health was indifferent, his absences from the House of Commons were frequent and mysterious, and he had already formed those relations with Mrs O'Shea which were ultimately to bring him to the divorce court. The Phoenix Park murderers were arrested and brought to justice early in 1883. Mr Forster seized the opportunity to deliver a scathing indictment of Parnell in the House of Commons. In an almost contemptuous reply Parnell repudiated the charges in general terms, disavowed all sympathy with dynamite outrages, their authors and abettors—the only occasion on which he ever did so—declined to plead in detail before an English tribunal, and declared that he sought only the approbation of the Irish people. This last was shortly afterwards manifested in the form of a subscription known as the “Parnell Tribute,” which quickly reached the amount of £37,000, and was presented to Parnell, partly for the liquidation of debts he was known to have contracted, but mainly in recognition of his public services. The Irish National League, a successor to the suppressed Land League, was founded in the autumn of 1882 at a meeting over which Parnell presided, but he looked on it at first with little favour, and its action was largely paralysed by the operation of the Crimes Act and the vigorous administration of Lord Spencer.
The Crimes Act, passed in 1882, was to expire in 1885, but the government of Mr Gladstone was in no position to renew it as it stood. In May notice was given for its partial renewal, subject to changes more of form than of substance. The second reading was fixed for the 10th of June. On the 8th of June Parnell, with thirty-nine of his followers, voted with the Opposition against the budget, and defeated the government by a majority of 264 votes to 252. Mr Gladstone forthwith resigned. Lord Salisbury undertook to form a government, and Lord Carnarvon became viceroy. The session was rapidly brought to an end with a view to the dissolution rendered necessary by the Franchise Act passed in 1884—a measure which was certain to increase the number of Parnell's adherents in parliament. It seems probable that Parnell had convinced himself before he resolved to join forces with the Opposition that a Conservative government would not renew the Crimes Act. At any rate, no attempt to renew it was made by the new government. Moreover, Lord Carnarvon, the new viceroy, was known to Parnell and to some others among the Irish leaders to be not unfavourable to some form of Home Rule if due regard were paid to imperial unity and security. He sought and obtained a personal interview with Parnell, explicitly declared that he was speaking for himself alone, heard Parnell's views, expounded his own, and forthwith reported what had taken place to the Prime Minister. In the result the new cabinet refused to move in the direction apparently desired by Lord Carnarvon.
Parnell opened the electoral campaign with a speech in Dublin, in which he pronounced unequivocally in favour of self government for Ireland, and expressed his confident hope “that it may not be necessary for us in the new parliament to devote our attention to subsidiary measures, and that it may be possible for us to have a programme and a platform with only one plank, and that one plank National Independence.” This was startling to English ears. The press denounced Parnell; Lord Hartington (afterwards the duke of Devonshire) protested against so fatal and mischievous a programme; Mr Chamberlain repudiated it with even greater emphasis. Meanwhile Mr Gladstone was slowly convincing himself that the passing of the Franchise Act had made it the duty of English statesmen and English party leaders to give a respectful hearing to the Irish National demand, and to consider how far it could be satisfied subject to the governing principle of “maintaining the supremacy of the crown, the unity of the Empire, and all the authority of parliament necessary for the conservation of the unity.” This was the position he took up in the Hawarden manifesto issued in September before the general election of 1885. Speaking later at Newport in October, Lord Salisbury treated the Irish leader with unwonted deference and respect. Parnell, however, took no notice of the Newport speech, and waited for Mr Gladstone to declare himself more fully in Midlothian. But in this he was disappointed. Mr Gladstone went no farther than he had done at Hawarden, and he implored the electorate to give him a majority independent of the Irish vote. Subsequently Parnell invited him in a public speech to declare his policy and to sketch the constitution he would give to Ireland subject to the limitations he had insisted on. To this Mr Gladstone replied, “through the same confidential channel,” that he could not consider the Irish demand before it had been constitutionally formulated, and that, not being in an official position, he could not usurp the functions of a government. The reply to this was the issue of a manifesto to the Irish electors of Great Britain violently denouncing the Liberal party and directing all Irish Nationalists to give their votes to the Tories. In these circumstances the general election was fought, and resulted in the return of 335 Liberals, four of whom were classed as “independent,” 249 Conservatives and 86 followers of Parnell.
Mr Gladstone had now ascertained the strength of the Irish demand, but was left absolutely dependent on the votes of those who represented it. Through Mr Arthur Balfour he made informal overtures to Lord Salisbury proffering his own support in case the Prime Minister should be disposed to consider the Irish demand in a “just and liberal spirit”; but he received no encouragement. Towards the close of the year it became known through various channels that he himself was considering the matter and had advanced as far as accepting the principle of an Irish parliament in Dublin for the transaction of Irish affairs. Before the end of January Lord Salisbury's government was defeated on the Address, the Opposition including the full strength of the Irish party. Mr Gladstone once more became prime minister, with Mr John Morley (an old Home Ruler) as chief secretary, and Mr Chamberlain provisionally included in the cabinet. Lord Hartington, Mr Bright and some other Liberal chiefs, however, declined to join him.
Mr Gladstone's return to power at the head of an administration conditionally committed to Home Rule marks the culminating point of Parnell's influence on English politics and English parties. And after the defeat of the Home Rule ministry in 1886, Parnell was naturally associated closely with the Liberal Opposition. At the same time he withdrew himself largely from active interposition in current parliamentary affairs, and relaxed his control over the action and policy of his followers in Ireland. He entered occasionally into London society—where in certain quarters he was now a welcome guest—but in general he lived apart, often concealing his whereabouts and giving no address but the House of Commons, answering no letters, and seldom fulfilling engagements. He seems to have thought that Home Rule being now in the keeping of an English party, it was time to show that he had in him the qualities of a statesman as well as those of a revolutionary and a rebel. His influence on the remedial legislation proposed by the Unionist government for Ireland was considerable, and he seldom missed an opportunity of making it felt. It more than once happened to him to find measures, which had been contemptuously rejected when he had proposed them, ultimately adopted by the government; and it may be that the comparative tranquillity which Ireland enjoyed at the close of the 19th century was due quite as much to legislation inspired and recommended by himself as to the disintegration of his following which ensued upon his appearance in the divorce court and long survived his death. No sooner was Lord Salisbury's new government installed in office in 1886, than Parnell introduced a comprehensive Tenants' Relief Bill. The government would have none of it, though in the following session they adopted and carried many of its leading provisions. Its rejection was followed by renewed agitation in Ireland, in which Parnell took no part. He was ill—“dangerously ill,” he said himself at the time—and some of his more hot-headed followers devised the famous “Plan of Campaign,” on which he was never consulted and which never had his approval. Ireland was once more thrown into a turmoil of agitation, turbulence and crime, and the Unionist government, which had hoped to be able to govern the country by means of the ordinary law, was compelled to resort to severe repressive
