'Yours,
'Chs. W. D.'

'As Mr. Gladstone at our last interview had bid me convert Spencer if I could, and virtually promised that he would support our views if Spencer would, I had asked Trevelyan and Harcourt to back me up in letters. Harcourt made delay. Trevelyan wrote on the 23rd: "I am sorry the whole thing is in the newspapers, and see in it another reason for getting it settled. If you and Chamberlain make it a point to have the Bill for a year, I should be glad to see the concession made. The concession on the part of those who take another view would not be greater than was made by those of us who objected to have a Land Bill that was not based upon a new system of Local Government."

'Early in the morning of Saturday, the 23rd, before the meeting of my Commission at the City Hall, I had had a long talk with Spencer, and I felt, more strongly than I ever had before, that his position in Dublin was untenable, and that he ought to be allowed to go. On Whit Sunday I attended church with Spencer, and in the afternoon took him for the only walk which he had enjoyed for a long time. We passed the spot where Lord Frederick Cavendish was killed, and accompanied by a single aide-de-camp, but watched at a distance by two policemen in plain clothes, and met at every street corner by two others, walked to the strawberry gardens, and on our return, it being a lovely Sunday when the Wicklow Mountains were at their best and the hawthorn in bloom, met thousands of Dublin people driving out to the strawberry gardens on cars. In the course of the whole long walk but one man lifted his hat to Spencer, who was universally recognized, but assailed by the majority of those we met with shouts of, "Who killed Myles Joyce?" [Footnote: One of several men hanged for the Maamtrasna murders. All the other men sentenced protested that Myles Joyce was innocent, and died protesting it. Strong efforts were made to gain a reprieve for this lad.] while some varied the proceedings by calling "Murderer!" after him. A few days later, when I was driving with Lady Spencer in an open carriage, a well-dressed bicyclist came riding through the cavalry escort, and in a quiet, conversational tone observed to us, "Who killed Myles Joyce?" At his dinner-party on the Sunday evening Spencer told us that a Roman Catholic priest [Footnote: Father Healy, parish priest of Bray, and most famous of modern Irish talkers.] who was present (the Vicar of Bray, I think, but not the Bray) was the only priest in Ireland who would enter his walls, while the Castle was boycotted by every Archbishop and Bishop. On Monday morning, the 25th, Whit Monday, I paid a visit to the Mansion House at the request of the Lord Mayor of Dublin, taking by Spencer's leave the Viceregal carriages there, where they had in his second viceroyalty not been before, and was received by the Lord Mayor in state, which consisted in much exhibition of the most gorgeous porter (in green and gold) that my eyes had ever beheld. I afterwards went on to see Hamilton, [Footnote: Sir Robert Hamilton, who had succeeded Mr. Bourke as the permanent head of Dublin Castle.] the Under-Secretary. He offered us as a maximum County Boards plus a Central Education Board for Ireland, to administer all the grants with rating powers, and to be called a great experiment to be extended if it answered. In the evening I discussed this with Spencer, who went a little farther, and offered, in addition to County Boards, four elective Central Boards for Ireland, to discharge much the same duties which Chamberlain's scheme gave to the Central Board; but Spencer obstinately refused to take the plunge of making the four Boards into one Board. It was on this point that we broke off; and he never got farther forward until after the Government had gone out. He has since declared that his conversion to a more advanced Home Rule scheme than that of Chamberlain, which he had refused, was caused by the return of a certain majority of Nationalist members; but he was perfectly aware at this time what that majority would be, and I confess that I have never been able to understand why Hamilton and Spencer should have held out as they did in May against the moderate scheme, and have supported the extreme one as early as July, which I believe to have been the case. Had Spencer yielded at this moment, it is at least possible that the Irish question would have been settled. At all events, there has never been in our time so fair a chance of settlement.

'On Tuesday, the 26th, I heard from Lefevre, who wrote strongly against the Coercion Bill for Spencer's benefit, but added in a separate letter that he regarded the notice in the Birmingham Post as indicating that Chamberlain had been talking freely about the dissensions in the Cabinet, and that if this was so he considered it unfortunate, as tending to increase the difficulty of getting any further concessions from Spencer or other members of the Cabinet who favoured coercion.

'On Tuesday evening the Commission dined with Gray, and met Dr. Walsh, the new Archbishop; but at Dr. Walsh's wish I had gone to Gray's house half an hour before dinner to see the Archbishop privately, and to be thanked by him for the part that I had taken in trying to prevent opposition to the choice. In the evening Gray had a party at which both sides were represented, Chief Justice Morris being among those present. Gray's house, although the Spencers disliked him, was one at which the parties always met as much as is possible at all in Ireland. When Gray came out of gaol after his imprisonment he gave a small dinner, at which were present the Judge who had sentenced him, the gaoler who had had him in custody, and the prosecuting counsel. The most interesting man at Gray's was Fottrell, the man whose memoirs ought to be interesting, for he had acted as intermediary between the Castle (that is, Hamilton) and Parnell at the time when secret communications were passing between them, although openly they were at war.

'Dickson, the Ulster Liberal member, [Footnote: M.P. For Dungannon, Tyrone, 1880-1885. He afterwards became a leading Unionist.] was at Gray's, and he announced that he had at last come over to Chamberlain's scheme. Now, Hartington was crossing the next day to stay at the Viceregal Lodge, and was to speak at Belfast under Dickson's auspices, and the announcement of Dickson's change of front was a startling blow to him and Spencer.

'On the morning of Wednesday, the 27th, I wrote to Grant Duff: "A pretty pass you Whigs have brought this country to! I really think we Radicals ought to be allowed to try. We certainly could not do it worse. 'Poland' has been a byword, yet Poland is far less of a weakness to Russia than Ireland to us, and the Russians have now the Polish peasantry with them, if they have the towns and nobles against them. We have no friends in Ireland. All our policy has aimed at conciliating at least Ulster, and now Ulster is fast becoming as Nationalist as Cork. The Liberals carried Belfast freeholders in the late Antrim election to the cry of 'Down with coercion!' and 'No special legislation!' Hartington comes to-night, and I shall try to arrange some compromise with him and Spencer as to the future—probably an Irish elective education Council."

'On the evening of the 27th I had a long conference with Hartington and Spencer, in which I "worked" Dickson much. Before this I had had the third meeting of my Commission, and then a public meeting in connection with the Dublin Ladies' Central Association, a body dealing with the Housing of the Working Classes. On the morning of May 28th Spencer came into my bedroom before eight o'clock, and told me that Hartington was very ill, suffering from sleeplessness and fever, and that it would be quite impossible for him to make his Belfast speech…. Dickson soon came to the Viceregal Lodge, and earnestly begged me to go to Belfast in Hartington's place, but under the circumstances I felt that it was impossible that I should do so, although he promised me that a special train should be waiting at the last moment if I would change my mind.

'I received this day a letter from Cardinal Manning strongly urging that Chamberlain, Lefevre, and I, should stay in. "If you and the like of you leave the Whigs, they will fall back and unite in resisting you. So long as you are in contact with them, they will yield to reason. These are the thoughts of an Old Testament Radical." But the Old Testament Radical went on to make proposals to me with regard to the Roman Catholic vote in Chelsea which would have astonished the Old Testament prophets.

'Another letter which I received this day was from O'Shea about Parnell's opinions on the Coercion Bill, but it is so obscure that I can make nothing of it. It was on a suggestion of Lefevre's with regard to bringing the Coercion Bill into force only by "proclamation." It shows, however, if O'Shea is to be believed, that Parnell was willing to accept a coercion measure of some kind, or, at all events, to haggle about its terms, if publicly resisting it as a whole.