An interview with him, written out on board of the steamer which took him to America by a correspondent detailed for that purpose, was published on the morning after his arrival.

It made on the whole an unfavourable impression in America, which was not improved by an injudicious quarrel into which he drifted with a portion of the American press, and which was distinctly deepened by his inexcusable misrepresentations of the conduct of Queen Victoria during the famine of 1847, and by his foolish attacks upon the management and objects of the Duchess of Marlborough's fund for the relief of Irish distress.

The friends of Mr.Davitt in America, however, and the leaders of the most active Irish organisations there, came to the rescue, and as the two American parties were preparing their lines of battle for the Presidential conflict of 1880, Mr.Parnell was not only "put through" the usual course of "receptions" by Mayors and State legislatures, but invited on an "off-day" to address the House of Representatives at Washington.

His tour, however, on the whole, harmed more than it helped the new Irish movement on my side of the Atlantic, and when he was called back to take his part in the electoral contest precipitated by Lord Beaconsfield's dissolution of Parliament at Easter 1880, Mr.Davitt went out to America himself to do what his Parliamentary associate had not succeeded in doing.

During this visit of Mr.Davitt to the United States, Mr.Henry George finally transferred his residence from San Francisco to New York, and made his arrangements to visit England and Ireland, and bring about a practical combination between the advocates of "the land for the people" on both sides of the ocean.