250 ENGLISH SAGA

splendid probity of life. Parnell was a concealed adulterer. Yet
Parnell made Gladstone ashamed. And what Gladstone's
conscience felt to-day, England's conscience would feel
to-morrow. In 1882 the 73-year-old Prime Minister, appalled
by the difficulty of governing Ireland and controlling the
Irish members, wrote to his Irish Secretary that so long as
there were no responsible bodies in Ireland with which a British
Government could deal, every plan framed to help them came
to Irishmen as an English plan. It was therefore probably con-
demned: at best regarded as a one-sided bargain which bound
the Englisb but not the Irish. Because of the miserable and
almost total want of responsibility for public welfare and peace
" in Ireland, reform was impossible. Such a sense of responsibility
"could only be created through local self-government. "If we
say we must postpone the question till the state of the country
is more fit for it, I should answer that the least danger is in
going forward at once. It is liberty alone which fits men for
liberty." The faith of a Liberal was never more nobly expressed.
For Gladstone's mind, more sincerely wed to the conception
of freedom than that of any of his followers, had grasped the
logic of the Irish situation. Either England must rule the subject
peoples of her Empire according to her own moral standards
and through strong and consistent imperial policy, or she must
make no attempt to impose her ways of life, however noble, on
others and trust to liberty to teach its own lesson. Gladstone
believed in liberty and was prepared to rely on it He was even
prepared to give it to the Irish.

To initiate a new departure in Irish policy, he therefore released
Parnell from Kilmainham Gaol, and appointed Lord Frederick
Cavendish, his beloved niece's husband and the most sympathetic
figure among the younger members of the House, as. Chief
Secretary for Ireland. Four days after Parnell's release Lord
Frederick was murdered by Fenian assassins as he walked home
across Phoenix Park.

It was a mark of Gladstone's growing greatness that he
allowed neither this terrible crime nor the crop of Irish dynamite
. outrages in England in the following year, to deflect him from
his purpose. Others* including Liberal elements in the Tory
Party, who were influenced by the example of the self-governing
colonies, were moving in the same direction. In 1885, when the
balance between the major parties was suJEciently even to give