astounding. The landlords would hold meetings and agree not to go beyond a
certain abatement, and then they would go individually and privately offer
to the tenant a greater abatement. Even the agents of the law and the
courts were shaken in their duty. The power of random arrest and detention
under the Coercion Act of 1881 had not improved the _moral_ of magistrates
and police. The sheriff would let the word get out that he was coming to
make a seizure, and profess surprise that the cattle had vanished. The
whole country-side turned out in thousands in half the counties in Ireland
to attend flaming meetings, and if a man did not attend, angry neighbours
trooped up to know the reason why. The clergy hardly stirred a finger to
restrain the wildness of the storm; some did their best to raise it. All
that was what Lord Spencer had to deal with; the very foundations of the
social fabric rocking."

The new viceroy attacked the formidable task before him with resolution,
minute assiduity, and an inexhaustible store of that steady-eyed patience
which is the sovereign requisite of any man who, whether with coercion or
without, takes in hand the government of Ireland. He was seconded with
high ability and courage by Mr. Trevelyan, the new Irish secretary, whose
fortitude was subjected to a far severer trial than has ever fallen to the
lot of any Irish secretary before or since. The coercion that Lord Spencer
had to administer was at least law. The coercion with which parliament
entrusted Mr. Forster the year before was the negation of the spirit of
law, and the substitution for it of naked and arbitrary control over the
liberty of the subject by executive power--a system as unconstitutional in
theory as it was infatuated in policy and calamitous in result. Even
before the end of the parliament, Mr. Bright frankly told the House of
Commons of this Coercion Act: "I think that the legislation of 1881 was
unfortunately a great mistake, though I was myself a member of the
government concerned in it."

Chapter V. Egypt. (1881-1882)

I find many very ready to say what I ought to have done when a
battle is over; but I wish some of these persons would come and
tell me what to do before the battle.--WELLINGTON.

In 1877 Mr. Gladstone penned words to which later events gave an only too
striking verification. "Territorial questions," he said, "are not to be
disposed of by arbitrary limits; we cannot enjoy the luxury