e bound to do. He declined to
join.

_Mr. Gladstone to Lord Derby._

_Private._

_11 C.H. Terrace, May 26, '58._--I have this morning received
Sir James Graham's reply, and I have seen Lord Aberdeen before and
since. Their counsel has been given in no narrow or unfriendly
spirit. It is, however, indecisive, and leaves upon me the
responsibility which they would have been glad if it had been in
their power to remove. I must therefore adhere to the reply which I
gave to Mr. Walpole on Saturday; for I have not seen, and I do not
see, a prospect of public advantage or of material accession to
your strength, from my entering your government single-handed.

Had it been in your power to raise fully the question whether those
who were formerly your colleagues, could again be brought into
political relation with you, I should individually have thought it
to be for the public good that, under the present circumstances of
the country, such a scheme should be considered deliberately and in
a favourable spirit. But I neither know that this is in your power,
nor can I feel very sanguine hopes that the obstacles in the way of
this proposal on the part of those whom it would embrace, could be
surmounted. Lord Aberdeen is the person who could best give a
dispassionate and weighty opinion on that subject. For me the
question, confined as it is to myself, is a narrow one, and I am
bound to say that I arrive without doubt at the result.

REFUSAL

'I hope and trust,' said Graham, when he knew what Mr. Gladstone had
done, 'that you have decided rightly; my judgment inclined the other
way. I should be sorry if your letter to Lord Derby led him to make any
more extended proposal. It could not possibly succeed, as matters now
stand; and the abortive attempt would be injurious to him. The
reconstruction of the fossil remains of the old Peel party is a hopeless
task. No human power can now reanimate it with the breath of life; it is
decomposed into atoms and will be remembered only as a happy accident,
while it lasted.'[374]

IV

SUEZ CANAL

In one remarkable debate of this summer the solitary statesman descended
from his pillar. Now was the time of the memorable scheme for the
construction of the S