resulted in the
passing of the Merchant Shipping Bill, intended to remedy the many
wrongs to which our merchant seamen were subject, a measure almost
entirely procured by the fervent human sympathy and resoluteness of
one member of Parliament, Samuel Plimsoll; and other measures
belonging to this period, and designed to benefit the toilers of the
land principally, were initiated by the energy of the Home Secretary,
Mr. Cross. But neither the imposing foreign action of Lord
Beaconsfield's Government, nor the domestic improvements wrought
during its period of power, could maintain it in public favour. There
was great and growing distress in the country; depression of trade,
severe winters, sunless summers, all produced suffering, and
suffering discontent. An appeal to the country, made in the spring of
1880, shifted the Parliamentary majority from the Conservative to the
Liberal side. Lord Beaconsfield resigned, and Mr. Gladstone returned
to power.

The history of the Gladstone Ministry does not come well within the
scope of this work. Certain very memorable events must be touched
upon; there are dark chapters of our national story, stains and blots
on our great name, which force themselves upon us. But to follow the
Government through its years of struggle with the ever-growing bulk
of Irish difficulty, and to track it through its various enactments
designed still further to improve the condition of the English
people, would require a small volume to itself. England still
remembers the thrill, half fury, half anguish, which ran through her
at the tidings that the new Chief Secretary for Ireland, charged with
a message of peace and conciliation, had been stabbed to death within
twenty-four hours of his landing on that unhappy shore. She cannot
forego the deep instinctive feeling--so generally manifested at the
time of Lincoln's murder--that the lawless spilling of life for any
cause dishonours and discredits that cause; nor have various
subsequent efforts made to terrorise public opinion here been
differently judged.

But it was a far more cruel shock that was inflicted through the
series of ill-advised proceedings that brought about the great
disaster of Khartoum. Before we deal with these, we must glance at
the African and Afghan troubles, again breaking out and again
quieted, the first by a peace with the Boers of the Transvaal that
awakened violent discussion not yet at an end, and the second, after
some successes