There was great jubilation over this among the Nationalists. It was a distinct surrender on the part of the Government to the party of separation: and the suppressed Land League was revived openly under the name of the National League. The response to the new policy of conciliation and condonement came in terrible fashion. Earl Cowper and Mr. Forster had been succeeded in the Lord Lieutenancy and Chief Secretaryship by Earl Spencer and Lord Frederick Cavendish. On May 6 the last-named gentleman, a brother of the present Duke of Devonshire, after attending the installation of his chief, took a car to drive out to the Chief Secretary's Lodge. Overtaking Mr. Burke, a permanent official at the Castle, Lord Frederick dismissed his car and walked on with him through the Phoenix Park. It was a fine spring evening, between seven and eight o'clock; just as they were passing an opening in the trees on their right, giving a view of the Viceregal Lodge, two men came along the path to meet them. One of them, Brady, a man of immense size and strength, stooped down as if to tie his shoe-lace. As the two gentlemen passed him, he sprang erect, gripped Mr. Burke by the waist, and stabbed him in the back. The other ruffian, Kelly, slashed Burke across the throat as he fell. Lord Frederick, attempting to defend his friend with an umbrella, received a fatal thrust in the breast from Brady's knife, and fell dead also. [Illustration: _Orlando Norrie._} {_From the Royal Collection._ DISTRIBUTION OF EGYPTIAN WAR MEDALS BY HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN AT WINDSOR, November 21, 1882.] On the 8th of the following month a gentleman called Walter Bourke, riding with a soldier as escort near Gort, was shot at, and both were killed; and in like manner, on the 29th, Mr. Blake, a land agent, and his steward, Mr. Keene, were murdered by concealed assassins near Lough Rea. Ireland had come to a desperate condition; it was garrisoned with not less than 20,000 cavalry and infantry and 20,000 mounted constabulary, yet the Executive seemed powerless to cope with an almost universal conspiracy against life and property. The murdered Cavendish was succeeded as Chief Secretary by Mr. G. O. Trevelyan, and the first act of the Government was to introduce a fresh Coercion Bill, of extraordinary severity, creating special tribunals for the trial of suspects and criminals, conferring rights of search on the police, and giving further powers for dealing with incitement to crime. The Bill was vehemently opposed by Mr. Parnell and his party; nevertheless, the Government pursued their apparently hopeless policy of conciliation by introducing and carrying through the Arrears of Rent Bill, whereby about two millions of money was applied to release Irish tenants of a moiety of the liabilities which the Land League had forbidden them to fulfil, and the balance of arrears was wiped out at the expense of landlords. [Illustration: _Sir J. D. Linton, P.R.I._} {_From the Royal Collection._