The Land League
Lord Cowper's viceroyalty has been tersely described as occupying 'two dismal years—the most dismal of the nineteenth century.' His own life was threatened, elaborate plots to terminate the Chief Secretary's existence were discovered as fast as an overworked detective department could unravel its agents' reports, and from all over the country murders were reported until it seemed that all sense of decency had long since departed from the country. Encouraged by the success of the Land League, a fresh series of revolting crimes shocked civilization. Terrified English ministers tried the effects of another Land Act, and in 1881 it was placed in the statute-book. This was a great triumph for the Land League, and was regarded by its members as the justification of its existence. Again a desire to conciliate had been interpreted as a sign of weakness.
The new Land Act did not decrease the agitation, and on October 12, 1881, a five-hour sitting of the Cabinet resulted in an order to the viceroy to have Parnell arrested under the Coercion Act. The Irish leader was thereupon taken to Kilmainham Gaol, and remained there for six months. Optimists expected that this bold stroke would intimidate the intimidators; it had an opposite effect. Mr. Forster had to report that crime was actually on the increase, and that the Land Act had not been of the slightest use. It was easy to imprison Parnell, but the spirit of the movement remained abroad in the people.
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. 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.
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.
There is an admirable and eloquent description in Viscount Morley's 'Life of Gladstone' of the condition of Ireland when Lord Spencer began his second viceroyalty: 'In 1882 Ireland seemed to be literally a society on the verge of dissolution. The Invincibles still roved with knives about the streets of Dublin. Discontent had been stirred in the ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and a dangerous mutiny broke out in the metropolitan force. Over half of the country the demoralization of every class, the terror, the fierce hatred, the universal distrust, had grown to an incredible pitch. The moral cowardice of what ought to have been the governing class was astounding. The landlords would hold meetings and agree not to go beyond a certain abatement, and then they would go individually and privately offer to the tenant a greater abatement. Even the agents of the law and the Courts were shaken in their duty. The power of random arrest and detention under the Coercion Act of 1881 had not improved the morale of magistrates and police. The Sheriff would let the word get out that he was coming to make a seizure, and profess surprise that the cattle had vanished. The whole countryside turned out thousands in half the counties in Ireland to attend flaming meetings, and if a man did not attend angry neighbours trooped up to know the reason why. The clergy hardly stirred a finger to restrain the wildness of the storm; some did their best to raise it. All that was what Lord Spencer had to deal with, the very foundations of the social fabric rocking.'
