“Those who take a larger and a nobler view of human affairs,” he said, “will, I think, recognise that, alone in the countries of Europe, England now, for almost countless generations, has--by her Parliament--established the fair exemplar of free government, and that, throughout the awful vicissitudes of her heroic history, she has--chiefly by this House of Commons--maintained and cherished that public spirit which is the soul of Commonwealth, without which Empire has no glory, and the wealth of nations is but the means of corruption and decay.” Earlier passages of that same speech had been marked by brilliant flashes of humour and sarcasm, showing, here as always, his incomparable power of registering in a single sentence the characteristics of a cause he desired to condemn. I remember in particular a reference to Professor Goldwin Smith which was very happily expressed. “Why, the other day,” he said, “a rampant orator who goes about the country maligning men and things, went out of his way to assail me, saying, ‘Where now are the 4000 freeholders of Buckinghamshire?’ Why, sir, they are where you would naturally expect to find them--they are in the county of Buckingham. I can pardon this wild man, who has probably lived in the cloisters of some abbey, making this mistake ...” etc. There are orators who are not orators, and who yet, by some undefinable power of personality, exercise an extraordinary authority upon their hearers. In this class, and I should be disposed to think foremost in this class, must be set Mr. Parnell, whose acquaintance I made at the house of Sir George Lewis about the date of the publication of the famous letter in the _Times_. To me that letter had seemed from the first a manifest forgery, and I had made several small bets in the Garrick Club that it would be so proved whenever it was made the subject of a judicial investigation. Mr. Parnell’s comment when I told him of my confidence as to the result was tinged with a certain sadness that was, I think, a constant quality of his nature. “You may make your mind quite easy upon that point,” he said. “I only wish I felt as sure that every incident, in what has been practically a revolution, would redound as surely to the credit of the Irish people. But it is inevitable,” he added, “that such a movement must of necessity call into being forces which it is beyond the power of any single individual to control.” Through his chief whip Mr. Richard Power, a dear friend and companion of the Garrick Club, Mr. Parnell had offered me a seat as one of the Irish party, but although I had then, and still retain, complete sympathy with the principles of Home Rule, I felt it would be impossible for me as an Englishman to yield such complete surrender of my independent judgment as was demanded by the parliamentary tactics of the party.