He is remembered, not as the leader who helped to force a Liberal
Government to produce two Home Rule Bills but as the leader who said
'No man can set bounds to the march of a nation....' To him the
British Empire was an abstraction in which Ireland had no spiritual
concern; it formed part of the order of the material world in which
Ireland found a place; it had, like the climatic conditions of Europe,
or the Gulf Stream, a real and preponderating influence on the
destinies of Ireland. But the Irish claim was, to him, the claim of a
nation to its inherent rights, not the claim of a portion of an empire
to its share in the benefits which the Constitution of that empire
bestowed upon its more favoured parts."

Judged by the most varied standards and opinions the greatness of
Parnell as the leader of a nation is universally conceded. The
question may be asked: But what did Parnell actually accomplish to
entitle him to this distinction? I will attempt briefly to summarise
his achievements. He found a nation of serfs, and if he did not
actually make a nation of freemen of them he set them on the high road
to freedom, he gave them a measure of their power when united and
disciplined, and he taught them how to resist and combat the
arrogance, the greed and the inbred cruelty of landlordism. He struck
at England through its most vulnerable point--through its Irish
garrison, with its cohorts of unscrupulous mercenaries and hangers-on.
He struck at it in the very citadel of its own vaunted liberties--in
the Parliament whose prestige was its proudest possession and which he
made it his aim to shatter, to ridicule and to destroy. He converted
an Irish Party of complaisant time-servers, Whigs and office-seekers
into a Party of irreproachable incorruptibility, unbreakable unity,
iron discipline and a magnificently disinterested patriotism. He
formulated the demand for Irish nationhood with clearness and