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 with the policy of 'boycotting.' He also penetrated into Ulster, and addressed an enthusiastic meeting of Orangemen at Armagh on the land question. He urged the issue of the 'No Rent' manifesto in Feb. 1881 instead of later, but the Parliamentary section of the movement post-poned its publication till Oct., when the liberal government retorted by suppressing the Land League. Meanwhile Davitt had been arrested as a ticket-of-leave man on 3 Feb. 1881, and endured a second but milder term of penal servitude in Portland. While in prison he was elected to parliament for co. Meath (24 Feb. 1882), but was disqualified as a treason-felony prisoner. He was released on 6 May 1882, and forthwith learned from Parnell that he had concluded the 'Kilmainham Treaty' with the government, that the agitation was to be mitigated, and that the Ladies' Land League had been suppressed by Parnell for declining to accept the compromise. Davitt at once prepared to fight Parnell in favour of a resumption of the agitation; but the assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish, which took place on the day of Davitt's release, threw him back into alliance with Parnell, whose proposed co-operation with liberalism was necessarily for the time at an end.

After another visit to America, in June 1882, Davitt induced Parnell to found the National League, successor of the suppressed Land League; the programme of the new organisation, however, marked the triumph of parliamentarianism over the more revolutionary ideas of Davitt. He declined office in the National League, but spoke regularly on its platforms. In 1883 (Jan. to May) he was imprisoned on a charge of sedition for a further period of four months in Richmond Bridewell, Dublin. Between 1882 and 1885 he devoted much of his time to advocating land nationalisation, lecturing throughout Great Britain, either alone or in company with Henry George, who was touring in the United Kingdom. He brought George to Ireland, and spoke with him at a meeting in Dublin, on 9 April 1884. This brought on him a categorical repudiation of land nationalisation by Parnell. In 1885, his health having broken down, Davitt visited Italy, Palestine, and Egypt. He opposed the policy adopted by Parnell at the general election of that year, of throwing the Irish vote in England for the conservatives. In 1886 he again visited America, and married Miss Mary Yore, of Michigan. As a token of national regard, his wife was presented with a house, known as Land League Cottage, at Ballybrack, co. Dublin. This was the only occasion on which Davitt accepted any material gift from the Irish people; he always refused to assent to any public testimonial, supporting himself, often with great difficulty, by his labours as a journalist. It was not till near the close of his life (1901) that a legacy from a relative of his wife relieved him of financial anxiety.

In 1887-8-9 Davitt was engrossed in the work involved by 'The Times' commission [see Parnell, Charles Stewart (DNB00)], which was appointed to investigate the charges brought by 'The Times' against Parnell and others, namely, that their real aim was to bring about the total independence of Ireland, that they had instigated assassination and other outrages, and that they had accepted money and other assistance from open advocates of crime and dynamite. Davitt was not originally included in these charges, but on his presenting himself before the tribunal, 'The Times' repeated the same charges against him, with two additional ones, namely, that he had been a convicted Fenian, and that he had brought about the alliance between the Parnellite home rule party in Ireland and the party of violence in America both of which were undenied facts. The chief labour of the defence fell on him, as the link between the constitutional and extreme nationalists, between the Irish and American branches of the movement. It was Davitt who first suspected Richard Pigott [q. v.], and he, by the aid of a volunteer secret service, countered every move of 'The Times' in the collection of evidence (Fall of Feudalism, ch. 44-49). When Parnell and the other Nationalists withdrew from the proceedings of the commission, as a protest against the refusal of the judges to order the production of the books of the 'Loyal and Patriotic Union,' Davitt dissented from this course, and continued to appear. Conducting his own case, he made a five-days' speech before the tribunal (Oct. 24-31, 1889), afterwards published as 'The Defence of the Land League,' a book which contains the best record of Davitt's life and work up to that time. In the report of the commission, the chief findings relating to Davitt were that he had entered the agrarian movement with the intention of bringing about the absolute independence of Ireland, and that he had in a special manner denounced crime and outrage. Immediately after the commission's attack had failed, came the proceedings in the