To the unofficial mind the reasons for the destruction of Alexandria and the invasion of Egypt remain somewhat vague; Mr. Gladstone, however, found little difficulty in persuading the House of Commons to entrust him with a Vote of Credit for £2,300,000; and towards the end of August an army, consisting of about 23,000 of all arms and ranks, landed on the Mediterranean shores of Egypt; subsequently reinforced by 11,000 more. In addition to these, there was an Indian contingent landed from the South, consisting of nearly 8,000 men, making the total strength of the British land forces in Egypt 40,560 men, under the command-in-chief of Sir Garnet Wolseley. It was found on landing, on August 22, that the enemy had placed dams across the Canal to cut off the water supply, and it became necessary to dislodge him from his position at Tel-el-Mahuta. This was effected without much difficulty on August 24, the Egyptian troops, about 10,000 strong, showing little inclination for fighting. |Battles of Kassassin and Tel-el-Kebir.| General Graham then advanced, on the 26th, with 2,000 men, to seize Kassassin Lock, which controlled the supply of fresh water. Here he was attacked, on the 28th, by a greatly superior force, and for a time the British were in a critical position. General Graham, however, managed to hold his own, and heliographed for reinforcements, which arrived in good time. The Egyptians fought well during the afternoon, but at sunset Sir Baker Russell led up the Household Cavalry, the 7th Dragoon Guards, and Horse Artillery, with four guns, and a brilliant charge of these fine troops threw the enemy into confusion, causing him to break and fly from the field. The total British loss was only eleven killed and sixty-eight wounded.

Arabi held a strongly-fortified position at Tel-el-Kebir. On September 9 he attempted a reconnaissance, with 8,000 men and twenty-four guns, but was driven back with the loss of some of his guns. Tel-el-Kebir offered a front to the British advance of about four miles of earthworks, with redoubts at intervals carrying guns. The flanks were protected by similar works. Wolseley struck his camp on the evening of September 12, and advanced during the night with 2,000 cavalry, 11,000 infantry, and sixty guns. At dawn on the 13th General Graham’s Brigade on the right, and Sir Archibald Alison’s Highland Brigade on the left, were within a quarter of a mile of the Egyptian lines. An irregular fire was opened upon them; they dashed forward to the assault, scaled the outer defences, bayonetted the gunners, paused to re-form, and advanced against the inner and stronger works. It remains a question of honourable rivalry which were first inside the Egyptian position, the Highlanders on the left or Graham’s infantry on the right. At all events, within half an hour the whole of Arabi’s defences were captured, his army was routed and flying under pressure of the British cavalry. The British loss in this well-managed affair was very slight, considering the strength of the position and the strength of Arabi’s army, supposed to amount to about 25,000 men. Eleven officers and forty-three men were killed, and twenty-two officers and 320 men wounded. The Egyptian loss was believed to be about 1,000; of prisoners, 3,000 were taken, with sixty guns. The campaign was practically over. Arabi’s troops disbanded themselves, and Arabi himself was arrested in Cairo. Being brought to trial as a rebel, he pleaded guilty, and sentence of death was passed on him. This sentence was commuted immediately by the Khedive for one of perpetual banishment from Egypt.

The net result of these events was the withdrawal of the condominium or dual control by England and France, the restoration of the Khedive’s authority, and the reconstruction of the administrative and social system. But the British continued to occupy Egypt as security for the pacific fulfilment of the reforms insisted on by the English Plenipotentiary, Lord Dufferin.

CHAPTER XVI.
1881–1887.

Imprisonment of Irish Members of Parliament—Assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke—Prevalence of Outrages in Ireland—A New Coercion Bill—Trial and Execution of the Phœnix Park Murderers—The Dynamite Conspiracy—Corrupt Practices Act—The Affairs of Egypt—General Gordon sent to Khartoum—Gordon Besieged—Inaction of the Government—Relief of Khartoum Undertaken—Too Late!—Death of Gordon—Lord Wolseley’s Campaign—Abandonment of the Soudan—Mr. Gladstone’s Reform Bill—The Question of Redistribution of Seats—The Frontier Question in Afghanistan—Defeat of Ministers on the Budget and their Resignation—Lord Salisbury’s First Administration—Dissolution of Parliament—The Irish Party and the Balance of Power—Mr. Gladstone’s Third Administration—His Conversion to Home Rule—Rupture of the Liberal Party—The Home Rule Bill Rejected—Dissolution of Parliament—Unionist Victory—Lord Salisbury’s Second Administration—Lord Randolph Churchill Resigns—The Round Table Conference.

THE effort made by the Government to conciliate the hostility of the people of Ireland by the Land Act did not at first offer much prospect of success. There was no diminution in the tyranny of the Land League or in the number of cruel outrages traceable to that organisation. A Cabinet Council was summoned hurriedly early in October 1881, the result of which was the arrest of Mr. Parnell and two other members of Parliament under the Protection of Life and Property Act, and their imprisonment in Kilmainham. |Imprisonment of Irish Members.| They remained in confinement as “suspects” until May 2, 1882, when they were released unconditionally, a step which led to the immediate resignation of Earl Cowper, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and his Chief Secretary, Mr. Forster.

There was great jubilation over this among the Nationalists. It was a distinct surrender on the part of the Government to the party of separation: and the suppressed Land League was revived openly under the name of the National League. The response to the new policy of conciliation and condonement came in terrible fashion. Earl Cowper and Mr. Forster had been succeeded in the Lord Lieutenancy and Chief Secretaryship by Earl Spencer and Lord Frederick Cavendish. On May 6 the last-named gentleman, a brother of the present Duke of Devonshire, after attending the installation of his chief, took a car to drive out to the Chief Secretary’s Lodge. Overtaking Mr. Burke, a permanent official at the Castle, Lord Frederick dismissed his car and walked on with him through the Phœnix Park. |Assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke.| It was a fine spring evening, between seven and eight o’clock; just as they were passing an opening in the trees on their right, giving a view of the Viceregal Lodge, two men came along the path to meet them. One of them, Brady, a man of immense size and strength, stooped down as if to tie his shoe-lace. As the two gentlemen passed him, he sprang erect, gripped Mr. Burke by the waist, and stabbed him in the back. The other ruffian, Kelly, slashed Burke across the throat as he fell. Lord Frederick, attempting to defend his friend with an umbrella, received a fatal thrust in the breast from Brady’s knife, and fell dead also.

On the 8th of the following month a gentleman called Walter Bourke, riding with a soldier as escort near Gort, was shot at, and both were killed; and in like manner, on the 29th, Mr. Blake, a land agent, and his steward, Mr. Keene, were murdered by concealed assassins near Lough Rea. Ireland had come to a desperate condition; it was garrisoned with not less than 20,000 cavalry and infantry and 20,000 mounted constabulary, yet the Executive seemed powerless to cope with an almost universal conspiracy against life and property. The murdered Cavendish was succeeded as Chief Secretary by Mr. G. O. Trevelyan, and the first act of the Government was to introduce a fresh Coercion Bill, of extraordinary severity, creating special tribunals for the trial of suspects and criminals, conferring rights of search on the police, and giving further powers for dealing with incitement to crime. The Bill was vehemently opposed by Mr. Parnell and his party; nevertheless, the Government pursued their apparently hopeless policy of conciliation by introducing and carrying through the Arrears of Rent Bill, whereby about two millions of money was applied to release Irish tenants of a moiety of the liabilities which the Land League had forbidden them to fulfil, and the balance of arrears was wiped out at the expense of landlords.

The additional powers conferred on the police by the Crimes Act of 1882 resulted in the capture of the gang who had planned and carried out the murders in the Phœnix Park. In January 1883 seventeen persons were arrested in Dublin, and on one of them, Farrell, turning informer, it came out that they were members of a secret society. Their principal object had been to make away with Mr. W. E. Forster when he was Chief Secretary, and on various occasions he had escaped assassination by what seemed the narrowest chances. |Trial and Execution of the Phœnix Park Murderers.| Among those arrested was James Carey, who had given the signal for the murder of Burke by raising a white handkerchief, and who turned Queen’s evidence. He was allowed to go free after the trial, while five of his gang were hanged, the remainder being sentenced to various terms of penal servitude. Finally, this bloody chapter was brought to a close in the murder of Carey himself, by a man named O’Donnell, who had travelled in the same ship with him to Cape Town. O’Donnell was brought home to England and hanged early in December.

While the trial of the Phœnix Park assassins was proceeding, another formidable conspiracy was brought to light. A gang of Irish-Americans had come to this country with the object of terrorising the Government by a series of explosions of nitro-glycerine. |The Dynamite Conspiracy.| On the evening of March 15, 1883, part of the Local Government Board Offices in Whitehall was wrecked by the explosion of a canister of dynamite placed inside one of the balustrades. Simultaneously, another explosion took place at the office of the Times, in Printing House Square. By the help of informers, the police were enabled to arrest a number of persons in London, Birmingham, and Glasgow, all of whom were brought to trial, and most of them proved to be active agents in a heinous conspiracy against life and property. The formidable power which modern explosives had brought within the reach of secret societies made it necessary to make the law dealing with such crimes more stringent, and Sir William Harcourt, the Home Secretary, on April 9, introduced a Bill to cope with what he termed “the pirates of the human race.” He assured the House that the danger was so grave and imminent that the Bill must pass through all its stages on that day. It was read a first, a second time, passed through Committee, and was read a third time, all within little more than an hour. Taken up to the Lords on the same evening, it was dispatched there with equal promptitude, and received the Royal Assent next day—an example of rapid legislation almost without parallel.

A much-needed boon was conferred this year (1883) upon Parliamentary candidates in the passage of the Corrupt Practices at Elections Bill. |Corrupt Practices Act.| The old and evil electioneering traditions were put an end to now by the statutory measure introduced by the Attorney-General, Sir Henry James (now Lord James of Hereford); a statutory and moderate limit to candidates’ expenses, based on the number of electors in each constituency, was fixed, which might not be exceeded on pain of voiding the election.

The Government were called upon early in 1884 to realise the full weight of the responsibility they had assumed in regard to Egyptian affairs. |The Affairs of Egypt.| The Ma­hom­ed­an Arabs of the Soudan had been brought under Egyptian rule in 1870; gross misgovernment had brought about bitter disaffection, and the troubles of Lower Egypt before and during Arabi’s revolt, afforded these wild tribes an opportunity for throwing off the yoke. Mohamed Ahmed appeared among them as the Mahdi, or Redeemer, who, besides being a religious enthusiast, was a daring and skilful commander in the field. In 1883 the Egyptian Government sent an army of about 11,000 men under command of Colonel Hicks, a retired officer of the Indian army, to restore the Khedive’s authority in the Equatorial Provinces. This force was attacked on November 1 in a rocky defile; for three days they defended themselves; on the fourth their ammunition was all spent, and every man in the Egyptian army, with many British officers, perished. Of course, this tremendous victory was accepted by the Arabs as complete proof of the Mahdi’s divine mission: the insurrection spread like wildfire, and the Khedive, acting under advice of the British Government, decided not to attempt the re-conquest of these provinces.

But the relief of Sinkat, Tokar, Khartoum, and other stations, garrisoned by Egyptian troops under command of European officers, was imperative. Expeditions to the relief of the two places first named were attacked by the Arabs and cut to pieces, and instructions were telegraphed for the immediate evacuation of Khartoum. But in Khartoum there were not less than 11,000 persons, many of them Christians and many in the Egyptian civil service, and to transport these safely down the Nile would be an operation of exceeding difficulty and hazard. |General Gordon sent to Khartoum.| General Gordon, commonly called “Chinese Gordon,” a man of remarkable character, happened to be in London at the time, preparing to start for the Congo in the service of the King of the Belgians. He had been Governor of the Soudan in 1874, under Ismail, and to him the British Government appealed in their perplexity. He readily consented to throw up his engagement under the King of the Belgians, and to proceed to Khartoum, telegraphing to the garrison of that place: “You are men, not women. Be not afraid. I am coming.” Meanwhile, the Mahdi had scored another signal success. Baker Pasha, formerly a well-known officer in the English cavalry, advanced in January, with a force of 3,500, to the relief of Tokar and Sinkat; he was attacked near Trinkitat and overwhelmed; his half-trained Egyptians fled, and were cut down to the number of 2,200, and sixteen European officers perished. Then Sinkat fell, the throats of all the garrison being cut, and Tokar surrendered.

The safety of Lower Egypt being threatened by the Mahdi’s continued success, the British Government undertook the defence of a frontier line drawn through Souakim. General Graham ascended the Nile with about 4,000 troops, and inflicted a severe defeat on the Arabs, under Osman Digna, at El Teb, on February 29. Again, on March 11, Graham attacked Osman Digna’s camp at Tamai, captured, and gave it to the flames.

General Gordon reached Khartoum on February 18. Finding that things were even worse than he expected, he decided to avail himself of the services of Zebehr Pasha, and telegraphed to Cairo for the Government to allow him to come. Sir Evelyn Baring strongly advised that consent should be given, but Zebehr was of evil repute as a slave-driving chief; stringent instructions were sent from London that he was on no account to be employed, and that if he attempted to join Gordon he was to be detained by force. The Mahdi’s forces invested Khartoum on March 23. Gordon, who had to contend with treachery inside the walls, as well as the open enemy outside, displayed extraordinary energy and ingenuity in defence, continuing to send urgent appeals for assistance, both for Khartoum and for Berber, which was also beleaguered. Berber fell before the end of May; still the British Government turned a deaf ear to Gordon’s messages. |Gordon Besieged.| At last the gallant General appealed from the Government to the “millionaires of England and America” to send him money enough to raise 2,000 or 3,000 Turkish troops to save Khartoum. It is, perhaps, well that by the beginning of May the enemy had gathered so closely round Khartoum that Lord Granville’s response never reached Gordon. It was to the effect that Her Majesty’s Government was not prepared to supply either Turkish or any other troops for military expeditions, and Gordon was reminded that the mission he had undertaken was of a pacific nature! But the spirit of the British people was galled by the indifference shown by the Government to the fate of their devoted servant; expressions of indignation grew louder and more frequent both in Parliament and in the press, and, at last, early in August, a vote of credit for £300,000 was obtained for the purpose of “preparations, as distinct from operations,” for a possible expedition to Khartoum. Lord Wolseley went out to view the military aspect of affairs, and before long a strong force was ascending the Nile.

Too late! Help had been withheld too long. On the last day of the year a tiny scrap of paper reached the British head-quarters on the Nile—“Khartoum all right. C. G. Gordon. December 14, 1884”; but on February 5, 1885, arrived a telegram in London announcing that the place had fallen. |Too Late!| When Parliament opened, on the 19th, Mr. Gladstone endeavoured to excuse the Government for their undoubted share in the disaster. “General Gordon contentedly forbore,” he said, “indeed more than contentedly—he determinedly forebore—to make use of the means of personal safety which were at all times open to him.” The words seemed to be swept from the Prime Minister’s lips by a hurricane of indignant exclamations, and he withdrew them. They meant that Gordon might have escaped down the river in a steamer, leaving the loyal Egyptians in Khartoum to their fate. He was not that kind of man. Party discipline prevailed to protect the Government from overthrow on a vote of censure: they managed to put into their lobby 302 against 288.

Khartoum fell on January 26, 1885, after a siege of 317 days, and after the garrison and townsfolk had endured extreme privations for several weeks. Gordon was shot down near the palace, and a horrible massacre followed, in which it was reckoned about 4,000 people were butchered.

Lord Wolseley’s expeditionary force, amounting to about 14,000 men, inflicted several defeats on the Mahdi’s troops, notably at Abu Klea and Gubat. But the British losses were exceptionally severe, not only on account of the invincible courage of the Arabs and their desperate mode of fighting, but because of sickness and climate. |Abandonment of the Soudan.| For example, out of General Stewart’s desert force of 2,000, no less than thirty officers, including General Stewart himself and 450 men perished. The Mahdi died of fever in July, and the Government decided on withdrawing from the Soudan and fixing the frontier of Egypt at the second Nile cataract.

It is necessary at this point to revert to the session of 1884. Mr. Gladstone had resolved on a further extension of the Parliamentary electorate by carrying out the equalisation of the county and borough franchise. |Mr. Gladstone’s Reform Bill.| His Bill was received by the Conservative Op­po­si­tion with that half-hearted resistance which comes of inward disapproval, tempered by dread of alienating the new electors, whom they were not strong enough to exclude. In the end they took their stand on the ground that no such Reform Bill should pass without a corollary measure redistributing seats. It passed the Commons, but the House of Lords declined to consider it until they had the redistribution scheme before them. In vain Lord Granville pledged the Government to introduce a Redistribution Bill the following year, if their Lordships would allow the Franchise Bill to pass at once. Lord Salisbury declared that he was not going to discuss redistribution with a rope round his neck. At last, after much wrangling, after the usual denunciations of the House of Lords on public platforms, and after sundry processions and demonstrations in London, it was agreed to hang up the Franchise Bill, prorogue Parliament, and call it together in the autumn to consider the complete scheme. This was done accordingly; the Franchise Bill was passed, and the Redistribution Bill read a second time, and the Committee stage postponed till after the Christmas recess.

But before that subject could be taken up again, the troubles of the Government had multiplied. Not only had Khartoum fallen, thereby rendering the Nile expedition as fruitless as it was costly, but the violation by the Russians of the Afghan frontier, seemed to render war with Russia all but inevitable, if our treaty engagements were to be held sacred. |The Afghan Frontier.| “The House will not be surprised,” said the Prime Minister, referring to the defeat of the Amir’s troops by General Komaroff, “when I say, speaking with measured words in circumstances of great gravity, that to us ... this attack bears the appearance of an unprovoked aggression.” Still more profound grew the conviction that the country was on the eve of a great war when, on April 27, Mr. Gladstone came down to the House to ask for a vote of credit for £11,000,000. But he did not tell the House, in the course of a magnificent and most stirring speech, that the Government practically had averted the danger by recalling Sir Peter Lumsden, the British Commissioner in Afghanistan, thereby condoning the offence of the Russians which he (Mr. Gladstone) had denounced already as “unprovoked aggression.”

All Parliamentary business, it was understood, including, the redistribution of seats, was to be speedily disposed of in order to make an early appeal to the constituencies under the new franchise. |Defeat and Resignation of Ministers.| But, in an unlucky hour for his colleagues, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Childers, decided to include in his Budget provision for increasing the duties on beer and spirits. There is no more perfectly organised body than the Licensed Victuallers; none whom ordinary members are more unblushingly anxious to conciliate on the eve of a general election. Early in June the Government were beaten on Mr. Childers’ proposal by a majority of twelve votes, and resigned.

The Queen accepted Mr. Gladstone’s resignation by telegram, and entrusted Lord Salisbury with the task of forming a new Cabinet. No easy duty on the brink of a general election, even had the Conservative Party been at Peace within itself. |Lord Salisbury’s First Administration.| But it was far from being so: a determined revolt was being conducted by Lord Randolph Churchill and his sympathisers—the “rapier and rosette” Tories—against Sir Stafford Northcote’s ineffective leadership. Amiable, cultivated, experienced, and sagacious as he was, Northcote had failed to gain the confidence of the combative spirits in his party, who recognised their real captain in the brilliant but erratic Churchill. Lord Salisbury solved the difficulty of uniting these discordant elements by removing Northcote to the Lords, with the title of Earl of Iddesleigh and the office of First Lord of the Treasury, placing Churchill in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for India, and committing the leadership of the Commons to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

This “Cabinet of Caretakers” had but a short existence. The new Ministry met Parliament on July 6, and finished the necessary work of the session in six weeks. It was understood that Parliament was to be dissolved in time for a general election in November. It proved a restless autumn. In almost every constituency canvassing and speech-making went on without intermission for three months, Mr. Gladstone leading the van with his third Midlothian campaign. He gave no countenance to the demand for Irish Home Rule; on the contrary, he implored the British electors to return such a Liberal majority as should render his party independent of the Irish vote in Parliament. In response to this flashed out a general order from Parnell, directing Irishmen in English and Scottish constituencies to vote solid against the Liberals, who had “coerced Ireland and deluged Egypt with blood.” The Irish leader’s policy was to keep the two great parties balanced by the Home Rule vote, and the result of the elections was as nicely adjusted as that skilled tactician could have desired; 335 Liberals returned to the new Parliament were exactly balanced by 249 Conservatives and 86 Home Rulers.

Of course, when Parliament re-assembled in February 1886, it was merely a question of how many weeks or days should precede the downfall of a Ministry in such a hopeless minority in the Commons. |Mr. Gladstone’s Third Administration.| Meanwhile strange rumours had been in circulation that Mr. Gladstone had decided to accept the doctrine of Home Rule for Ireland, against which he and his party had fought hitherto with as much obstinacy as the Conservatives. On December 16 the sketch of a scheme attributed to him appeared in some of the newspapers, and, in spite of an ambiguous disclaimer from himself, people gradually became aware that Mr. Gladstone had resolved to extricate his party from their subjection to the Irish party in Parliament by the astounding expedient of granting the essence of their demands.

Lord Salisbury’s Government fell on January 25: Mr. Gladstone became Prime Minister, and in his Cabinet were included some of his colleagues who had pronounced most emphatically and most recently against Home Rule, although the Lords Hartington, Derby, and Selborne stood significantly aloof. The mine was laid: the only indication of the coming explosion was the resignation, on March 26, by Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Trevelyan of their seats in the Cabinet. The train was fired on April 8, when Mr. Gladstone introduced his Bill for the better government of Ireland. The permanent furniture of the House of Commons does not permit of more than some 400 out of its 670 members being seated within its walls. An attempt was made to admit the presence of a larger number to hear the explanation of this most momentous measure; even so, only seventy or eighty additional seats could be provided by filling the floor of the chamber with chairs. Probably there never was such a scene of anxious expectation in the modern history of Parliament.

The division on the second reading was taken on June 7, the corresponding Monday to that on which Mr. Gladstone’s previous Administration had fallen in 1885. Ninety-three Liberals voted against the Bill, and Ministers were left in a minority of thirty. The Liberal party was rent from summit to base, not less completely than the Conservatives had been torn asunder by the action of their leader in 1846. |Dissolution of Parliament.| The Prime Minister advised the Queen to dissolve Parliament. Sudden and sharp was the appeal; firm and not to be misunderstood was the response. Mr. Gladstone went out on his fourth Midlothian campaign, and encountered no difficulty in retaining his own seat, as no opponent came forward to challenge it. But the country turned a deaf ear to his appeal. It preferred to listen to Lord Randolph Churchill’s characteristic denunciation of the Home Rule Bill, than which he vowed that “the united and concentrated genius of Bedlam and Colney Hatch would strive in vain to produce a more striking tissue of absurdities.” He declared that the real reason they were asked to accept such a measure was only, “to gratify the ambition of an old man in a hurry.” The result of the elections showed 316 Conservatives, 78 Liberal Unionists, 191 official Liberals, and 85 Parnellites: or a majority in the new House of 113 against Mr. Gladstone’s Irish policy.

When the Queen sent for Lord Salisbury, he invited Lord Hartington to join him in forming a coalition Cabinet; but the time for that was not yet—a purely Conservative Ministry, therefore, was formed. |Lord Salisbury’s Second Administration.| Everything promised fair for the endurance of Lord Salisbury’s second Administration, but a rude shock was in store for it almost on the threshold of its career.

By far the most striking figure in the Conservative ranks of the House of Commons was Lord Randolph Churchill. He became Chancellor of the Exchequer in the new Cabinet and leader of the House of Commons. Right well he led it through the six weeks of autumn session following on the elections. His admirers were delighted—his critics reconciled—by his adroit exchange of the manners of a political bravo for those of a responsible statesman; and that, too, without sacrifice of power in debate or pungency in retort. What was the dismay of Ministerialists when, in a moment of caprice, impatient because he could not get exactly his own way on a question of military and naval expenditure, Churchill threw up his office and left the Cabinet! |Lord Randolph Churchill Resigns.| This happened in December 1885; active negotiations were going on at the time for the redintegration of the old Liberal Party. Mr. Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan, as Unionists, had consented to confer with Sir William Harcourt and Mr. John Morley, as Home Rulers, at a “round table,” under the presidency of Lord Herschell (also a Home Ruler). |The Round Table Conference.| In the opinion of most people, the return of at least half the Liberal Unionists to their former allegiance might be expected, as the outcome of this conference. The stability of the Ministry, therefore, was peculiarly jeopardised by any appearance of internal disunion at this juncture. The crisis passed over in safety. Mr. Goschen, an old colleague of Mr. Gladstone, having been First Lord of the Admiralty in his first Administration, now determined to throw in his lot with the Unionists, and accepted the office vacated by Lord Randolph. The Round Table Conference separated without having found a basis of agreement, and the main body of Liberal Unionists remained staunch in support of Ministers.

The question still remained—who was to lead the House of Commons? The answer was a remarkable one. Mr. W. H. Smith, in spite of the mediocrity of his powers of oratory, had risen to very high office in successive Conservative Cabinets. As a man of business his reputation was unsurpassed, and he had secured the respect and confidence of all sections of the House of Commons by his well-known indifference to office and independence of its emoluments. Upon him the choice fell; he exchanged the post of Secretary for War for that of First Lord of the Treasury, and justified his appointment by leading the House of Commons with admirable temper and judgment during five trying sessions.

CHAPTER XVII.
1887–1897.

Adoption of the Closure by the House of Commons—The Queen’s Jubilee—Thanksgiving Service in Westminster Abbey—The Imperial Institute—“Parnellism and Crime”—Appointment of Special Commission of Judges—Their Report—Fall of Parnell—Disruption of the Irish Party—Deaths of Parnell and W. H. Smith—The Baring Crisis—The Local Government Bill—Establishment of County Councils—Free Education—Death of the Duke of Clarence—General Election—Mr. Gladstone’s Fourth Midlothian Campaign—The Newcastle Programme—Victory of Home Rulers—The Second Home Rule Bill—Its Rejection by the Lords—Parish Councils and Employers’ Liability Acts—Mr. Gladstone Resigns the Leadership—Lord Rosebery becomes Prime Minister—Disunion of Ministerialists—Defeat and Resignation of the Government—Lord Salisbury’s Third Administration—General Election—Unionist Triumph—The Eastern Question—Massacres in Armenia—Lord Rosebery Resigns the Leadership—Trouble in the Transvaal—Dr. Jameson’s Raid—The German Emperor’s Message—The Venezuelan Dispute—President Cleveland’s Message.