The Life Of Charles Stewart Parnell Vol - I

/ET. 35] 'THE RESOURCES OF CIVILISATION' 307
'"After the eleventh resolution.
' " That, pending the result of the test cases selected by the Executive, no member of the League should apply to the court to fix his rent without previous consultation with, and obtaining the consent of, the branch of the League to which he belongs."
' Having written this, he handed me the proof to pass it on to the secretary so that the alteration might be duly made. I looked at it, and said: " This is an interesting document, Mr. Parnell, and I think I will give the secretary a clean copy and, as the lawyers say, ' file the original.' " He smiled, and simply said " It is business." The resolution as amended by Parnell was carried at the convention.'
I cannot say how far this Maryborough meeting affected the action, of the Irish Executive, but curiously enough it was on this very day, September 26, that Mr. Forster wrote to Mr. Gladstone suggesting that Parnell should be arrested, adding: ' I think you will do great good by denouncing Parnell's action and policy at Leeds.' l
Mr. Gladstone did denounce Parnell's ' action and policy' at the Leeds meeting on October 7, telling his audience that the f resources of civilisation were not exhausted,' and plainly hinting that they would be used against the Irish leader who [in his efforts to obstruct the operation of the Land Act] stood between the living and the dead, not, like Aaron, to stay the plague, but to spread the plague.'
'Parnell's reply to you,' Forster wrote to Gladstone on October 9, ' may be a treasonable outburst. If the
1 Sir Wemyss Reid, Life of the Elglit Hon. W. E. Forster.
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