The natural course would have been now to carry the inquiry on to the source of the letters. Instead of that, the prosecutors called an expert in handwriting. The court expostulated. Why should they not hear at once where the letters came from; and then it might be proper enough to hear what an expert had to say? After a final struggle the prolonged tactics of deferring the evil day, and prejudicing the case up to the eleventh hour, were at last put to shame. The second of the two marvellous stories was now to be told.
The personage who had handed the three batches of letters to the newspaper, told the Court how he had in 1885 compiled a pamphlet called Parnellism Unmasked, partly from materials communicated to him by a certain broken-down Irish journalist. To this unfortunate sinner, then in a state of penury little short of destitution, he betook himself one winter night in Dublin at the end of 1885. Long after, when the game was up and the whole sordid tragi-comedy laid bare, the poor wretch wrote: “I have been in difficulties and great distress for want of money for the last twenty years, and in order to find means of support for myself and my large family, I have been guilty of many acts which must for ever disgrace me.”[256] He had now within reach a guinea a day, and much besides, if he would endeavour to find any documents that might be available to sustain the charges made in the pamphlet. After some hesitation the bargain was struck, a guinea a day, hotel and travelling expenses, and a round price for documents. Within a few months the needy man in clover pocketed many hundreds of pounds. Only the author of the history of Jonathan Wild the Great could do justice to such a story of the Vagabond in Luck—a jaunt to Lausanne, a trip across the Atlantic, incessant journeys backward and forward to Paris, the jingling of guineas, the rustle of hundred-pound notes, and now and then perhaps a humorous thought of simple and solemn people in newspaper offices in London, or a moment's meditation on that perplexing law of human affairs by which the weak things [pg 407]
The Forgeries Exploded
of the world are chosen to confound the things that are mighty.
The moment came for delivering the documents in Paris, and delivered they were with details more grotesque than anything since the foolish baronet in Scott's novel was taken by Dousterswivel to find the buried treasure in Saint Ruth's. From first to last not a test or check was applied by anybody to hinder the fabrication from running its course without a hitch or a crease. When men have the demon of a fixed idea in their cerebral convolutions, they easily fall victims to a devastating credulity, and the victims were now radiant as, with microscope and calligraphic expert by their side, they fondly gazed upon their prize. About the time when the judges were getting to work, clouds arose on this smiling horizon. It is good, says the old Greek, that men should carry a threatening shadow in their hearts even under the full sunshine. Before this, the manager learned for the first time, what was the source of the letters. The blessed doctrine of intrinsic certainty, however, which has before now done duty in far graver controversy, prevented him from inquiring as to the purity of the source.
The toils were rapidly enclosing both the impostor and the dupes. He was put into the box at last (Feb. 21). By the end of the second day, the torture had become more than he could endure. Some miscalled the scene dramatic. That is hardly the right name for the merciless hunt of an abject fellow-creature through the doublings and windings of a thousand lies. The breath of the hounds was on him, and he could bear the chase no longer. After proceedings not worth narrating, except that he made a confession and then committed his last perjury, he disappeared. The police traced him to Madrid. When they entered his room with their warrant (March 1), he shot himself dead. They found on his corpse the scapulary worn by devout catholics as a visible badge and token of allegiance to the heavenly powers. So in the ghastliest wreck of life, men still hope and seek for some mysterious cleansing of the soul that shall repair all.
This damning experience was a sharp mortification to the government, who had been throughout energetic confederates [pg 408] in the attack. Though it did not come at once formally into debate, it exhilarated the opposition, and Mr. Gladstone himself was in great spirits, mingled with intense indignation and genuine sympathy for Mr. Parnell as a man who had suffered an odious wrong.
VI
The report of the commission was made to the crown on February 13, 1890. It reached the House of Commons about ten o'clock the same evening. The scene was curious,—the various speakers droning away in a House otherwise profoundly silent, and every member on every bench, including high ministers of state, plunged deep and eager into the blue-book. The general impression was that the findings amounted to acquittal, and everybody went home in considerable excitement at this final explosion of the damaged blunderbuss. The next day Mr. Gladstone had a meeting with the lawyers in the case, and was keen for action in one form or another; but on the whole it was agreed that the government should be left to take the initiative.
The report was discussed in both Houses, and strong speeches were made on both sides. The government (Mar. 3) proposed a motion that the House adopted the report, thanked the judges for their just and impartial conduct, and ordered the report to be entered on the journals. Mr. Gladstone followed with an amendment, that the House deemed it to be a duty to record its reprobation of the false charges of the gravest and most odious description, based on calumny and on forgery, that had been brought against members of the House; and, while declaring its satisfaction at the exposure of these calumnies, the House expressed its regret at the wrong inflicted and the suffering and loss endured through a protracted period by reason of these acts of flagrant iniquity. After a handsome tribute to the honour and good faith of the judges, he took the point that some of the opinions in the report were in no sense and no degree judicial. How, for instance, could three judges, sitting ten years after the fact (1879-80), determine better than anybody [pg 409]