ALTHOUGH IT MAY have seemed in retrospect that the
negotiations in France were, as Morley called them, 'idle from
the start' they were not--from the viewpoint of Parnell's
opponents--entirely fruitless. ¹ The liberal assurances were not
withdrawn because Parnell had rejected them, and this at least
was an advance on the blank negative which was all the dele-
gates from Committee Room Fifteen had received from Glad-
stone two months earlier. Further, the fact that they were pub-
lished to the world meant that the liberal party had been
committed in advance on the two important topics of the land
and the police in a manner it would be impossible to repudiate. ²
And apart from this, the meetings between McCarthy and
Parnell had resulted in the liberation of £8,000 from the Paris
fund mainly, if not entirely, for the support of the evicted
tenants. It is true that this was the subject of angry exchanges as
to who had taken the initiative and how much was really
allotted to the evicted tenants and how much otherwise, but it
seems beyond doubt that not less than £5,000 was released for
the benefit of these unfortunate people, and this too was a
positive gain.³ Finally, if the break-down of the negotiations

-251-