At the League Hall demonstration on the night of the election, Mr. Parnell appeared to have caught the high spirit and enthusiasm of his audience, and in a more powerful address than I had ever before heard from him, he said:—
Ireland has been knocking at the English door long enough with kid gloves. I tell the English people to beware, and be wise in time. Ireland will soon throw off the kid gloves, and she will knock with a mailed hand.
In this General Election, the Irish vote of Great Britain, in accordance with the League manifesto, generally went for the Tories, who came into office, but with a majority so small that they were turned out at the opening of the Session of 1886, and Mr. Gladstone again came into power. Seeing that 85 out of the 103 Irish members of Parliament had been returned pledged to National self-government, he came to the conclusion to drop coercion, and no longer to attempt to rule the country against the wishes of the people. He, therefore, introduced his Home Rule Bill on the 8th of April, 1886, but, failing to carry the whole of his party with him, he was defeated on the second reading by 30 votes. His defeat at the polls at the General Election which followed seemed even more crushing than his defeat in Parliament, for, of the members elected, there was a majority against him of 118.
Mr. Gladstone, looking more closely into the figures of the General Election, was not disheartened, and as the British public became educated on the Irish question, bye-election after bye-election proved triumphantly the truth of his famous saying that the "Flowing Tide" was carrying the cause of Home Rule on to victory.
Nor were we disheartened, for, counting up the whole of about two and a half millions of votes given, we found that the Unionists, as the Tories and Dissentient Liberals called themselves, had a majority of less than 80,000 votes at the polls. During this time I had become general organiser of the recognised Irish political organisation of Great Britain, and upon me chiefly devolved the duty of directing the work of registration of our Irish voters. A close study of the local conditions in the various constituencies showed that the mere bringing up of the neglected Irish vote to something approaching its proper strength would alone be sufficient to effect the necessary gain. We threw ourselves into the task—and we succeeded.
I shall always remember with pride my share in increasing and organising the Irish vote throughout Great Britain, and its result in bringing Mr. Gladstone back to power, and enabling him to carry the Home Rule Bill through the House of Commons.
It was my duty to visit every part of Great Britain to see that the various districts and branches were kept in a high state of efficiency, and at the end of that period of hard and unremitting work from 1886 to 1892 I was able to show our Executive from the books and figures in our possession that we had accomplished our aim.