The Tory party sought for a new political weapon, and one day _The Times_ came out with the facsimile of what purported to be a letter in Parnell's hand.

This document implied at least condonation of the Phoenix Park murders.
Other letters equally incriminating were published.

Parnell denied the authorship, his denial was not accepted; fierce controversy ended in the establishment of one of the strangest Commissions of Enquiry ever set up--a semi-judicial tribunal of judges.

Its proceedings created the acutest public interest, drawn out over long months, up to the day when Sir Charles Russell had before him in the witness-box the original vendor of the letters--one Pigott.

Pigott's collapse, confession of forgery, flight and suicide, followed with appalling swiftness: and the result was to generate through England a very strong sympathy for the man against whom, and against whose followers, such desperate calumnies had been uttered and exploited.