Miss Parnell termed him a hoary-headed old miscreant; Miss Helen Taylor, of the London School Board, described him as a dastard and a recreant; Mr. O’Donnell, M.P., said Gladstone was a Judas, who had betrayed Ireland by the kiss of peace to the persecutor and tormentor. In Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, the effigy of Mr. Gladstone was burned by a crowd of fifteen hundred Irish under the direction of the League leaders. Even in Hawarden the magistrates had to place four additional constables to protect Mr. Gladstone from the effects of Irish revenge. Mr. Gladstone, said Mr. Parnell at Wexford just before he was arrested, was the greatest coercionist, the greatest and most unrivalled slanderer of the Irish nation, that ever lived. The situation was gloomy. Naturally Mr. Gladstone made as light as possible of the situation in the speech he delivered at the Lord Mayor’s banquet. The speech for the moment silenced the murmurs of dissension inside the Cabinet. ‘You said,’ Mr. Gladstone wrote to Forster, ‘that if we are to ask for a suspension of Habeas Corpus, it must be on a case of great strength and clearness. But do these figures, after all the allowance to be made for protection, indicate such a case? As far as I can judge, there is a tendency in Ireland upon a series of years to a decline in the total number of homicides. The immense increase in property offences, agrarian, for 1880 seems to me to mark the true character of the crisis and the true source of the mischief of the Land League. But I incline to assume that any suspension of Habeas Corpus must be founded on danger to life.’ When Parliament met in 1881 began the long running fight between Mr. Forster and Mr. Parnell. As the chief representative of the Land League, Mr. Parnell had spoken defending the action of the League, and Mr. Forster retorted that the meetings of that body had constantly been followed by outrage, and that the object of the Land Leaguers was not to bring about an alteration in the law of the land by constitutional means, but to prevent any payment of rent save such as might be in accordance with the unwritten law of Mr. Parnell. In Parliament Government carried a Protection Act, an Arms Bill, and an Irish Land Bill. The Acts were of no avail. Outrages increased after the passing of the Protection Act. In May Mr. John Dillon was arrested and others of his party. In September it was resolved to arrest Mr. Parnell, ‘the uncrowned king,’ as his followers called him. Mr. Gladstone assented to the arrest if in the opinion of the law officers of the Crown he had by his speeches been guilty of treasonable practices.