There was never stagnation, nor stupidity, nor blundering in the handling of Irish affairs whilst his hand was on the helm.  It was only later that the creeping paralysis of inefficiency and incompetence exhibited itself and that a people deprived of his genius for direction and control sank into unimagined depths of apathy, indifference and gloom.

He thwarted and defeated what appeared to be the settled policy of England—­namely, to palter and toy with Irish problems, to postpone their settlement, to engage in savage repressions and ruthless oppressions until, the race being decimated by emigration or, what remained, being destroyed in their ancient faiths by a ruthless method of Anglicisation, the Irish Question would settle itself by a process of gradual attenuation unto final disappearance.

It was Parnell who practically put an end to evictions in Ireland—­those “sentences of death” under which, from 1849 to 1882, there were no less than 363,000 peasant families turned out of their homes and driven out of their country.  It was his policy which invested the tenants with solid legal rights and gave them unquestioned guarantees against landlord lawlessness.  He and his lieutenants had their bouts with Dublin Castle, and they proved what a very vulnerable institution it was when courageously assailed.

Taken all in all, he brought a new life into Ireland.  He left it for ever under manifold obligations to him, and whilst grass grows and water runs and the Celtic race endures, Ireland will revere the name of Parnell and rank him amongst the noblest of her leaders.

CHAPTER V

The wreck and ruin of A party

The blight that had come upon Irish politics did not abate with the death of Parnell.  Neither side seemed to spare enough charity from its childish disputations to make an honest and sincere effort at settlement.  There was no softening of the asperities of public life on the part of the Parnellites—­they claimed that their leader had been hounded to his death, and they were not going to join hands in a blessed forgiveness of the bitter years that had passed with those who had lost to Ireland her greatest champion.  On the other hand, the Anti-Parnellites showed no better disposition.  It had been one of their main contentions that Parnell was not an indispensable leader and that he could be very well done without.  They were to prove by their own conduct and incapacity what a hollow mockery this was and how feeble was even the best of them without the guidance of the master mind.  They cut a pitiful figure in Parliament, where their internal bickerings and miserable squabbles reduced them to positive impotence.  For years the “Antis,” as they were termed, were divided into two almost equal sections, one upholding the claims of John Dillon and the other faithful to the flag of T.M.  Healy.  Meanwhile Justin