The Life Of Charles Stewart Parnell Vol - I

^ET. 35] 'UNITED IRELAND' 229
" D------, when you told me that morning we breakfasted together that nothing less than the ' three 3?V would do, I thought you were mad; but they are all in the Bill."
'"When the second reading was carried, a number of Ulstermen met at the "Westminster Palace Hotel to consider what message should be sent to the north. They had no copy of the Bill, and they asked me to get one. I went to the Irish office and saw Law (the Irish Attorney-General). I told him about the meeting at the Westminster Palace Hotel, and asked for a copy of the Bill. He said : " The only copy I have is the one you see on the table, which has my private notes on it, and of course I cannot give you that," I pressed him to give it to me,-and he finally consented, making me promise that I would not let it out of my hands. As he gave me the Bill he said: " Do you see that?" pointing to a figure—I think it was 22—on the Bill. I said: "Yes; what does it mean?" "It means," he replied, "that that is the twenty-second Bill which has been before us!" "And, Law," I asked, " what was the first Bill like ? " " Well may you ask," he said with a smile. And then. I learnt this moral lesson from my conversation with Law: that the first Land Bill was an insignificant amendment of the Land Act, 1870, but that as lawlessness and outrage increased in Ireland the Bill was broadened until it reached its final dimensions.'
While the measure was going through Parliament .Parnell lent himself to a new project. There was no organ in the Irish Press which he could absolutely control. The' Freeman's Journal' was in the hands of Mr. Gray; the ' Nation' and ' Weekly News ' belonged to the Sullivans ; the ' Irishman,' the ' Shamrock,' and