Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885Reid, T. Wemyss (Thomas Wemyss)
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Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885
Reid, T. Wemyss (Thomas Wemyss)
Journalists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Reid, T. Wemyss (Thomas Wemyss), 1842-1905
For my part, I look back with pride and deep satisfaction to the line
which I then took, and from which I never swerved. It was not a
successful line. Mr. Forster's enemies were too powerful for him, and, as
everybody knows, he became their victim. But there are better things in
this world than success, and I am more content to have been Forster's
associate in his unmerited fall than I would have been to share in the
personal triumph which Mr. Chamberlain gained over him. Although
complaint was made, when my "Life" of Forster appeared, that I had made
too full a revelation of Cabinet secrets, the fact remains that a good
deal of truth has still to come out with regard to his resignation of
office in 1882. I do not propose to lift the veil here, but it is well
known that an ingenious trap was laid for him, and that, with
characteristic confidence in the good faith of his fellow-men, he walked
unsuspectingly into it. His resignation, it will be remembered, was due
to his refusal to accept as satisfactory a letter written by Mr. Parnell,
in which he undertook, if he were released from Kilmainham, to give
certain assistance to the Government in putting down outrages in Ireland.
Forster would willingly have accepted Mr. Parnell's word as a gentleman
that he would exert himself to this end, but he was not prepared to
accept the skilfully framed words in which Mr. Parnell sought to convey
the impression that was desired whilst avoiding all personal
responsibility in the matter. Those who wish to know how Mr. Forster was
jockeyed out of office must learn the history of Parnell's letter, and
how and by whom the sentences were devised which seemed acceptable to the
sanguine temperament of Mr. Gladstone, but which Forster, with his closer
knowledge of the situation, regarded as wholly unsatisfactory. The time
has not yet come for the story to be told, but when the precise facts are
revealed they will be found to throw a curious light upon this episode.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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