SESSION OF 1881.—­The winter of 1880-81 was a terrible one in Ireland.  The rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill had borne the fruit which Mr. Forster had predicted, and which the House of Lords had ignored.  Outrages were numerous and serious.  The cry in England for repressive measures had gone on rising from November, when it occasioned a demonstration at the Guildhall banquet.  Several Liberal members (of whom I was one) went to Ireland at Christmas, to see with our own eyes how things stood.  We were struck by the difficulty of obtaining trustworthy information in Dublin, where the richer classes, with whom we chiefly came in contact, merely abused the Land League, while the Land Leaguers declared that the accounts of outrages were grossly exaggerated.  The most prominent, Mr. Michael Davitt, assured me, and I believe with perfect truth, that he had exerted himself to discountenance outrage, and that if, as he expected, he was locked up by the Government, outrages would increase.  When one reached the disturbed districts, where, of course, one talked to members as well of the landlord class as of the peasantry, the general conclusion which emerged from the medley of contradictions was that, though there was much agrarian crime, and a pervading sense of insecurity, the disorders were not so bad as people in England believed, and might have been dealt with by a vigorous administration of the existing law.  Unfortunately, the so-called “better classes,” full of bitterness against the Liberal Ministry and Mr. Forster (whom they did not praise till it was too late), had not assisted the Executive, and had allowed things to reach a pass at which it found the work of governing very difficult.

When the Coercion Bill of 1881 was introduced, many English Liberals were inclined to resist it.  The great majority voted for it, but within two years they bitterly repented their votes.  Our motives, which I mention by way of extenuation, not of defence, were these.  The Executive Government declared that it could not deal with crime by the ordinary law.  If its followers refused exceptional powers, they must displace the Ministry, and let in the Tories, who would doubtless obtain such powers, and probably use them worse.  We had still confidence in Mr. Forster’s judgment, and a deference to Irish Executive Governments generally which Parliamentary experience is well fitted to dissipate.  The violence with which the Nationalist members resisted the introduction of the Bill had roused our blood, and the foolish attempts which the Radical and Irish electors in some constituencies had made to deter their members from supporting it had told the other way, and disposed these members to vote for it, in order to show that they were not to be cowed by threats.  Finally, we were assured that votes given for the Coercion Bill would purchase a thorough-going Land Bill, and our anxiety for the latter induced us, naturally, but erringly, to acquiesce in the former.