Of course Irish affairs immediately occupied Parliament, but on September 21 the Land Bill, introduced by Parnell, and upon which, he warned the House, the peace of Ireland depended, was rejected by a majority of 95 votes. On October 23, the Plan of Campaign was launched and furiously denounced by the Conservatives in the House of Commons and on every platform throughout the country. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach resigned the Chief Secretaryship on account of his failing eyesight, and was replaced by Mr. Balfour. The first Parliament that met in 1887 was given notice of two measures for Ireland--a Coercion Bill to be introduced in the House of Commons and a Land Bill in the House of Lords. The Coercion Bill was the most stringent of its kind ever introduced. It abridged and destroyed the {358} constitutional liberties of the people of Ireland and created new offences. It withdrew the protection of juries, and gave full powers to resident magistrates of dealing with cases of intimidation and of holding public meetings against the will of the executive. It was proposed, moreover, that the measure should be a permanent one, and not restricted to one or a limited number of years.[1] Two extraordinary events occurred in that year, in both of which Mr. Labouchere played an important part. They both had their indirect origin in the coercive measures which Mr. Balfour succeeded in passing through the House. The first took place during the spring, when the _Times_, in order to strengthen the hands of the Government, in their remorseless warfare on Irish liberties, published, during the course of a series of articles called "Parnellism and Crime," the facsimile of a letter supposed to have been written by Mr. Parnell to Mr. Patrick Egan in 1882, referring brutally to the Phœnix Park murders. The letter was contained in the fourth article of the series. The reader will easily perceive from the following short extracts the spirit in which these articles were conceived: "Be the ultimate goal of these men (the Parnellites) what it will, they are content to march towards it in company with murderers. Murderers provide their funds, murderers share their inmost counsels, murderers have gone forth from the League[2] offices to set their bloody work afoot, and have presently returned to consult the 'constitutional leaders' on the advancement of the cause," occurred in the first article. The third article declared that "even now" the Parnellite conspiracy was controlled by dynamiters and assassins, and proceeded thus: "We have seen how the infernal fabric arose 'like an exhalation' to the sound of murderous oratory; how assassins guarded it {359} about, and enforced the high decrees of the secret conclave within by the ballot and the knife. Of that conclave to-day, three sit in the Imperial Parliament, four are fugitives from the law." The first series of the articles finished up with this appeal: "Men