All vainly I speak. To-night this money will be voted. I know that well. But I know what verdict will yet be passed on this episode of British history. When the present feeling of resentment has passed away, when passion has cooled, and reason returned, there will arise some Allison, or some Macaulay, or some Lecky, to trace for our indignant posterity the story of this hour. They will say it was a reproach to the British Parliament that it had not patriotism enough or independence enough to resist and refuse this application for money to spend in a war which they will declare to be, as I declare it to be, as unjust, as wicked, and as wanton as that which George III. waged-thank God, he waged in vain!-against the liberty-loving people of the American Colonies.

PARNELL

I

ON THE FORGED LETTER PRINTED IN

THE LONDON "TIMES"1

(1887)

Born in 1846, died in 1891; elected to Parliament in 1875; President of the Irish Land League in 1879; visited the United States in 1879; imprisoned under the Coercion Act, 1881; in alliance with Gladstone for Home Rule in 1886; recovered five thousand pounds damages from the London Times for libel in 1889.

It appears that, in addition to the passage of this Coercion Act, the dice are to be loaded—that your great organs of public opinion in this country are to be permitted to pay miserable creatures for the purpose of producing these calumnies. Who will be safe in such circumstances and under such conditions? I do not envy the right honorable gentleman, the chief secretary for Ireland, this first commencement of suppression and defense-this first commencement of calumny and of forgery which has been made by his supporters.

Now, sir, when I first heard of this precious

1 From a speech delivered in the House of Commons on April 18, 1887. The forged letter purporting to have been written by Parnell had been reproduced (on the same day) by the London Times in facsimile. The letter gave countenance to the Phoenix Park murders.

concoction-I heard of it before I saw it, because I do not take in or even read the Times usually when I heard that a letter of this description, bearing my signature, had been published in the Times, I supposed that some autograph of mine had fallen into the hands of some person for whom it had not been intended, and that it had been made use of in this way.

I supposed that some blank sheet containing my signature, such as many members who are asked for their signature frequently send-I supposed that such a blank sheet had fallen into hands for which it had not been intended, and that it had been misused in this fashion, or that something of that kind had happened.

But when I saw what purported to be my signature, I saw plainly that it was an audacious and unblushing fabrication. Why, sir, many members of this House have seen my signature, and if they will compare it with what purports to be my signature in the Times of this morning they will see that there are only two letters in the whole name which bear any resemblance to letters in my own signature as I write it.

I can not understand how the conductors of a responsible, and what used to be a respectable, journal, could have been so hoodwinked, so hoaxed, so bamboozled, and that is the most charitable interpretation which I can place on it, as to publish such a production as that as my signature.

My writing-its whole character-is entirely different. I unfortunately write a very cramped hand; my letters huddle into each other, and I write with very great difficulty and slowness. It is, in fact, a labor and a toil to me to write anything at all. But the signature in question is written by a ready penman, who has evidently covered as many leagues of letter-paper in his life as I have yards.

Of course, this is not the time, as I have said, to enter into full details and minutæ as to comparisons of handwriting; but if the House could see my signature, and the forged, the fabricated signature, they would see that, except as regards two letters, the whole signature bears no resemblance to mine.

The same remark applies to the letter. The letter does not purport to be in my handwriting. We are not informed who has written it. It is not alleged even that it was written by anybody who was ever associated with me. The name of this anonymous letter-writer is not mentioned. I do not know who he can be. The writing is strange to me. I think I should insult myself if I said I think, however, that I perhaps ought to say it, in order that my denial may be full and complete that I certainly never heard of the letter.

I never directed such a letter to be written. I never saw such a letter before I saw it in the Times this morning. The subject-matter of the letter is preposterous on the surface. The

phraseology of it is absurd-as absurd as any phraseology that could be attributed to me could possibly be. In every part of it it bears absolute and irrefutable evidence of want of genuineness and authenticity.

Politics are come to a pretty pass in this country when a leader of a party of eighty-six members has to stand up, at ten minutes past one, in the House of Commons, in order to defend himself from an anonymous fabrication such as that which is contained in the Times of this morning. I have always held, with regard to the late Mr. Forster, that his treatment of his political prisoners was a humane treatment, and a fair treatment; and I think for that reason alone, if for no other, he should have been shielded from such an attempt as was made on his life by the Invincible Association.

I never had the slightest notion in the world that the life of the late Mr. Forster was in danger, or that any conspiracy was on foot against him, or any other official in Ireland or elsewhere. I had no more notion than an unborn child that there was such a conspiracy as that of the Invincibles in existence, and no one was more surprised, more thunderstruck, and more astonished than I was when that bolt from the blue fell upon us in the Phoenix Park murders.

I know not in what direction to look for this calamity. It is no exaggeration to say that if I had been in the park that day. I would gladly have stood between Lord Frederick Cavendish