Considering all the causes of his downfall in the light of later events the alliance of the Irish Party with English Liberalism was, in my judgment, the primary factor.  Were it not for this entanglement or obligation—­call it what you will—­the Gladstone letter would never have been written.  And even that letter was no sufficient justification for throwing Parnell overboard.  If it were a question of the defeat of the Home Rule cause and the withdrawal of Mr Gladstone from the leadership of the Liberal Party, something may be said for it, but the words actually used by Mr Gladstone were:  “The continuance of Parnell’s leadership would render my retention of the leadership of the Liberal Party almost a nullity.”  Be it observed, Gladstone did not say he was going to retire from leadership; nor did he say he was going to abandon Home Rule—­to forsake a principle founded on justice and for which he had divided the Liberal Party and risked his own reputation as a statesman.

To think that Gladstone meant this is not alone inconceivable, but preposterous.  And, indeed, it has been recently made abundantly clear in Lord Morley’s book of personal reminiscences that the Parnell Split need never have taken place at all had steps been taken by any responsible body of intermediaries to obtain Gladstone’s real views.  We now know it for absolute fact that Gladstone had had actually struck out of his letter as prepared by him for publication the fatal and fateful passage and that it was only reinserted at Mr John Morley’s dictation.  Mr Morley’s own narrative of the circumstances deserves quotation: 

“At 8 to dinner in Stratton Street.  I sat next to Granville and next to him was Mr G. We were all gay enough and as unlike as possible to a marooned crew.  Towards the end of the feast Mr G. handed to me, at the back of Granville’s chair, the draft of the famous letter in an unsealed envelope.  While he read the Queen’s speech to the rest I perused and reperused the letter.  Granville also read it.  I said to Mr G. across Granville:  ’But you have not put in the very thing that would be most likely of all things to move him,’ referring to the statement in the original draft, that Parnell’s retention would mean the nullity of Gladstone’s leadership.  Harcourt again regretted that it was addressed to me and not to P. and agreed with me that it ought to be strengthened as I had indicated if it was meant really to affect P.’s mind.  Mr G. rose, went to the writing-table and with me standing by wrote, on a sheet of Arnold M.’s grey paper, the important insertion.  I marked then and there under his eyes the point at which the insertion was to be made and put the whole into my pocket.  Nobody else besides H. was consulted about it, or saw it.”

Thus the fate of a great man and, to a very considerable extent also, the destiny of an ancient nation was decided by one of those unaccountable mischances which are the weapons of Fate in an inscrutable world.  I think that to-day Ireland generally mourns it that Parnell should ever have been deposed in obedience to a British mandate—­or perhaps, as those who conscientiously opposed Mr Parnell at the time might prefer to term it, because of their fidelity to a compact honestly entered into with the Liberal Party—­an alliance which they no doubt believed to be essential to the grant of Home Rule.