In despair Gladstone turned to Parnell, clutching at the straw presented by one of the Irishman's friends that Parnell was willing to discuss terms of peace with the Government. The premier was willing, anxious, in fact, to remove the reproach from his Government the state of Ireland entailed, and he sent Forster to open negotiations with the prisoner, who was a dictator. When Lord Cowper heard of the preliminaries to what became known as the Kilmainham Treaty he resigned, rightly deeming it demeaning and humiliating for responsible ministers to treat with a man who had roused the passions of the uncontrollables, and who, to his lasting disgrace, never denounced the crimes the Land League produced until the greatest crime of all convinced him that sometimes murder is a mistake. Mr. Gladstone appealed to Lord Spencer, a member of his Cabinet, and an experienced administrator of Irish affairs, to take up the most dangerous and irksome post in the Government. The earl could not, of course, refuse, for refusal in the circumstances could have been construed into a confession of cowardice. {279} He had agreed in the Cabinet to the _pourparlers_ with Parnell, and he was determined to give the Irish leader an opportunity of retrieving the blunders of the Land League, and doing so with a show of victory over the Government, which did not care about its reputation on Irish matters provided an end was made of the reign of the murderers. [Sidenote: State of the country] Immediate events justified Lord Cowper up to the hilt, who must have watched with a grim satisfaction the terrible results of Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy in the early eighties. When the time came that disclosed Mr. Gladstone as the champion of Home Rule, Lord Cowper took a leading part in the forces arrayed against his old chief. At a meeting in a London theatre addressed by Lord Salisbury and the Marquis of Hartington, Lord Cowper was in the chair, and his presence was a tower of strength to the cause. After the final defeat of Liberal Home Rule he dropped out of public life, and at his death--on July 19, 1905--he was almost forgotten by his contemporaries.