The Life Of Charles Stewart Parnell - Ii

/Ex. 41-42] AT THE EIGHTY CLUB ,,191
never saw a highly strung meeting thrown so completely into a state of collapse. When he finished the fourth sentence my next neighbour poked me in the ribs and said: "This is bad.' I think my friend's verdict was the verdict of almost everyone in the room.
Parnell said: 'I was ill, dangerously ill It was an illness from which I have not entirely recovered up to this day. I was so ill that I could not put pen to paper or even read a newspaper. I knew nothing about the movement until weeks after it had started, and even then I was so feeble that for several months, absolutely up to the meeting of Parliament, I was positively unable to take part in any public matter, and was scarcely able to do so for months after. If I had been in a position to advise about it, I candidly admit to you that I should have advised against it.
' I should have advised against it not because I supposed it would be inefficacious with regard to its object—the protection of the Irish tenants. I believe I have always thought that it would be most successful in protecting the Irish tenants from eviction, and in obtaining those reductions in their rent which the G-overnment of Lord Salisbury in 1886 refused to concede to me when I moved the Tenants' Belief Bill. My judgment in that respect has been correct. But I considered, and still consider, that there were features of the Plan of Campaign, and in the way in which it was necessary it should be carried out, which would have had a bad effect upon the general political situation —in other words, upon the national question.'
Next day Mr. Gladstone addressed a great meeting at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, when a Eule address, signed by 3,730 Nonconformisttner-