tional situation of extreme delicacy and peril.
Many anxious moments followed; for the scene of quarrel was far off,
details were hard to clear up, diplomacy was sometimes ambiguous, popular
excitement was heated, and the language of faction was unmeasured in its
violence. The preliminary resolution on the vote of credit had been
received with acclamation, but a hostile motion was made from the front
opposition bench (May 11), though discord on a high imperial matter was
obviously inconvenient enough for the public interest. The mover declared
the government to have murdered so many thousand men and to have arranged
a sham arbitration, and this was the prelude to other speeches in the same
key. Sir S. Northcote supported the motion--one to displace the ministers
on a bill that it was the declared intention not to oppose. The division
was taken at half-past two in the morning, after a vigorous speech from
the prime minister, and the government only counted 290 against 260. In
the minority were 42 followers of Mr. Parnell. This premature debate
cleared the air. Worked with patience and with vigorous preparations at
the back of conciliatory negotiation, the question was prosecuted to a
happy issue, and those who had done their (M72) best to denounce Mr.
Gladstone and Lord Granville for trampling the interests and honour of
their country underfoot thought themselves very lucky, when the time came
for them to take up the threads, in being able to complete the business by
adopting and continuing the selfsame line. With justifiable triumph Mr.
Gladstone asked how they would have confronted Russia if "that insane
policy--for so I still must call it"--of Afghan occupation which he had
brought to an end in 1880, had been persevered in. In such a case, when
Russia came to advance her claim so to adjust boundaries as to make her
immediate neighbour to Afghanistan, she would have found the country full
of friends and allies, ready to join her in opposing the foreigner and the
invader; and she would have been recognised as the liberator.(120)

IV

In some respects Mr. Gladstone was never more wonderful than in the few
weeks that preceded the fall of his second administration. Between the
middle of April and the middle of May, he jots down with half-rueful
humour the names of no fewer than nine members of the cabinet who within
that period, for one reason or another and at one moment or another,
appeared to contemplate resignati