stringent and sweeping "Coercion Act" of July 11th, 1882, passed under
the stress of the murders in the Phoenix Park, expiring by its own terms
in July 1885, Mr. Gladstone found himself forced either to alienate a
number of his Radical supporters by proposing a renewal of that Act, or
to invite a catastrophe in Ireland by attempting to rule that country
under "the ordinary law."

He elected to escape from the dilemma by inviting a defeat in Parliament
on a secondary question of the Budget. He went out of power on the 9th
of June 1885, leaving Lord Salisbury to send the Earl of Carnarvon as
Viceroy to Ireland, and the Irish party in Parliament to darken the air
on both sides of the Atlantic with portentous intimations of a
mysterious compact, under which they were to secure Home Rule for
Ireland by establishing the Conservatives in their places at the general
election in November.[7]

What came of all this I may briefly rehearse. Going out to America in
November 1885, and returning to England in January 1886, I remained in
London long enough to assure myself, and to publish in America my
conviction of the utter hopelessness of Mr. Gladstone's "Home Rule"
measure, the success of which would have made his government the ally
and the instrument of Mr. Parnell in carrying out the plans of Mr.
Davitt, Mr. Henry George, and the active Irish organisations of the
United States. All this is matter of history.

The effect of Mr. Gladstone's speech of April 8, 1886, introducing his
Home Rule Bill, upon the Irish in America was simply intoxicating. They
saw him, as in a vision, repeating for the benefit of Ireland at Dublin,
on a grander scale, the impressive scene of his surrender in 1858 at
Corfu of the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands to Greece.