ABSTRACT
The closing years of Beaconsfield saw the first appearance in parliamentary politics of a new and strange force of incalculable importance. It has been argued that party government is only possible when both the parties are substantially in agreement, and up till this time all the parliamentary politicians of consequence, whatever else their differences, were at least united in their desire that the system should work. In the last years of the 1870’s there appeared in politics Charles Steuart Parnell—a man who differed profoundly from the leading politicians, who saw clearly that his difference would make the system unworkable, who intended to make the system unworkable.
