The Land League suppressed by Mr.Forster had been suffered to reappear as the National League by Earl Spencer and Mr.Trevelyan.Sir William Harcourt's stringent and sweeping "Coercion Act" of July 11th, 1882, passed under the stress of the murders in the Phoenix Park, expiring by its own terms in July 1885, Mr.Gladstone found himself forced either to alienate a number of his Radical supporters by proposing a renewal of that Act, or to invite a catastrophe in Ireland by attempting to rule that country under "the ordinary law." He elected to escape from the dilemma by inviting a defeat in Parliament on a secondary question of the Budget.

He went out of power on the 9th of June 1885, leaving Lord Salisbury to send the Earl of Carnarvon as Viceroy to Ireland, and the Irish party in Parliament to darken the air on both sides of the Atlantic with portentous intimations of a mysterious compact, under which they were to secure Home Rule for Ireland by establishing the Conservatives in their places at the general election in November.[7] What came of all this I may briefly rehearse.

Going out to America in November 1885, and returning to England in January 1886, I remained in London long enough to assure myself, and to publish in America my conviction of the utter hopelessness of Mr.Gladstone's "Home Rule" measure, the success of which would have made his government the ally and the instrument of Mr.Parnell in carrying out the plans of Mr.
Davitt, Mr.Henry George, and the active Irish organisations of the United States.

All this is matter of history.
The effect of Mr.Gladstone's speech of April 8, 1886, introducing his Home Rule Bill, upon the Irish in America was simply intoxicating.

They saw him, as in a vision, repeating for the benefit of Ireland at Dublin, on a grander scale, the impressive scene of his surrender in 1858 at Corfu of the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands to Greece.
Upon thousands also of Americans, interested more or less intelligently in British affairs, but neither familiar, nor caring to be, with the details of the political situation in Great Britain, this appearance of the British Premier, as the champion of Home Rule for Ireland, denouncing the "baseness and blackguardism" of Pitt and his accomplices, the framers of the Union of 1800, naturally produced a very profound impression.