In all this time of trouble and eviction Parnell went backwards and forwards between England (Eltham) and Ireland as occasion required, and so successful were his efforts in spreading the agitation and linking up the League that the Government became uneasy as to the outcome of this new menace to landlordism. Finally Parnell and fourteen of his followers were put on trial, charged with "conspiracy to impoverish landlords." Parnell, of course, went over to Ireland for these "State trials," but he considered the whole thing such a farce, in that it was {80} an impotent effort of the Government to intimidate him, that he could not take it seriously in any way. No jury (in Ireland) would agree to convict him he was well aware, and he attended the trials chiefly, he said, for the "look of the thing," and to give the support of his presence to his colleagues. Incidentally he told me on one occasion that he had considerably hurried the jury when he was very anxious to catch a train in time for the night mail to England (Eltham) by "willing" them to agree (to disagree) without the long discussion of local politics with which all self-respecting Irish jurors beguile the weary ways of law. He observed that here, in the question of how far an unconscious agent can be "willed" into a desired action, he had discovered another and most entrancing study for us when we had more time to go into it thoroughly. Talking of the Land League's procedure against the interests of the Irish landlords, I may, I think, here pertinently remind those who have, among so many other accusations, brought against Parnell the charge of self-seeking in regard to money matters, that Parnell himself was an Irish landlord and of very considerable estates, and that this land campaign (really, of course, directed against eviction), meant, to all practical purposes, the loss of his rents, and that not only for a time, as in other cases, but, with the very generous interpretation put upon his wishes by the "Chief's" tenants, for all time--or rather for all his lifetime. Captain O'Shea also had certain estates in Ireland, and naturally, not being in sympathy with Parnell's policy, but being at heart a thorough Whig and a strong advocate for Mr. Shaw, the ex-leader of the Irish party, he was furious at the League's anti-landlord work, and refused to have any hand in it. He considered {81} that hapless as was the plight of those who had to pay in rent the money they did not possess, that of the landlord whose rent was his all was but little to be preferred.