of England! These are the foul and dastardly methods by which the National League and the Parnellites have established their terrorism over a large portion of Ireland. Will you refuse the Government the powers which will enable these cowardly miscreants to be punished, and which will give protection to the millions of honest and loyal people in Ireland?" It is very certain that all Liberal Unionists, and even a few of the more educated Tory statesmen, realised that the articles were merely theatrical appeals to the contracted imaginations of those armchair politicians, whose ways of influencing voters in rural districts were all powerful, but it was not to be expected that the man in the street could understand them as such. On him they made a profound impression. The first article appeared on March 7, the second on the 14th, and the third on the 18th. On the 22nd Mr. Balfour gave notice of his Coercion Bill. "Parnellism and Crime" had prepared the way for him. The Bill was read for the first time in the beginning of April, and on the last day of the debate on the Second Reading, April 18, the _Times_ published its _pièce de résistance_--what has since become known as "the facsimile letter." It ran as follows: 15/5/82. DEAR SIR,--I am not surprised at your friend's anger, but he and you should know that to denounce the murders was the only course open to us. To do that promptly was plainly our best policy. But you can tell him and all others concerned that though I regret the accident of Lord F. Cavendish's death, I cannot refuse to admit that Burke got no more than his deserts. You are at liberty to show him this, and others whom you can {360} trust also, but let not my address be known. He can write to House of Commons.--Yours very truly, CHAS. S. PARNELL. I have before me the photograph of the facsimile letter, used in the Parnell Commission, and also the letters received by Mr. Labouchere at different times from the Irish leader, and it seems incredible, on comparing the general style and caligraphy of the former with the latter, how the _Times_ agents and Mr. Soames could have been deceived for one moment; but I must not anticipate in this place the verdict of the Commission on the forgery, in the obtaining of which Mr. Labouchere played such a characteristic part. The whole of England was indignant when the issue of the _Times_ containing the facsimile letter appeared on their breakfast tables, and even comparatively tender-hearted persons began to think seriously that no treatment of Ireland by the English could be savage enough to avenge the cold-hearted, calculating cruelty of Parnell.