ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1889, William Ewart Gladstone wrote to Dr. Dollinger in reply to a letter in which Dollinger had been expressing his Unionist views and his reasons for them. Gladstone thought that the worst disaster that could befall Home Rule would be the death of Parnell. He learned in the winter of 1890 that he was wrong. Parnell’s death would have been a small disaster compared with Parnell’s disgrace. Home Rule might have survived the first; it was destroyed—for Gladstone’s lifetime and long after—by the second. Between the close of the Commission and the issue and discussion of the Report Parnell made his first and only visit to Hawarden. Parnell had appeared to the public a man of courage and character who had escaped a shameful conspiracy on the part of his rich and powerful enemies.
