ABSTRACT
Charles Stewart Parnell was a Protestant; he came of a family of English origin, and was the son of an American mother. He had hardly entered the House of Commons when he resolved to show England that Ireland’s desires and necessities could not be disposed of by merely ignoring them. Lord Hartington with a heavy heart, was obliged, in obedience to the Queen’s insistent orders to consult first Granville and then to ask William Ewart Gladstone whether he would enter the Cabinet under Granville or himself. If the Queen had privately consoled herself with the thought that the Prime Minister, who was seventy-one years of age, would soon retire from practical politics, he soon gave her an unmistakable proof that he himself had the fullest confidence in his undiminished capacity for work. The economic condition of Ireland had greatly deteriorated, and they had to reckon with Parnell, the Leader of an absolutely compact Party, resolved to go to any lengths.
