autumn of 1879 for the purpose of agrarian agitation, and Parnell after some hesitation had given it his sanction. He visited the United States at the close of 1879. It was then and there that the “new departure”—the alliance of the open and the secret organizations—was confirmed and consolidated. Parnell obtained the countenance and support of the Clan-na-Gael, a revolutionary organization of the American-Irish, and the Land League began to absorb all the more violent spirits in Ireland, though the Fenian brotherhood still held officially aloof from it. As soon as the general election was announced Parnell returned to Ireland in order to direct the campaign in person. Though he had supported the Liberals at the election, he soon found himself in conflict with a government which could neither tolerate disturbance nor countenance a Nationalist agitation, and he entered on the struggle with forces organized, with money in his chest, and with a definite but still undeveloped plan of action. The prevailing distress increased and outrages began to multiply. A fresh Relief Bill was introduced by the government, and in order to stave off a measure to prevent evictions introduced by the Irish party, Mr Forster consented to add a clause to the Relief Bill for giving compensation in certain circumstances to tenants evicted for non-payment of rent. This clause was afterwards embodied in a separate measure known as the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which after a stormy career in the House of Commons was summarily rejected by the House of Lords.
The whole Irish question was once more opened up in its more dangerous and more exasperating form. It became clear that the land question—supposed to have been settled by Mr Gladstone's Act of 1870—would have to be reconsidered in all its bearings, and a commission was appointed for the purpose. In Ireland things went from bad to worse. Evictions increased and outrages were multiplied. Intimidations and boycotting were rampant. As the winter wore on, Mr Forster persuaded his colleagues that exceptional measures were needed. An abortive prosecution of Parnell and some of his leading colleagues had by this time intensified the situation. Parliament was summoned early, and a Coercion Bill for one year, practically suspending the Habeas Corpus Act and allowing the arrest of suspects at the discretion of the government, was introduced, to be followed shortly by an Arms Bill. Parnell regarded the measure as a declaration of war, and met it in that spirit. Its discussion was doggedly obstructed at every stage, and on one occasion the debate was only brought to a close, after lasting for forty-one hours, by the Speaker's claiming to interpret the general sense of the house and resolving to put the question without further discussion. The rules of procedure were then amended afresh in a very drastic sense, and as soon as the bill was passed Mr Gladstone introduced a new Land Bill, which occupied the greater part of the session. Parnell accepted it with many reserves. He could not ignore its concessions, and was not disposed to undervalue them, but he had to make it clear to the revolutionary party, whose support was indispensable, that he regarded it only as a payment on account, even from the agrarian point of view, and no payment at all from the national point of view. Accordingly the Land League at his instigation determined to “test” the act by advising tenants in general to refrain from taking their cases into court until certain cases selected by the Land League had been decided. The government treated this policy, which was certainly not designed to make the act work freely and beneficially, as a deliberate attempt to intercept its benefits and to keep the Irish people in subjection to the Land League; and on this and other grounds—notably the attitude of the League and its leaders towards crime and outrage—Parnell was arrested under the Coercion Act and lodged in Kilmainham gaol (October 17, 1881).
Parnell in prison at once became more powerful for evil than he had ever been, either for good or for evil, outside. He may have known that the policy of Mr Forster was little favoured by several of his colleagues, and he probably calculated that the detention of large numbers of suspects without cause assigned and without trial would sooner or later create opposition in England. Mr Forster had assured his colleagues and the House of Commons that the power of arbitrary arrest would enable the police to lay their hands on the chief agents of disturbance, and it was Parnell's policy to show that so long as the grievances of the Irish tenants remained unredressed no number of arrests could either check the tide of outrage or restore the country to tranquillity. Several of his leading colleagues followed him into captivity at Kilmainham, and the Land League was dissolved, its treasurer, Patrick Egan, escaping to Paris and carrying with him its books and accounts. Before it was formally suppressed the League had issued a manifesto, signed by Parnell and several of his fellow-prisoners, calling upon the tenants to pay no rents until the government had restored the constitutional rights of the people. Discouraged by the priests, the No-Rent manifesto had little effect, but it embittered the struggle and exasperated the temper of the people on both sides of the Irish Channel.
Lord Cowper and Mr Forster were compelled to ask for a renewal of the Coercion Act with enlarged powers. But there were members of the cabinet who had only accepted it with reluctance, and were now convinced not only that it had failed, but that it could never succeed. A modus vivendi was desired on both sides. Negotiations were set on foot through the agency of Captain O'Shea—at that time and for long afterwards a firm political and personal friend of Parnell, but ultimately his accuser in the divorce court—and after a somewhat intricate course they resulted in what was known as the Kilmainham Treaty. As a consequence of this informal agreement, Parnell and two of his friends were to be released at once, the understanding being, as Mr Gladstone stated in a letter to Lord Cowper, “that Parnell and his friends are ready to abandon ‘No Rent’ formally, and to declare against outrage energetically, intimidation included, if and when the government announce a satisfactory plan for dealing with arrears.” Parnell's own version of the understanding has been quoted above. It also included a hope that the government would allow the Coercion Act to lapse and govern the country by the same laws as in England. Parnell and his friends were released, and Lord Cowper and Mr Forster at once resigned.
The Phoenix Park murders (May 6, 1882) followed (see Ireland: History). Parnell was prostrated by this catastrophe. In a public manifesto to the Irish people he declared that “no act has ever been perpetrated in our country, during the exciting struggle for social and political rights of the past fifty years, that has so stained the name of hospitable Ireland as this cowardly and unprovoked assassination of a friendly stranger.” Privately to his own friends and to Mr Gladstone he expressed his desire to withdraw from public life. There were those who believed that nevertheless he was privy to the Invincible conspiracy. There is some prima facie foundation for this belief in the indifference he had always displayed towards crime and outrage when crime and outrage could be made to serve his purpose; in his equivocal relation to the more violent and unscrupulous forms of Irish sedition, and in the fact that Byrne, an official of the Land League, was in collusion with the Invincibles, that the knives with which the murder was done had been concealed at the offices of the Land League in London, and had been conveyed to Dublin by Byrne's wife. But the maxim is fecit cui prodest disallows these suspicions. Parnell gained nothing by the murders, and seemed for a time to have lost everything. A new Crimes Bill was introduced and made operative for a period of three years. A régime of renewed coercion was maintained by Lord Spencer and Mr (afterwards Sir George) Trevelyan, who had succeeded Lord Frederick Cavendish in the office of chief secretary; Ireland was tortured for three years by the necessary severity of its administration, and England was exasperated by a succession of dynamite outrages organized chiefly in America, which Parnell was powerless to prevent. The Phoenix Park murders did more than any other incident of his time and career to frustrate Parnell's policy and render Home Rule impossible.
For more than two years after the Phoenix Park murders Parnell's influence in parliament, and even in Ireland, was only intermittently and not very energetically exerted. His
