A word must be said on this measure, which had its origin, to a great extent, in sheer and audacious falsehood. By this time Parnell was at the head of some sixty adherents in the House of Commons; he had linked the Home Rule and the Land League movements; his followers were, in many instances, chiefs of the League; they induced Mr. Gladstone to listen to them, on representations characteristically untrue. Evictions were on the increase in Ireland, owing to the onslaught made by the League on the landed gentry; Parnell and his band unscrupulously exaggerated the number, perhaps twenty-fold, by confounding ejectment decrees of the Courts with evictions actually carried out; Mr. Gladstone appears to have accepted this shameful statement. The new 'Compensation for Disturbance' Bill, as it was called, provided that in the case of certain classes of tenants, although they had failed to pay their rents, compensation, withheld, we have seen, under the Act of 1870, might be afforded them, under rather strict conditions; this was certainly an innovation of a startling kind, but something was to be said for it, in the existing position of affairs. The House of Commons, however, disliked a measure nicknamed 'payment by reason of non-payment,' and limited its application in many ways; and the House of Lords, unfortunately, I think, threw it out. This Bill, closely circumscribed as it was, would not have extended, perhaps, to many tenants; it was condemned by Parnell and his satellites as a sham. Its rejection, however, gave an opportunity to the League; its leaders proclaimed at meetings, never so frequent before, that Ireland had nothing to expect from a foreign Parliament; the attack on 'landlordism' became more intense; treasonable and predatory harangues increased in vehemence. The influence of the conspiracy spread beyond Connaught, over nearly all Munster, and parts of Leinster; wherever it was felt it was attended with agrarian crime; 'crime,' as Mr. Gladstone exclaimed, 'always dogged its footsteps.' Offences of this kind portentously multiplied; they had been eight hundred and sixty-three at the close of 1879; they were two thousand five hundred and eighty-nine at the close of 1880;[70] and these included a number of barbarous murders, and of other atrocious deeds of outrage and blood, especially of the mutilation of the cattle of those opposed to the League. A kind of servile war springing from the land had set in; and during this whole period the spokesmen of the League, whether in the highest or the lowest grades, continued to denounce the landed gentry, though they knew that their utterances were the direct incentive to far-spreading crime. Parnell, however, infinitely the ablest of the conspirators, perceived that this brutal disorder would incense Parliament, and, besides, could not have decisive results; the cool, calculating schemer laid down a plan of operations for the League, which he hoped would be less openly detestable,