e
liberals, with a majority of eighty-two over the tories, were to leave the
tory minority undisturbed in office, on the chance of their bringing in
general measures of which liberals could approve, and making Irish
proposals to which Mr. Parnell, in the absence of competition for his
support, might give at least provisional assent. In principle, these
tactics implied, whether right or wrong, the old-fashioned union of the
two British parties against the Irish. Were the two hundred and fifty
tories to be left in power, to carry out all the promises of the general
election, and fulfil all the hopes of a new parliament chosen on a new
system? The Hawarden letter-bag was heavy with remonstrances from newly
elected liberals against any such course.

Second only to Mr. Gladstone in experience of stirring and perilous
positions, Lord Granville described the situation to one of his colleagues
as nothing less than "thoroughly appalling." A great catastrophe, he said,
might easily result from any of the courses open: from the adoption of
coercion by either government or opposition; from the adoption by either
of concession; from the attempt to leave the state of Ireland as it was.
If, as some think, a great catastrophe did in the end result from the
course that Mr. Gladstone was now revolving in his own mind at Hawarden,
and that he had commended to the meditations of his most important
colleagues, what alternative was feasible?

IV

The following letters set out the various movements in a drama that was
now day by day, through much confusion and bewilderment, approaching its
climax.

_To Lord Granville._

_December 18, '85._--... Thinking incessantly about the matter,
speaking freely and not with finality to you, and to Rosebery and
Spencer--the only colleagues I have seen--I have trusted to writing
to Hartington (who had had Harcourt and Northbrook with him) and
to you for Derby.

If I have made _any_ step in advance at all, which I am not sure
of, it has most certainly been in the direction of leaving the
field open for the government, encouraging them to act, and
steadily refusing to say or do _anything_ like negotiation on my
own behalf. So I think Derby will see that in the main I am
certainly with him.... What will Parnell do? What will the
government do? How can we decide without knowing or trying to
know, both if we can, but at any rate the second?