precision. He knew how to bargain with the wiliest and subtlest
statesman of his age, and great and powerful as Gladstone was he met
in Parnell a man equally conscious of his own strength and equally
tenacious of his principles. In fact, on every encounter the ultimate
advantage rested with Parnell. He won on the Land Question, he won on
the labourer's demands, he won on the Home Rule issue and he showed
what a potent weapon the balance of power could be in the hands of a
capable and determined Irish leader.

Not alone did he create an impregnable Irish Party; he established a
united Irish race throughout the world. His sway was acknowledged with
the same implicit confidence among the exiled Irish in America and
Australia as it was by the home-folk in Ireland. He was the great
cementing influence of an Irish solidarity such as was never before
attempted or realised. He did a great deal to arrest the outflow of
the nation's best blood by emigration, and, if he had no strong or
striking policy on matters educational and industrial, he gave manhood
to the people, he developed character in them, he gave them security
in their lands and homes, and, if the unhappy cataclysm of his later
days had not be-fallen, he would unquestionably have given them a
measure of self-government from which they could march onward to the
fullest emancipation that the status of nationhood demands.

There was never stagnation, nor stupidity, nor blundering in the
handling of Irish affairs whilst his hand was on the helm. It was only
later that the creeping paralysis of inefficiency and incompetence
exhibited itself and that a people deprived of his genius for
direction and control sank into unimagined depths of apathy,
indifference and gloom.