ave afterwards risen to distinction, Mr. Parnell's first
public appearance was a great disappointment to himself and his friends.
Before the electors of Dublin he completely broke down in his first
attempt at public speaking, and the great city which has since showered
upon him the highest honors it can give, rejected him. In 1875, he
entered the House of Commons for the first time as member for Meath. For
the first few years of his Parliamentary life he was mainly
distinguished for the skill and unwearied persistency of his tactics as
an obstructionist, though he also succeeded in carrying useful
amendments to such measures as the Factories and Workshops Bill and the
Bill for the Abolition of Flogging in the Army and Navy.

The Land League organization gave him just the kind of political
machinery he wanted, though the credit of its creation belongs more to
Michael Davitt and John Dillon than to him. It soon became immensely
popular in Ireland, and, for a time, its orders and decrees superseded
the established law of the land, with the seeming result of replacing
social order and tranquillity by a condition of widespread anarchy,
confusion, and lawlessness. It is only fair to say, however, that the
Land League meetings did not create but only revealed the misery,
distress, and discontent of the Irish rural populace. The country had
recently suffered from a severe visitation of famine. Evictions for
non-payment of rent had been steadily increasing for several years past.
In 1877 the number stood at 463; in 1878 it swelled to nearly 1,000; at
the end of 1880 it had actually reached 2,110. A bill was introduced by
one of the Irish members with a view to mitigating the rigors of the law
as regarded the impoverished tenantry. The government refused to adopt
the measure, but sought to meet the case by framing a remedial scheme of
their own which was introduced under the name of the Compensation for
Disturbance Bill. This bill, which was vigorously assailed from opposite
quarters in the Commons, was unceremoniously rejected by the Lords, who
denounced it as a flagrant encroachment on the rights of property. It
must ever be regretted in the interests of mere humanity that Mr.
Gladstone's government did not compel the recalcitrant peers to abandon
their attitude of defiance in regard to that much-needed piece of
ameliorative legislation. The House of Lords takes nothing so ill as
open and avowed conflict with a powerful and popu