radical wings in any durable liberal
government.

Mr. Goschen, who had been a valuable member of the great ministry of 1868,
was invited to call, but without hopes that he would rally to a cause so
startling; the interview, while courteous and pleasant, was over in a very
few minutes. Lord Derby, a man of still more cautious type, and a rather
recent addition to the officers of the liberal staff, declined, not
without good nature. Lord Northbrook had no faith in a new Irish policy,
and his confidence in his late leader had been shaken by Egypt. Most
lamented of all the abstentions was the honoured and trusted name of Mr.
Bright.

Mr. Trevelyan agreed to join, in the entirely defensible hope that they
"would knock the measure about in the cabinet, as cabinets do," and mould
it into accord with what had until now been the opinion of most of its
members.(183) Mr. Chamberlain, who was destined to play so singular and
versatile a part in the eventful years to come, entered the cabinet with
reluctance and misgiving. The Admiralty was first proposed to him and was
declined, partly on the ground that the chief of the fighting and spending
departments was not the post for one who had just given to domestic
reforms the paramount place in his stirring addresses to (M107) the
country. Mr. Chamberlain, we may be sure, was not much concerned about the
particular office. Whatever its place in the hierarchy, he knew that he
could trust himself to make it as important as he pleased, and that his
weight in the cabinet and the House would not depend upon the accident of
a department. Nobody's position was so difficult. He was well aware how
serious a thing it would be for his prospects, if he were to join a
confederacy of his arch enemies, the whigs, against Mr. Gladstone, the
commanding idol of his friends, the radicals. If, on the other hand, by
refusing to enter the government he should either prevent its formation or
should cause its speedy overthrow, he would be left planted with a
comparatively ineffective group of his own, and he would incur the deep
resentment of the bulk of those with whom he had hitherto been accustomed
to act.

All these were legitimate considerations in the mind of a man with the
instinct of party management. In the end he joined his former chief. He
made no concealment of his position. He warned the prime minister that he
did not believe it to be possible to reconcile conditions as to the
security of the e