solution of this terrible question. My Lords, these I believe
to be the opinions and the views of my colleagues."(131)

This remarkable announcement, made in the presence of the prime minister,
in the name of the cabinet as a whole, and by a man of known purity and
sincerity of character, was taken to be an express renunciation, not
merely of the policy of which notice had been given by the outgoing
administration, but of coercion as a final instrument of imperial rule. It
was an elaborate repudiation in advance of that panacea of firm and
resolute government, which became so famous before twelve months were
over. It was the suggestion, almost in terms, that a solution should be
sought in that policy which had brought union both within our colonies,
and between the colonies and the mother country, and men did not forget
that this suggestion was being made by a statesman who had carried
federation in Canada, and tried to carry it in South Africa. We cannot
wonder that upon leading members of the late government, and especially
upon the statesman who had been specially responsible for Ireland, the
impression was startling and profound. Important members of the tory party
hurried (M83) from Ireland to Arlington Street, and earnestly warned their
leader that he would never be able to carry on with the ordinary law. They
were coldly informed that Lord Salisbury had received quite different
counsel from persons well acquainted with the country.

The new government were not content with renouncing coercion for the
present. They cast off all responsibility for its practice in the past.
Ostentatiously they threw overboard the viceroy with whom the only fault
that they had hitherto found, was that his sword was not sharp enough. A
motion was made by the Irish leader calling attention to the
maladministration of the criminal law by Lord Spencer. Forty men had been
condemned to death, and in twenty-one of these cases the capital sentence
had been carried out. Of the twenty-one executions six were savagely
impugned, and Mr. Parnell's motion called for a strict inquiry into these
and some other convictions, with a view to the full discovery of truth and
the relief of innocent persons. The debate soon became famous from the
principal case adduced, as the Maamtrasna debate. The topic had been so
copiously discussed as to occupy three full sittings of the House in the
previous October. The lawyer who had just been made Irish chancellor,