ry party, one of them its recognised whip, came to him in succession
declaring that they came straight from Lord Salisbury with certain
propositions; how he found the assurance unsatisfactory, and asked each of
these gentlemen in turn on different nights to go back to Lord Salisbury,
and put further questions to him; and how each of them professed to have
gone back to Lord Salisbury, to have conferred with him, and to have
brought back his personal assurance.(123) On the other hand, it has been
uniformly denied by the tory leaders that there was ever any compact
whatever with the Irishmen at this moment. We are not called upon here to
decide in a conflict of testimony which turns, after all, upon words so
notoriously slippery as pledge, compact, or understanding. It is enough to
mark what is not denied, that Lord Salisbury and his confidential friends
had resolved, subject to official information, to drop coercion, and that
the only visible reason why they should form the resolution at that
particular moment was its probable effect upon Mr. Parnell.

II

Let us now return to the ministerial camp. There the whig wing of the
cabinet, adhering to Lord Spencer, were for a modified renewal of the
Coercion Act, with the balm of a land purchase bill and a limited
extension of self-government in local areas. The radical wing were averse
to coercion, and averse to a purchase bill, but they were willing to yield
a milder form of coercion, on condition that the cabinet would agree not
merely to small measures of self-government in local areas, but to the
erection of a (M75) central board clothed with important administrative
functions for the whole of Ireland. In the House of Commons it was certain
that a fairly strong radical contingent would resist coercion in any
degree, and a liberal below the gangway, who had not been long in
parliament but who had been in the press a strong opponent of the coercion
policy of 1881, at once gave notice that if proposals were made for the
renewal of exceptional law, he should move their rejection. Mr. Gladstone
had also to inform the Queen that in what is considered the whig or
moderate section of the House there had been recent indications of great
dislike to special legislation, even of a mild character, for Ireland.
These proceedings are all of capital importance in an eventful year, and
bear pretty directly upon the better known crisis of the year following.

A memorandum by Mr. Glad