The Life Of Charles Stewart Parnell Vol - I

318 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL [1881
obnoxious to the Irish people than the personality of the Prime Minister at this moment. It was the old story. Public opinion in England went in one direction, public opinion in Ireland in another. The solitary individual who regarded the whole proceeding with the most perfect equanimity was the prisoner himself. In llio course of the day a reporter from the ' Freeman's Journal ' called to interview him, lie ended the interview, with ouo of those significant sentences which displayed his faculty for always saying the thing that host suited the occasion : (I shall take it as evidence,' he said, £ that the people of the country did not do their duty if I am speedily released.'
In his cell at Kilmainham Parnell was a greater power in Ireland than the British Minister, surrounded by all the paraphernalia of office and authority.