m. I felt rather hopeless, as he was a big man, and I............