When the new Parliament assembled the Liberals were in a majority of more than a hundred, if the Irish Home Rulers were counted as neutral. If they were added to the Liberal ranks, their majority became 170. No one then thought of adding them to the Conservatives, though half of them—the Parnellites—subsequently voted with the Conservatives in a vast number of divisions, and finally contributed to Mr. Gladstone’s downfall. CHAPTER X. IRELAND UNDER MR. FORSTER. When Mr. Gladstone returned to power, Mr. Forster was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, with Lord Cowper as Viceroy. There was great distress—as there generally is in Ireland—and exceptional efforts had been made, both by the Government and the people of this country, to meet it. A benevolent fund had been raised, chiefly through the influence of the Duchess of Marlborough, wife of the Lord-Lieutenant, and a Distress Relief Act had been carried by Parliament to empower the application of three-quarters of a million of the Irish Church Surplus Fund, and some good had unquestionably been done by the public and private effort thus made to relieve distress; but it was clear, from the results of the elections, and from the speeches of the popular Irish leaders, that it was not to measures of this kind that the people looked for permanent relief. The unusual distress of 1879 had intensified and aggravated the chronic disaffection, and sixty members had been returned to Parliament who were pledged to do their utmost to put an end to English rule in Ireland by securing Home Rule. Flushed with the brilliant success they had achieved, the Liberal party entered upon office confident that a career of prosperity lay before them. Lord Beaconsfield’s defeat had been brought about by the national repudiation of his foreign policy; and, in the first instance, it was of foreign, rather than domestic, affairs that the new House of Commons was thinking. But Ireland at once came to the front. The existing Coercion Act would expire in a few weeks, and it was necessary to secure its renewal before it lapsed; but the Cabinet resolved to try the experiment of governing by means of the ordinary law.