After the Easter recess the attacks on Forster were renewed. It was demanded that he should be removed from office, and that the suspects should be immediately released, on the plea that their imprisonment had not prevented the continuance of the outrages. To make matters worse, the American Government became urgent in their demands for the release of those prisoners who could prove that they were citizens of the United States, while, in addition to the political perplexities thus created, the atrocious murder of Mrs. H. J. Smythe, as she was driving home from church in West Meath, sent a thrill of horror through the country. At this time Forster, in a letter to Mr. Gladstone, writes: ‘That if now or at any future time’ (the _Pall Mall_ had been suggesting his resignation) ‘you think that from _any cause_ it would be to the advantage of the public service or for the good of Ireland that I should resign, I most unreservedly place my resignation in your hands.’ In reply, Mr. Gladstone wrote from Hawarden, April 5, 1882: ‘Yesterday morning I was unwell, and did not see the papers, so that I have only just become aware of the obliging suggestion that you should retire. I suspect it is partly due to a few (not many) Tory eulogies. There is one consideration which grievously tempts me towards the acceptance of the offer conveyed in your most handsome letter. It is that if you go, and go on Irish grounds, surely I must go too. . . . We must continue to face our difficulties with an unbroken front and with a stout heart. I do not admit your failure, and I think you have admitted it rather too much—at any rate, by omission—by not putting forward the main fact that in the deadly fight with the social revolution you have not failed, but are succeeding. Your failure, were it true, is our failure; and outrage, though a grave fact, is not the main one. Were there a change in the features of the case, I would not hesitate to recognise it, with whatever pain, as unreservedly as I now record their actual condition. I do not suppose we ought to think of legislating on the Irish case until after Whitsuntide.’ But, nevertheless, Mr. Forster did resign. In April Lord Spencer succeeded Earl Cowper as Irish Viceroy, and negotiations were carried on between Captain O’Shea and Mr. Parnell—known now as the Kilmainham Treaty—of which Mr. Forster strongly complained. Mr. Gladstone took a different view. Writing to Forster, he expressed the satisfaction with which he had read Mr. Parnell’s letter. With regard to the expression in the letter of the writer’s willingness to co-operate in future with the Liberal party, Mr. Gladstone wrote: ‘This is a _hors d’œuvre_ which we had no right to expect. I may be far wide of the mark, but I can scarcely wonder at O’Shea saying, “The thing is done. . . .” On the whole, Parnell’s letter is the most extraordinary I ever read. I cannot help feeling indebted to O’Shea.’