He had fully expected in this way to elect a Conservative member for the city of York.

Great was his chagrin, therefore, when he found the Liberal candidate returned.

Upon investigation he discovered, as he told me, that the catastrophe was due to the activity of a local Irish priest, _who was a devoted Fenian_, utterly opposed to the Parliamentary programme, and who had exerted his authority over the local Irish to bring them to the polls for the Liberal candidate.
Sir Frederick Milner, Bart., the defeated Conservative candidate for York, afterwards told me that the local priest referred to here was a most excellent man, and that so far from playing the part thus ascribed to him, he took the trouble, as a matter of fair dealing, to see his parishioners on the morning of the election and warn them against believing a pamphlet which was sedulously circulated among the Irish voters on the night before the polling, with a message to the effect that Sir Frederick despised the Irish, and wanted nothing to do with them or their votes.

Sir Frederick has no doubt, from his knowledge of what occurred during the canvass, that direct instructions were sent by Mr.Parnell or his agents to the Irish voters in York to throw their votes against the Radical candidates.

These latter brought down a Home Rule lecturer to counteract the effect of these instructions, and the pamphlet above referred to was an eleventh-hour blow in the same interest.