ABSTRACT
The story of the 1890 Session is hardly worth telling in the detail that has been devoted to its predecessors. From the Session’s very opening on February 11th it was plain that the Oppositions, Gladstonian and Parnellite, were going to give all the trouble they could in an effort to force on a Government defeat and a General Election as soon as might be. A last appeal to Parnell failed, and Gladstone’s view that Parnell’s “continuance at the present moment in the leadership would be disastrous in the highest degree to the cause of Ireland” had to be communicated to the Press in the shape of a letter from Gladstone to Morley. The fierce internecine controversies in which the Irish factions thereupon involved themselves and tried to drag Gladstone must have been almost as damaging to the Home Rule cause with British “public opinion” as would have been Parnell’s unchallenged retention of the Irish leadership.
