PARNELL. Well, their proof has satisfied them, anyhow: as they are acting
on it. Oh! When I see what poor, weak things nations really are--so
inadequately equipped for the shaping of their own destinies--I wonder
whether in truth the history we read is not the wrong history--mere side
history, to which a false significance has been given, because so much
blood and treasure have been expended on it, which just a little
expenditure of common sense might have spared.... Think of all the silly
accidents and blunders, in Ireland's great chapter of accidents, which
have counted for so much--even in these last few years!... The Phoenix
Park business--an assassination, for which perhaps only a dozen men were
responsible--and at once, for that one act, more suppression and hatred
and coercion are directed against a whole nation: Crimes Acts, packed
juries, judges without juries, arrests without charge, imprisonments
without trial. So logical, isn't it? What a means for putting a foreign
Government right in the eyes of the people who deny its moral
authority!... And then--Pigott, that shallow fraud, driven to suicide by
those who were at first so eager to believe him: and the exposure of his
silly forgery turns elections, makes Home Rule popular! Coming by such
means, would it be worth it?... Gladstone, honourably hoodwinking himself
all those years, accepting you as our secret go-between--and you making no
pretence, my dear! Oh, I suppose it was the right and gentlemanly thing
for him to pretend not to know.
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