Parnell opened the electoral campaign with a speech in Dublin, in which he expressed the hope that "it may be possible for us to have a programme and a platform with only one plank, and that one plank National Independence." Parnell invited Gladstone 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 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. Thereupon Parnell instructed Irish Nationalists in Great Britain to give their votes to the Tories. In these circumstances the gen eral 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's return to power at the head of an administra tion conditionally committed to Home Rule marks the culmina ting point of Parnell's influence on English politics and English parties. And after the defeat of the Home Rule ministry in 1886, Parnell more than once found measures, which had been con temptuously rejected when he had proposed them, ultimately adopted by the government; and the comparative tranquillity which Ireland enjoyed at the close of the i9th century may be ascribed partly to legislation inspired and recommended by him self. In 1886 Parnell introduced a comprehensive Tenants' Relief Bill. The Salisbury 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, tur bulence and crime. In the course of the spring of 1887 The Times had begun publishing a series of articles entitled "Parnellism and Crime," on lines following Mr. Forster's indictment of Parnell in 1883, though with much greater detail of circumstance and accu sation. On April 18 appeared an article accompanied by the fac simile of a letter purporting to be signed but not written by Par nell, in which he apologized for his attitude on the Phoenix Park murders, and specially excused the murder of Mr. Burke. On the
same evening, in the House of Commons, Parnell declared the letter to be a forgery. He was not believed, and the second reading of the Crimes Act followed. Later in the session Sir Charles Lewis, an Ulster member and a bitter antagonist of the National ists, moved that the charges made by The Times constituted a breach of privilege. The government met this proposal by an offer to pay the expenses of a libel action against The Times on behalf of the Irish members incriminated. This was refused. Gladstone proposed a select committee of inquiry into the charges, including the letter attributed to Parnell, and to this Parnell assented. But the government rejected the proposal. For the rest, Parnell maintained almost superhuman reticence.
The specific charges brought against Parnell personally were thus dealt with by the commissioners:— (a) That at the time of the Kilmainham negotiations Mr. Parnell knew that Sheridan and Boyton had been organizing outrage, and therefore wished to use them to put down outrage.
We find that this charge has not been proved.