university out of national funds. The Irish Protestants were furious at the proposed breaking up of the long-established university system in Dublin. The Catholics declared that it did not in any sense meet the justice of their claims as regards the Catholic university. It soon became certain that a large number of the Protestant Nonconformist Members of Parliament were determined to oppose it. Mr. Disraeli's speech during the closing debate was full of brilliancy and triumphant sarcasm. He knew what the end was to be, and he exulted in the already certain defeat of his great opponent. Mr. Glad stone's speech in reply was dignified, serene, and even pathetic. It was the speech of one who could bear anticipated defeat without bitterness, without despondency, "rather in the independence of a quiet than the disdain of a despairing heart," if I may quote some almost for gotten words of Bulwer Lytton. I listened to that speech of Mr. Gladstone's with an absorbed interest. So, indeed, must every one have done who had the privilege to hear it. Especially touching were the few sentences in which Mr. Gladstone expressed his regret for his inevitable severance on that occasion from the Irish National Members with whom he had worked so happily and so successfully on the bill for the abolition of the Irish Church and the Land Tenure scheme for Ireland. The division bell rang, and the defeat came. It was not, indeed, a great defeat. The measure was thrown out by only a majority of three. But, as Mercutio says of his wound, "'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'tis enough 'twill serve."

Mr. Gladstone, of course, resigned office at once, and Mr. Disraeli was sent for by the Queen. Mr. Disraeli, however, prudently declined to accept office under such conditions. He pointed, not unreasonably, to the fact that on most questions there would be a majority against him; and he drew, in a subsequent speech, an amusing picture of the troubles imposed on a Prime Minister who has on various great public questions a majority of the House of Commons against him. Of course, it might be said that he could have dissolved Parliament and called for the judgment of the country at a general election. But, as he once more not un

reasonably put it, How could he appeal to the constituencies against a decision of the House of Commons which had his thorough approval? Disraeli, in fact, knew quite well that the time was not opportune for him, and he also knew that the opportune time was coming soon. He held to his resolve; he declined to undertake office, and there was nothing for it but that Mr. Gladstone should return, not indeed to power, but to office. There is a vast difference between being in office and being in power, as Mr. Disraeli had pointed out in the amusing speech to which I have lately alluded. Mr. Gladstone came back, not to power, but to office. It must have been a painful thing for him to continue still to be Prime Minister under such conditions. He came back to office very unwillingly, as everybody knew. He was tired of the whole business. He had good reason to feel disappointed. His health had been severely injured by the excessive strain of the work to which he had devoted himself with an unsparing and almost reckless self-sacrifice. He knew well, every

one must have known, that, coming back to office under such conditions, he must come back with a diminished and a discredited influence. Any outside observer could have seen all that. It must have been borne keenly into Mr. Gladstone's knowledge. A man with a less magnanimous nature than Mr. Gladstone might have refused point-blank to undertake so thankless, so disheartening, and so futile a task. But that was not Gladstone's way. Sensitive and highly strung as he was by nature, he was always able to subject his own personal feelings to the public good. He came back to office seeing, as everybody must have seen, that the end was near.

In truth, the force of reforming energy had spent itself for a time. In English political life there is a law of action and reaction so palpable in its working that almost any intelligent observer might undertake to issue a weather prophecy about its movements. Mr. Gladstone had come into power on the crest of the third wave, as boatmen say, and with that impulse he had accomplished a magnificent series of reforms in legislation. Now, however, the force was spent. The outer public had grown tired of mere reform,

Great political questions in England are not always decided by the men who take a real and active interest in them. There is an outer public who care little either way, but who vote all the same and whose general inclination is to be let alone unless when something is in the air which has some special attraction for them. The fate of a great administration is often decided by such men as these. They murmur to their own souls that they are rather tired of reforming measures; that they are rather tired of Gladstone and his energy; and when election comes they either stay at home and do not vote at all or they vote against the energetic and wearisome administration. It must have been quite plain to Mr. Gladstone that that turn in the tide had come. Still, he had no inclination to embarrass public life and Parliament by refusing to return to office, although well knowing that he was only to be a stop gap there. With what Burke would have called a "proud humility," he bowed his head and entered the Prime Minister's room again. During his short career of renewed office he enabled the late Mr. Fawcett to carry a measure for the abolition of religious tests in the University of Dublin. That was all that he could do just then for that cause of university education in Ireland which he had so generously undertaken. He did the best he could; as he could not bring in a great reform, he brought in a reform of a minor degree, but still on the way to a complete scheme.

Better

a small reform than nothing, he thought. His nature was always a curious compound of the thinker, perhaps even of the dreamer, and of the worker.

CHAPTER XXIV.—THE ALABAMA QUESTION

I need not go into the internal troubles which, according to public conjecture, helped towards the speedy overthrow of the Liberal party. There was some talk of dissensions, talk likely enough to be true, among the members of the Liberal Cabinet. Election after election here and there, as vacancies were made, began to be lost to the Liberals. It was plain that the full tide of reaction was in force.

The Alabama question had undoubtedly created some trouble for Mr. Gladstone's Government. It has always seemed to me that one of the best and bravest things

Mr. Gladstone ever did was his acceptance, and I might even say his enforcement, of the principle of arbitration with regard to that question. The Treaty of Washington, arranged in May, 1871, prevented, in all human probability, the breaking off of diplomatic relationship, and possibly even the outbreak of a war between England and the United States. The American Government had done what any Englishman with any brains in his head would have known they would do, and were entitled to do-they insisted on a settlement of the claims arising out of the damage done by the Alabama and the other cruisers of the Southern States which had been built in the English dockyards and had sailed from English ports and were sometimes to a great extent manned by English sailors. Up to a certain point English statesmen had rather paltered with the question; they had expressed themselves willing to go into arbitration as to any individual claims for personal damage done which a few Englishmen might have to present on the one side of the quarrel and a few Americans on the other side. But this was not by any means what the American statesmen required, and what, as everybody now believes, they were entitled to expect. Their claim was made as a nation injured by another nation. Such a claim was not to be met by merely admitting a willingness to pay for any personal damages that this or that American citizen might have sustained. Mr. Gladstone's Government, under his direct inspiration, finally agreed to accept the most ample and complete terms for the discussion of the whole controversy. They declared themselves willing to treat the subject in dispute as a national and not merely an individual lawsuit.

A commission was sent out to Washington which was to hold conference with an American commission, and to enter upon all the different subjects of dispute still unsettled between England and the United States. Of these subjects the principal were the Alabama question, the San Juan boundary, and the Canadian Fishery question. The Dominion of Canada was represented on this commission. Of the English commissioners, one is still alive, the Marquis of Ripon. Lord Iddesleigh, who was then Sir Stafford North