the only object. These gentlemen wish to march through rapine to the disintegration and dismemberment of the Empire."

What a cynical smile must have lit up Parnell's handsome face as he read this speech in his snug room in Kilmainham! The whistling was growing louder! Six months later the secret treaty of Kilmainham was settled. Mr Gladstone acknowledged that Parnell and the Land League "commanded the support of the majority of the people of Ireland," and he undertook to promote their policy; and Parnell on his part promised to use his influence to put an end to the outrage campaign, and to give Parliamentary support to the Government in 66 forwarding Liberal principles." And, as Mr Gladstone declared in the course of the Home Rule debates of 1893, "From that date forward no hard word, and no word of censure, in any speech of mine respecting Mr Parnell was to be found."

That charming historical romance, the Irish section of Morley's Life of Gladstone,' gives an account of the Kilmainham treaty which, I suppose, will pass into history. The Premier's colleagues in the Cabinet attributed his change of policy to the assurances received through Captain O'Shea, M.P. (the emissary of Lord Morley's story), "that Mr Parnell was desirous to use his influence on behalf of peace." These assurances were communicated by Mr Chamberlain to the Cabinet on the 25th April; and at the next Council, held

that day week, it was decided to release the Irish outragemongers and to allow the Act under which they were imprisoned to lapse.

By several of the Ministers that decision was accepted with misgivings. But the author of the Leeds and Liverpool philippios was its staunch and enthusiastic advocate. Of the real grounds on which he advocated it his colleagues knew nothing, for until April 1893 1893 the real Kilmainham treaty was a profound secret. The high contracting parties to that treaty were the Prime Minister on the one side, and on the other the only person on earth who enjoyed the unreserved confidence of the Irish leader. I refer, of course, to Mrs O'Shea, who afterwards became his wife. And the negotiations took place in a tête-à-tête in Thomas's Hotel in Berkeley Square. Cherchez la femme. Many a great man has been fooled by a woman.

On Saturday morning, the 6th May, Lord Spencer landed in Ireland to inaugurate the new policy which was to bring peace to the country. Just twelve hours later Lord Frederick Cavendish, the newlyappointed Chief Secretary, and Thomas Henry Burke, the Permanent Under Secretary at Dublin Castle, were murdered in the Phoenix Park. The policy of the Kilmainham treaty, which not a hundred hours before had been deliberately adopted by the Cabinet, was instantly discarded; and not only the British public but the Ministers of the Crown

gave themselves up to a fit of blind passion and panic. What wonder is it if English Government is despised by the Irish people. If the Cabinet's decision on the Tuesday was right, the murder on the Saturday in no way justified the reversal of it. For however deep might be the responsibility of the Ministry for this orime, Parnell was clear of it; and the horror which it excited in the breast of almost every Irishman would have afforded him the leverage without which he could never have fulfilled his part of the Kilmainham compact.

And real statesmanship would have recognised that Cavendish's murder was an event of no special significance. As a matter of fact, it was a mere accident. That the Invincibles had planned the death of Forster, Burke, and my own brother, the Crown Solicitor, was known at Dublin Castle. I myself had given definite warnings of these plots. But Cavendish was a stranger to the assassins, and it was not till after the event that they learned the identity of their second victim. It was indeed a brutal murder; but the criminal returns of the time record a long list of murders quite as brutal and far more significant of the condition of the country. But the savage crimes which marked the rule of the League only led up to surrender to the League. So long as it was only the Irish who were the victims, Downing Street was callously indifferent. And if poor Tom

Burke had been alone that evening, his murder would have been condoned, and the Kilmainham treaty would have stood. And it must in honesty be acknowledged that if Parnell had been given & free hand, Ireland would have suffered less during the year which followed than it did under Mr Gladstone's ad

ministration.

The Phoenix Park murder was one of the turning-points in my official life. "The Secret Service' is thankless work, and, moreover, I had never taken to it con amore. So in the winter of 1881-82 I again decided to turn from it. This resolution was due in part to offers of work that was more to my taste. One was in the sphere of journalism, a second related to literary work of a higher kind, and the third was professional. A gentleman, whose name looms large in public life, called on me to say that R. S. Wright (afterwards Mr Justice Wright), who had been advising him in his Parliamentary work, was obliged to withdraw his services on account of his receiving a Treasury appointment, and he had recommended me as his successor. I have often been gratified to find how highly I am esteemed by people who don't know me! And here was a signal instance of it, for Wright and I were strangers.

The work I thus undertook was thoroughly compatible with my duties in the Prison Department, and it was altogether congenial. But that

IN 1834 The Honourable East India Company was deprived of the exclusive right to trade to China-all that then remained of the privileges which had once given it the monopoly of British commerce in the East. It ceased to be a trading body. The commanders and officers of its Maritime Service were therefore deprived of honours, securities, advantages, and emoluments which no merchant seaman could hope to find elsewhere, or ever to enjoy again. After the manner of British men in such an emergency they formed a com

mittee to state their case for compensation, and they chose Captain George Probyn as their chairman. Probyn drew up the memorial letter to be laid before the Court of Directors-which "Sheweth," to quote his opening words, "That the Maritime Service of the East India Company has existed for upwards of two hundred years; that the ships and seamen employed by the said Company have been, in a great degree, instrumental in acquiring and securing the now vast territories of British India, and in advancing its commercial success to that degree it so long maintained." The reader knows that the Maritime Service of the H.E.I.C. was not the Bombay Marine or Indian Navy, a later body with another history. It was the commercial service, com

posed of those commanders, officers, and men who went out desirous to trade, but prepared to fight for freedom to trade. When Captain Probyn said that they had been "in a great degree instrumental" in creating the British Empire and British commerce in the East, he spoke with the modesty of a brave and honest man. He might have said that they had made the Empire and the commerce possible.

The founders of both were the seafaring_servants of the Company of Merchants of London, who, after Godolphin's arbitration in 1708, became the United Company of Merchants of England trading into the East Indies. But for Lancaster, who showed the way; Best and Downton, who broke the strength of the Portuguese on the Coast of Malabar; Saris, who opened the trade to China,

-there could have been no Clive, no Warren Hastings. Two centuries after Lancaster had sailed his last voyage, it would have gone hard with the Company if its Maritime Service had not included such resolute skippers as Commodore Dance and others, who daunted Linois at Pulo Aor on the 14th and 15th of February 1804.

General Gordon is credited with the saying that England (he meant the British Empire) was made by her adventurers. The adventurer proper makes nothing. Empires of all time have been made by solid work

men who were not afraid of adventures. Michelborne, who poached on the Company's preserve, was an adventurer, and made mischief. Lancaster was a workman a very different stamp of man, for he includes the adventurer and a great deal more. It was a supremely brave man, but not an adventurer, who wrote this letter in 1603 to the Governor and Company of the Merchants of London trading into the East:

"Right Worshipful, what hath passed in this voyage, and what

trades I have settled for this Com

panie, and what other events have befallen us, ye shall understand by the bearers hereof, to whom (as occasion hath fallen) I must referre you. I will strive with all diligence to save my ship, and her goods, as you may perceive by the course I take in venturing mine owne life, and those that are with mee. I cannot tell where you should looke for me, if you send out any pinnace to seeke me, because I live at the devotion of the winds and seas. And thus fare-you-well, desiring God to send us a merrie meeting in this world if it be His good will and pleasure. "The passage to the East Indies lieth in 62 degrees the north-west on the America side. -Your very loving friend,

"JAMES LANCASTER."

Here visibly enough is the message of a man in peril. It was great. The Dragon was on her way home with her consort the Hector. They met with storms in the South Atlantic. The rudder of the Dragon was unshipped, and could not be rehung in the sea then running. Some of her men would willingly have left her to drift, and have made their way home in the Hector. Lancaster held them to their

duty. But he would not neglect the interest of the Company. The Hector should not be kept waiting on the fortunes of the Dragon. So her captain was ordered to part company, and make the best of his way home with this letter, which was to be his authority for leaving his commander, 80 that he might deliver what goods he carried, and the even more valuable information gathered in this voyage, the first undertaken for the merchants of London. For himself Lancaster claims only the merit of a diligent servant, quotes the peril of his position without mock-modesty, but only for the purpose of letting his worshipful masters know that he did not think the case desperate,-guards, with a Hash of poetry like a true Elizabethan, against the possibility that

the Company

would send & pinnace to look for men who "live at the devotion of the winds and seas"; hopes for a merry meeting, and ends with what he honestly believed was a piece of useful information. It was God's good will and pleasure that Lancaster should have the merry meeting he hoped for. The wind abated, the rudder was rehung, and Lancaster lived to reach home to be knighted, and to enjoy old age, rest, and honour, as a Director of the worshipful Company. And of such as he was its Maritime Service from first to laststeady practical seamen, who sought prosperity by peaceful means if so it was to be obtained, but in whom there lay