ation was to
see."

The view which Mr. Gladstone took of the events of the winter of 1885-6
is illustrated by a memorandum which he wrote in 1897, in which he
says:--

"I attached value to the acts and language of Lord Carnarvon and the
other favourable manifestations. Subsequently we had but too much
evidence of a deliberate intention to deceive the Irish with a view to
their support at the election."[22]

The attitude of the Tories and the rankling memory of the bitter debates
on the Liberal Coercion Bill of 1882, coupled with the attitude of the
Tories and the deception which they practised, resulted, not
unnaturally, in the fact that Parnell threw his weight in favour of the
Conservatives at the general election which ensued, and by this means,
it is estimated, lost at least twenty seats to the Liberals. Immediately
after the election the Viceroy and the Chief Secretary retired, but
though their successors were appointed in the third week in December, it
was not till the middle of January that the resignations were made
public. The first act of the new Chief Secretary was to announce that,
in spite of the emphatic disclaimers of the previous June, a Coercion
Bill was to be introduced, and as a result of the Irish voting with the
Liberals the Tories were defeated, and Mr. Gladstone took office. The
Home Rule Bill which was introduced was thrown out in the month of June,
the Government being in a minority of thirty. Had it not been for
Parnell's manifesto, urging Irishmen in Great Britain to vote for
Conservatives, the Government would have had a majority of between ten
and twenty, and, moreover, if a general election had followed, the
morale of the Liberals would have been much greater if they had been
fighting for the second time within a few months shoulder to shoulder
with the Irishmen, and not been in the position in which in fact they
were--of enjoying the support in June of those who had opposed them in
November.

Let us now turn to the MacDonnell incident. One of the first acts of Mr.
Balfour, on becoming Prime Minister in July, 1902, on the retirement of
Lord Salisbury was to give Mr. Wyndham, the Chief Secretary, a seat in
the Cabinet. In September Mr. Wyndham appointed as Under Secretary Sir
Antony MacDonnell, a distinguished Indian Civil Servant and Member of
the Indian Council, who had been in turn head of the Government of
Burma, the Central Provinces, and the North-West Provinces, and who had
with