Parnell Commission
The Parnell Commission, officially the Commissioners under the Special Commission Act 1888, was a judicial commission of inquiry from 1888 to 1890 into allegations made in articles in The Times in 1887, and a resulting libel trial in 1888, that members of the Irish Parliamentary Party had condoned or were complicit in criminal acts associated with the Land War or the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The most serious allegation was a putative letter by IPP leader Charles Stewart Parnell condoning the 1882 Phoenix Park Murders; in his 1889 testimony to the commission, Richard Pigott admitted to having forged the letter. The commission was largely seen as vindication for Parnell, although its report substantiated some of the lesser allegations against IPP members.
Background
On 6 May 1882 two leading members of the British Government in Ireland, Chief Secretary for Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish and the Permanent Under-Secretary for Ireland T.H. Burke were stabbed to death in Phoenix Park, Dublin by the Irish National Invincibles.In March 1887, The Times published a series of articles, "Parnellism and Crime", in which Home Rule League leaders were accused of being involved in murder and outrage during the land war. The Times produced a number of facsimile letters, allegedly bearing Parnell's signature and in one of the letters Parnell had excused and condoned the murder of T. H. Burke in the Phoenix Park.
In particular the newspaper had paid £1,780 for a letter supposedly written by Parnell to Patrick Egan, a Fenian activist, that included: "Though I regret the accident of Lord F Cavendish's death I cannot refuse to admit that Burke got no more than his deserts" and was signed "Yours very truly, Charles S. Parnell". On the day it was published, Parnell described the letter in the House of Commons as "a villainous and barefaced forgery."
Also on 18 April the bill for the Perpetual Crimes Act had its second reading and debate in the Commons. It appeared to nationalists that it was more than coincidental that the Times article on the letter was published on the same day and was obviously intended to sway the debate.
Frank Hugh O'Donnell, who had been accused of Fenianism in the Times articles, took a libel case against the newspaper's editor John Walter, without consulting Parnell. The case was dismissed on 5 July 1888, but the additional allegations raised during the O'Donnell v. Walter trial precipitated the creation of a special commission established by statute.
The commission
After considerable argument, the government eventually set up a special commission to investigate the charges made against Parnell and the Home Rule party. The commission sat for 128 days between September 1888 and November 1889. In February 1889, one of the witnesses, Richard Pigott, admitted to having forged the letters; he then fled to Madrid, where he shot himself. Parnell's name was fully cleared. He brought a libel action against The Times which resulted in Parnell being awarded a large sum of money. His principal lawyer was Charles Russell, who later become Lord Chief Justice. Russell also wrote an influential book about the case.In an out-of-court settlement Parnell accepted £5,000 in damages. While this was less than the £100,000 he sought, the legal costs for The Times brought its overall costs to £200,000. When Parnell re-entered parliament after he was vindicated, he received a standing ovation from his fellow MPs.
The commission did not limit itself to the forgeries, but also examined at length the surrounding circumstances, and in particular the violent aspects of the Land War and the Plan of Campaign. Testimony included an extensive submission by Land League founder Michael Davitt for which he was paid by The Irish Party.
In July 1889, the Irish Nationalist MPs and their lawyers withdrew, satisfied with the main result. When it eventually published its evidence it satisfied for the most part the pro- and anti-nationalist camps in Ireland:
- Nationalists were pleased that Parnell had been heroically vindicated, in particular against The Times which had become a supporter of the high Tory prime minister Lord Salisbury.
- Unionists conceded that Parnell was innocent, but pointed to a surrounding mass of sworn evidence that suggested that some of his MPs had condoned or advocated violence in such a way that murders were inevitable. They also made much of the fact that Pigott had formerly been a Nationalist supporter and was clearly deranged.
Historiography