The Life Of Charles Stewart Parnell - Ii

140 CHARLES STEWAET PAENELL [1886
to the exclusion of the Irish members as a matter of detail. What I should like to ask is, if you objected to the exclusion as a matter of detail, or if you really used that clause for the purpose of attacking the Bill? Was it really your aim to turn Mr. Gladstone's flank by attacking that point ? '
Mr. Chamberlain. ' I wanted to kill the Bill.'
' And you used the question of the exclusion of the Irish members for that purpose ? '
Mr. Chamberlain. ' I did, and I used the Land Bill for the same purpose. I was not opposed to the reform of the land laws. I was not opposed to land purchase. It was the right way to settle the land question, but there were many things in the Bill to which I was opposed on principle. My main object in attacking it, though, was to kill the Home Eule Bill. As soon as the Land Bill was out of the way 1 I attacked the question of the exclusion of the Irish members. I used that point to show the absurdity of the whole scheme.'
' Well, I may say, Mr. Chamberlain, that that is the conclusion I have myself come to. It was strategy, simply strategy.'
Mr. Chamberlain. f I wanted to kill the Bill. You may take that all the time.5
' Mr. Jeyes, in his short life of you—which seems to me ,a very fair as well as a clever book—says you were once on the point of being converted to Home Eule.'
Mr. Chamberlain. ' He is wrong. I was never near being converted to an Irish Parliament. The national councils was my extreme point. There I stood.'
* I should like to talk to you about what you said on the subject of Canadian Home Eule. I am satisfied
1 Mr. Gladstone introduced a Land Purchase Bill at the same time as the Home Bule Bill, and suddenly dropped it.tilirrti?d This was in 1884 or early in 1885. Ultimately Ihould legislate!?'ll had risen to in n shorter timo than I now take to tell the Htory. Whenoin Mr, (*lml**tunr,* Nr\t <luy tht*