The only other serious act of the Fenians was an attempt to release two prisoners confined in Clerkenwell Gaol, who, considering the means adopted, might very well pray to be delivered from their friends. A barrel of gunpowder, placed against the outer wall, was exploded at four in the afternoon, throwing down about sixty yards of masonry and wrecking several houses in the street. But for a warning received by the Governor of the gaol that an attempt was to be made to blow it up, the prisoners would have been at exercise in the yard at the time of the explosion, and almost certainly must have been killed. As it was, twelve persons were killed and 120 were wounded.

|War with Abyssinia.|

The arms of a great and growing empire are seldom allowed to rust from disuse, no matter how pacific the intentions of its rulers may be. Parliament was called together in November 1867 to vote supplies for an Expedition which it had been found necessary to send out to Abyssinia, under the command of Sir Robert Napier. Theodore, King of Abyssinia, a passionate and semi-barbarous despot, had cultivated amicable relations with Great Britain for a number of years, chiefly on account of his friendship for Mr. Plowden, formerly English Consul at Massowah. But Mr. Plowden was dead—killed in an encounter between Theodore and his rebellious subjects; and Captain Cameron, who succeeded to the Consulate at Massowah, had not succeeded in ingratiating himself with the King. Theodore appealed to Queen Victoria to help him against the Turks, and on receiving no immediate reply to his letter, lost his temper and threw all the British subjects he could catch into the cavernous dungeons of his capital, Magdala. Among these captives was Captain Cameron. Mr. Rassam was sent on an embassy to remonstrate with Theodore, who, however, was not inclined to listen to reason. On the contrary, he had the envoy seized, with his companions, Lieutenant Prideaux and Dr. Blane, loaded with chains, and thrust into prison. Lord Stanley now sent to demand the release of the prisoners within three months, and declared that immediate invasion would follow if this were refused. It was a delicate business to convey despatches to the tyrant in his rock fortress, and Theodore never received the ultimatum. The expedition set out: 400 miles of very mountainous country had to be traversed, but everything had been admirably prepared in the matter of transport and commissariat, and Napier was an experienced commander. The ease of the victory which awaited him has done something to diminish the fame which is really his due for accomplishing a very difficult task. He encountered the Abyssinian army under the walls of Magdala on April 10, 1868; the King’s soldiers fought with headlong gallantry, and fell in heaps before the terrible fire of British Infantry. Charge after charge was repelled, until Napier found that his enemy had vanished, leaving some 2,000 dead and wounded on the field, while in his own force the casualties amounted to no more than nineteen wounded. The fierce old King so far bowed under chastisement that the captives were released, but he refused to surrender. It then became necessary to enforce the lesson that, if Great Britain does not take up arms lightly, neither does she lay them down without exacting all her demands. Napier determined to take Magdala by assault. Perched high on a precipitous rock, it occupied a position which, in old times and without modern appliances, must have been pronounced inaccessible. But there are few places to which courage equipped by science can be denied admission: the northern gate was stormed, and lying within it was found the old lion King. Preferring death to dishonour he had perished by his own hand.

Lord Derby’s health had given him repeated warning that the time had come when he must seek release from public duties. He retired from office in February 1868, and Mr. Disraeli became Prime Minister. “The time will come when you will hear me.” Few—very few—who had heard that vaunt shouted across the House in 1837 were there to witness its complete fulfilment in 1868. It was a position of the highest honour, but not one of great power to which Disraeli had succeeded, and he was not called on to occupy it long. He could not reckon on a majority on any question upon which the Opposition should act together under a resolute leader. Such a question and such a leader were soon found.

|The Irish State Church.|

In choosing the Established Protestant Church of Ireland for attack, Mr. Gladstone selected the weakest spot in the Constitution; one, nevertheless, which the Conservative party were bound to defend to their last man. The Irish peasantry, except those of the greater part of Ulster, were Roman Catholics, and Roman Catholics of a peculiarly devout and enthusiastic kind. The Protestant Establishment was an alien Church, and could never be anything else; a monument of conquest which it had been unwise to set up. It presented itself to Mr. Gladstone as the very core and pillar of disaffection, and it was very easy to make out a strong case for its abolition. In March 1868 he brought forward three resolutions, declaring that it was the opinion of the House of Commons that the Established Church of Ireland should cease to exist, and the first division showed a majority of sixty-one in favour of the project and against the Government. In consequence of this Disraeli advised the Queen to dissolve Parliament, which was done in July. Writs were made returnable in November, and the interval was spent in such canvassing and platform work as the country had never experienced before. |Liberal Triumph.| Mr. Gladstone was beaten in Lancashire, Mr. W. H. Smith ousted Mr. Mill from Westminster, and Mr. Roebuck lost his seat at Sheffield; nevertheless, the general result of the polls was an immense gain to the Liberals, showing a majority for them of 120 in the New Parliament. Mr. Gladstone, having found a seat at Greenwich, set to work to obey the Queen’s bidding in forming a Ministry. |Mr. Gladstone’s Cabinet.| The most notable accession to the Cabinet was that of Mr. Bright, who became Secretary of State for India, thus marking an epoch in Parliamentary history by the formal recognition of the extreme Radicals as a party in the State. The great business of the session of 1869 was, of course, the Bill to disestablish and disendow the Irish Church. No Irish question can be touched without releasing the springs of oratory of a quality beside which the most impassioned appeals of average English or Scottish speakers seem tame and halting. In the Commons the fight was a foregone conclusion; but the Irish Church was an exceedingly wealthy corporation, and the disposal of its possessions, to the value of sixteen millions sterling, afforded matter for long and complicated debates in Committee. The Lords could not be persuaded even to delay the Act on which the country and the House of Commons had spoken with so much decision. The Bill passed its second reading by a majority of thirty-three, and received the Royal Assent on July 26, 1869. Lord Derby had made his last speech on the second reading of this measure, which he resisted with much of his ancient vigour and all his splendid eloquence. |Death of Lord Derby.| He died in October of the same year, and, in the opinion of most men qualified to form one, Parliament lost in him its most polished orator.

The Irish people at first showed few signs of gratitude for the disestablishment of their State Church. The Fenians were giving fresh signs of activity, agrarian crime was of frightful frequency during the winter of 1869–70, and the virulence of the anti-British press became day by day more intense. Troops were poured into the country to repress disturbance, and Mr. Gladstone set about preparing fresh measures of conciliation. The Irish land system, theoretically almost identical in general principles to that of Great Britain, not only differed from it in important details, but had come to be worked on wholly different lines from those pursued by English and Scottish landlords. |Irish Land Legislation.| In Great Britain the tendency had been to throw small unprofitable holdings into substantial farms which should be worth the efforts of energetic men of means to cultivate. The landlord, as a rule, equipped the farm with suitable buildings and fences, and frequently lived on his estates during most of the year. In Ireland, with few exceptions, buildings and improvements of every sort were executed by the tenant, who was allowed to subdivide his holding into mere patches of land, with a hovel run up at the expense of the occupant. The peasantry were bound to their holdings by the capital they had sunk in them; they could not in every season wring the rent out of the land; huge masses of arrears accumulated, often ending in eviction, which meant practical confiscation of such permanent improvements as had been effected. All the evil effects and bitter feelings arising out of this decrepid mode of tenure were intensified by the ever-increasing tendency of landowners to absenteeism, and by the prevailing difference in the religion of proprietors and peasantry.

In Ulster, indeed, the conditions were different. Not only was there a large Protestant element in the farming and labouring class, but the custom of tenant-right had grown up, protecting the tenant against disturbance as long as he paid his rent, securing his right to compensation on leaving for improvements executed by himself, and, most important of all, giving him a saleable property in the goodwill of the tenancy. The Ulster tenantry, as a rule, were prosperous. Mr. Gladstone refused to see in their prosperity only the result of their greater industry and capacity for business: he set it down to the system of dual ownership involved in the recognition of tenant-right, and this system he resolved to apply to every part of Ireland by creating a statutory partnership between landlord and tenant. It is hardly possible to conceive a reform more vital than that initiated by this measure in the social fabric of Ireland; for, except in the north-east of Ulster, agriculture forms the sole important industry of that country. Yet the Conservative Opposition, led by Mr. Disraeli, made no attempt to resist it; the case for legislation was too clamant.

Far-reaching as the Irish Land Bill has proved in its effects, it was hardly of greater moment than a measure introduced two days later by Mr. W. E. Forster, establishing a scheme of elementary education. |National Education.| The Government had been not more than two years in office, and had amply fulfilled the first part of an ambitious programme by passing three measures of extraordinary importance, dealing with the Irish Church, Irish land tenure, and national education; yet the tide of popular favour which had carried them into power began to show unmistakeable signs of ebbing. The legislation of 1871, actual and proposed, served to add to the number of malcontents. |Army Purchase.| The first step taken was against the system of purchase in the army. It was the recognised practice in all except a few special corps in the British army for an officer to purchase his first commission, as well as every subsequent step in regimental promotion. There was a regulation scale of prices, but there was also an extra regulation payment, winked at by the authorities. An officer’s commission thus became a valuable property to him, which he could dispose of on leaving the service. It was a system which few people could defend successfully in theory, but it was one that had worked well in practice; and the project to sweep it away created a vigorous opposition. But what makes the Parliamentary fight over army purchase of moment in history is the means by which Mr. Gladstone carried his purpose in the teeth of the House of Lords. The abolition of purchase had been part only of a sweeping measure of army re-organisation brought in by Mr. Cardwell. In order to save part of the Bill, the Government threw overboard every section of it except the purchase clauses. The Lords, desiring to defeat what was left of the original Bill, declared they would not accept the purchase clauses until the whole scheme of army reform was before them. A sigh of relief escaped from military men; the system endeared to them by custom and association had been saved by the action of the Upper House. But they had to learn how resolute and adroit was he with whom they had to reckon. Mr. Gladstone had a theatrical surprise in store for everyone. He gave the go-by to Parliament by announcing that, whereas army purchase had been created by Royal warrant, it could be rendered illegal by the same means; and, therefore, he had advised the Queen to cancel the old warrant and issue a new one. It was a complete victory over the House of Lords; they were forced to pass the Bill so obnoxious to them, otherwise the officers of the army would have been deprived of the compensation provided for the sums they had paid for their commissions. But the victory was very damaging to Mr. Gladstone’s Government.

Most educated people were tired, and perhaps ashamed, of the uproar and scandal inseparable from the old system of elections, and the Government brought in a Bill to abolish the hustings and make the proceedings more orderly, against which few voices would have been raised, had it not contained provisions for voting by Ballot. |The Ballot Bill.| The idea of secret voting was repugnant to the national sense of what is fair and above-board; but the Bill eventually got through the House of Commons, though shorn, at the instance of Mr. Vernon Harcourt and Mr. James (now Lord James of Hereford), of the provisions for throwing the expenses of elections on the rates. The measure was rejected by the House of Lords, but the Government succeeded in passing it during the session of 1872. The result upon the balance of parties in the House of Commons has been singularly small, and certainly the Conservatives, who had most reason to dread the effect of secret voting on the fortunes of their party, have had no reason to complain of the result.

CHAPTER XIV.
1870–1880.

The Franco-German War—Russia seizes her Opportunity—The Irish University Bill—Defeat and Resignation of Ministers—Mr. Gladstone resumes Office—Dissolution of Parliament—Conservative Victory—The Ashanti War—Mr. Disraeli’s Third Administration—Mr. Gladstone Retires from the Leadership—Annexation of the Fiji Islands—Purchase of Suez Canal Shares—Visit of the Prince of Wales to India—The Queen’s New Title—Threatening Action of Russia—The Bulgarian Massacres—Disraeli becomes Earl of Beaconsfield—The Russo-Turkish War—Great Britain Prepares to Defend Constantinople—Secession of Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby—The “Jingo” Party—The Berlin Congress and Treaty—“Peace with Honour”—Massacre at Cabul—War with Afghanistan—The Zulu War—Disaster of Isandhlana.

THE hurricane which, breaking over Western Europe in the summer of 1870, had swept away the Imperial Dynasty of France before the close of the year, was not felt in Great Britain with any alarming effect. |The Franco-German War.| Nothing occurred seriously to endanger her neutrality; she was enjoying a period of commercial prosperity strangely in contrast to the savage strife beyond the sea, until a sudden and ominous act on the part of the Russian Government redoubled the anxious vigilance of Her Majesty’s Government. The Treaty of Paris had established the neutrality of the Black Sea, throwing open its waters to the mercantile marine of all nations, and interdicting them to the flag of war, “either of the Powers possessing its coasts, or of any other Power.” |Russia Seizes her Opportunity.| By this provision Russia now proclaimed she would no longer be bound. She could not have chosen a better opportunity for her own purpose. The Western Alliance was dislocated; two of the signatories to the Treaty of Paris were engaged in mortal strife; a third—Austria—could not be expected to take action independently of Prussia; was it incumbent on Great Britain—the fourth Power—to vindicate, single-handed, the sanctity of the treaty? Few responsible people could be found to contemplate seriously such a course; yet it was peculiarly galling to the national pride to have to acquiesce in the action of Russia. Lord Granville proposed a conference of the Powers to be held in London, and the proposal was accepted. The Conference met on January 17, 1872, and solemnly proceeded to abrogate that which they were in no position to maintain—the neutralisation of the Black Sea. Reflection on the situation of Europe at that time can lead to no other conclusion but that Great Britain was sagaciously steered without loss of honour through a very difficult channel; but none the less unfavourable to the Government was the impression created at the time, that the country had suffered a degree of humiliation in permitting a treaty which had cost her so dear to be torn up.

But Mr. Gladstone, full of serious purpose, was blind to the symptoms of failing prestige—indifferent to the warning conveyed by loss of successive seats at by-elections. He had dealt with two limbs of the upas-tree; there remained the third—that of Irish education, and he bared his arms to attack it. |The Irish University Bill.| On February 13 he introduced a Bill dealing with the Irish Universities. It was a masterly measure, a scheme of extraordinary complexity, dealing with a very complicated and unsatisfactory state of things. It is not necessary to examine its details at this time; it is, perhaps, enough to say that the Prime Minister’s plan was one that, while it offended and alarmed every one deriving benefit from the existing state of things, failed to satisfy any of the religious bodies—Protestant, Catholic, or Non­conformist—which desired a change. Disraeli’s words spoken on the second reading came home to many hearts on both sides of the House. “You have now had four years of it,” he said. “You have despoiled churches; you have threatened every corporation and endowment in the country. You have examined into everybody’s affairs. You have criticised every profession and vexed every trade. No one is certain of his property, and nobody knows what duties he may have to perform to-morrow. I believe that the people of this country have had enough of confiscation.” |Defeat and Resignation of Ministers.| The Bill was rejected by a majority of three votes, and Mr. Gladstone resigned office; but, on the Queen sending for Mr. Disraeli, he declined to form “a weak and discredited Administration,” and the Government resumed its functions.

Ministers were in an unenviable position. The increasing bitterness of parties had brought about a disregard of those unwritten laws which had contributed so much in the past to the amenity of public life and to earning for the House of Commons the character of being “the best club in London.” There were bitter dissensions among Ministers themselves, of which Lord Ripon and Mr. Childers gave evidence by leaving the Cabinet. In four years the Conservatives had gained fifteen seats in by-elections, against which Ministerialists could only set two captured from the enemy. Still, the Government could reckon on a majority of ninety in the House of Commons, and no one dreamt of their appealing to the country while all the omens remained adverse. Nevertheless, Mr. Gladstone startled everybody by issuing a manifesto, in January 1874, announcing the dissolution of Parliament. |General Election.| Never did a politician play more completely into his opponent’s hands, though the Conservatives went to the polls full of misgiving about the effect of the new-fangled Ballot. The result proved that their fears were unfounded. The followers of Mr. Disraeli in the new Parliament outnumbered those of Mr. Gladstone by half a hundred.

The closing months of Mr. Gladstone’s Administration were marked by a short war on the Gold Coast, arising out of a dispute with Koffee Calcalli, King of Ashanti, who had claimed a tribute formerly paid to him by the Dutch for some territory which they sold to Great Britain in 1872. |The Ashanti War.| Failing to obtain acknowledgment of his claim, the King of Ashanti attacked the Fantis, a tribe under British protection, and it became necessary to chastise him. The difficulty of doing so lay, not in the character of the people of Ashanti, for, though brave and warlike, they could not stand before modern arms of precision, but in the nature of the climate and the difficulty of transport. The campaign had to be limited to the cool season; it was entrusted to Sir Garnet Wolseley, who well sustained the reputation he had earned in the Red River Expedition in 1870. The Expedition left England on September 12, 1873, and returned on March 21, 1874, having in the interval captured and destroyed Coomassie, the capital, brought the King to terms, and laid a perpetual interdict on the hideous human sacrifices which formed one of his most cherished institutions. The Ashanti warriors defended their forest roads gallantly, and the British loss was heavy in proportion to the numbers engaged. The total cost of this Expedition was reckoned at a little short of one million sterling.

The new Ministry was formed with unexampled celerity. Mr. Gladstone, accepting the verdict of the country, did not attempt to meet the new Parliament, but resigned on February 18, 1874. |Mr. Disraeli’s Third Administration.| Three days later the Queen had approved of the names submitted to her by Mr. Disraeli for all the offices in the Government, both in the Cabinet and outside it. Lord Salisbury, sometimes known then as “the terrible Marquis,” and Lord Carnarvon, both of whom had seceded in 1867 on the question of the franchise, resumed their former seats at the India and Colonial Offices respectively. The Liberal party were languishing in that political anæmia which follows on overwhelming defeat, when they received an additional blow in the retirement of Mr. Gladstone from the leadership. Some hard things were said about one who thus abandoned his party at the lowest ebb of their fortunes, and uncomplimentary contrasts were drawn between him and Disraeli, who had cheered his followers by his constant presence in adversity which seemed irredeemable. After some months of indecision, during which the Liberal leadership was administered by a kind of junta, the Marquis of Hartington assumed the thankless task of leading the deserted and dispirited Opposition, an office made all the more difficult by the occasional raids upon the debates made by Mr. Gladstone as often as some subject which specially interested him turned up, such as the Public Worship Bill, and the Bill abolishing patronage in the Church of Scotland.

Mr. Disraeli was not new to office, but he found himself in power for the first time. With a good working majority behind him in the House of Commons, a helpless Opposition before him, and a surplus of six millions at the Treasury, the natural question in everybody’s mouth was “What will he do with it?” There were still many of his own party who mistrusted his love of display and his magnificent conception of empire as likely to impel him along some hazardous course of conquest abroad or legislation at home, but their apprehensions were soon allayed. |Annexation of the Fiji Islands.| In leading the House, Disraeli exchanged his formidable gifts of invective for a manner and speech conciliatory to men of all parties. The domestic programme of the Government for the sessions of 1874 and 1875 was unambitious but useful, and the only extension of British dominion abroad was the peaceful annexation of the Fiji Islands at the request of King Cakobau and his council.

But towards the end of 1875 there came the occasion for the display of some spirit, in which may be traced the beginning of reaction against the “Little Britain” school of politicians. When a singular opportunity presented itself of strengthening our communications with the East, Disraeli fearlessly seized it. The Suez Canal had been open since 1869, and Great Britain, though she was the Power which made most use of it, had no pecuniary interest in it. The funds necessary for the work had been subscribed almost entirely by the Egyptian Government and by private speculators in France. Of the 400,000 original shares, the Khedive of Egypt held 176,000; but the Khedive’s expenditure had been for years far beyond his revenues, and his shares were thrown upon the market in 1875. Disraeli was struck by the proposition advanced by Mr. Greenwood, a journalist of some note, that these shares should be bought by the British Government, and the purchase was completed on November 25, the price paid being £4,000,000. |Suez Canal Shares.| Sir Stafford Northcote, on whom fell the duty of asking Parliament for the money, was opposed to his chief’s policy in this matter, and must have felt some misgiving in repelling the attacks made upon it by the Liberals, but he did so effectively. Mr. Gladstone emerged from his retirement to fling himself into the debate, and declared that to spend the national funds in such an object was “an unprecedented thing”;—“So is the Canal!” retorted Northcote. It is only just to Disraeli’s statesmanship to notice what an excellent investment, in a monetary sense, was made for Great Britain by the purchase of these shares. The original sum of four millions has been entirely paid off out of income derived from the shares, which, for a number of years, have been paying from 17 to 21 per cent. The shares purchased have risen in value from four to eighteen millions, and the proportion of British tonnage to the whole tonnage of all nations using the Canal is 75 per cent. It would, however, be claiming too much for Disraeli’s commercial acumen to suppose that he realised what should become the ultimate monetary value of these shares. What he perceived was the importance of Great Britain acquiring a voice in the management of the new and dominant highway to India. The public had received recently the means of estimating the stupendous responsibility resting on the shoulders of those charged with the administration of British India. The results of the first census ever taken there were published in 1875, showing the total population of the British dominion in India to consist of twenty-three distinct nationalities, amounting to 190,563,048 souls—nearly five times that of the United Kingdom. This did much to dispel an idea dimly present in the minds even of educated persons, that the Queen’s Indian subjects consisted of one dusky race, speaking one language and divided into two religions—Mahomedan and Hindoo.

It was a congenial duty for the Prime Minister, entertaining these lofty views of the burden and glory of empire, to ask the House of Commons to vote £142,000 to defray the expenses of a visit about to be paid by the Prince of Wales to India. |The Prince of Wales Visits India.| His Royal Highness had already visited the principal Colonies, but the customs of Oriental Courts, the ceremony and display considered indispensable, and, above all, the necessity for exchanging costly presents with the various Princes, rendered the expenses far beyond what any ordinary tour would involve. The money was cheerfully voted, for the public approved of the energy shown by the heir to the Crown in acquiring a personal acquaintance with all parts of the British Empire. |The Queen’s New Title.| There was less unanimity in the reception of the next important proposal of the Government, made after the Prince’s return from India in 1876, namely, to supply such addition to the titles of the Sovereign as had been rendered appropriate by her assumption, in 1858, of the direct government of India.

Meanwhile, the Eastern Question had burst out again. Insurrections in the Turkish provinces of Bulgaria, Servia, and Montenegro had been suppressed by the Porte with that ferocity so characteristic of Turkish misrule; Russia had begun moving troops towards the Danube, and a large section of the English public avowed sympathy with her, or with any other Power that would put an end to the sickening brutalities in Bulgaria. |The Bulgarian Massacres.| Mr. Gladstone threw Homer and theology to the winds, and the country rang with his denunciations of “the unspeakable Turk.” Those who accuse Disraeli of undue solicitude for popularity should study the course he steered in the storm that was raging round him. But before it came to its height, he had spoken his last words in the House of Commons. On August 11, 1876, Mr. Evelyn Ashley charged the Government with negligence and the British Ambassador at Constantinople with mischievous and dilatory tactics, in their dealings with the Porte and their toleration of massacres. Disraeli replied in one of the most effective speeches he ever delivered, concluding with the words: “What our duty is at this critical moment is to maintain the Empire of England. Nor will we ever agree to any step, though it may obtain for a moment comparative quiet and a false prosperity, that hazards the existence of that Empire.” Next morning the Prime Minister’s place on the Treasury Bench was filled by Sir Stafford Northcote; a well-kept secret was revealed; Mr. Disraeli, on whose health the stress of forty years of active Parliamentary life had told with serious effect, had accepted a peerage, and gone to the House of Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield. Not, however, to escape responsibility. Throughout that autumn and winter the Government was vehemently denounced in the country for their toleration of Turkish misdeeds, but Lord Beaconsfield remained firm in his resolution to refrain from embarrassing the Porte or countenancing the designs of Russia. Before Parliament met, cooler counsels had begun to prevail, and when the Czar declared war against the Sultan, on April 24, the Bulgarian atrocities faded out of sight, and British sympathy flowed out towards the weaker combatant. |The Russo-Turkish War.| The gallantry of Osman Pasha’s troops, his double victory over the Russians at Plevna in July, and the heroic defence of the Shipka Pass, brought our old Crimean allies into high favour; but it was when the tide of victory had turned, when the Turkish armies had been crushed under the resistless preponderance of the Northern Power, when Russia was at the gates of Constantinople, and the Porte forced to accept an armistice, sent a Circular Note to the Great Powers, and a special appeal to Great Britain, praying for help in her extremity, that the policy of Beaconsfield was brought to the test.

Parliament was summoned hastily on January 17, 1878, and Northcote gave notice that a Vote of Credit for £6,000,000 would be moved for immediately, for the Cabinet had decided to defend the Sultan’s capital against the Czar. |Secession of Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby.| The British fleet was ordered, on January 15, to enter the Dardanelles, a step which caused the instant resignation by Lord Carnarvon of his seat in the Cabinet, followed a couple of months later, by that of a far more important Minister—the Foreign Secretary. To send warships into the Dardanelles would have been an empty menace unless it had been supported by corresponding preparation of land forces, but calling out the Army Reserve, the occupation of Cyprus by a British force, and the dispatch of 7,000 Indian troops to the Mediterranean, proved too much for the nerves of Lord Derby; he resigned his office, and two years later severed his connection with the Conservative party and accepted office in Mr. Gladstone’s Second Administration.