time, and which on the other side has a majority which revolt of even a
small number can at any moment turn into a dishonoured and impotent
minority. Such being the material, a nice little plot was concocted by
which a certain number of young members, full of all that vague distrust
of existing ministries which belongs to ardent young Radicalism, were
to be induced to give a vote against Mr. Gladstone's proposal to take
away the time of private members. And it is reported that one member of
the Liberal party had begun operations as many as four weeks before Mr.
Gladstone's Bill came on, and had tried to extort a number of pledges,
the full meaning of which would only come upon the unhappy people who
made them when they had endangered or destroyed the best of modern
Ministries.

[Sidenote: The out-manoeuvred Tories.]

I think I have now said enough to explain what I am going to relate. Mr.
Gladstone explained his proposal; which briefly was, that in order to
get on with Home Rule it was necessary to take the time of private
members. As will have been seen, the meaning of this would have been to
have swept away at once all the private motions in which members were
interested. When the motion came to be discussed, there was a very
curious phenomenon. Everybody had been reading in the morning papers the
chorus of disapproval in which the Tory press had been denouncing the
leadership of the Tory party, liberals had been repeating to each other
with delight the verdict of the chief Tory organ--the _Standard_
newspaper--that the Tory party had been out-manoeuvred and beaten at
every point in the struggle, and that the portentous promises of the
recess had been utterly baffled by the superior judgment, the better
concerted tactics, and, above all, by the unexpected solidity and
cohesion of the Liberal party.