is announcement was made on the 26th of January,
when several of the Amendments in the Address were still on the paper.
Before the House rose, the Government had ceased to exist. By a majority
of 79, in a House of 583; a Resolution in support of a policy advocated
by the Radical section of the Liberal party was carried against the
Government. The motion of Mr. Jesse Collings was, it must be remembered,
not a necessary assertion of a particular principle. The importance of
the questions of allotments was acknowledged by the Ministry
collectively and individually. It was not supposed, even by Mr. Collings
himself, that the carrying of this particular Motion on the Address
would advance legislation on the subject by a single day. The motion was
one of those demonstrations of opinions, ordinary enough in Parliament,
and generally resulting in a debate without a division or if pushed to a
division, in the withdrawal from the House of all but declared
partizans. On this particular occasion the motion was taken up and
pressed to a division, in order that the National League was to be put
down, was followed in a few hours by a vote which, in the existing
constitution of parties, necessarily involved the restoration of Mr.
Gladstone to power. So transparent was the object of the division that
13 Liberals voted with the Ministers, among others such staunch
adherents of Liberalism as Lord Hartington and Sir Henry James.

When the new Ministry was formed, two extraordinary circumstances came
to light. Lord Hartington, the heir-apparent to the Liberal Leadership,
Lord Derby, Mr. Gladstone's most distinguished proselyte, Lord Selborne,
and other eminent colleagues in the conduct of the Liberal party, would
have nothing to do with the new scheme for the final settlement of
Ireland for the third time. Another still more singular fact was soon
disclosed. All the members of the new Cabinet, who had any future before
them, had come in with reservations of a right of further consideration,
when the subject of Irish policy should be brought up for discussion.

One remarkable ally, however, Mr. Gladstone had found in his momentous
enterprise. The appointment of Mr. John Morley to the principal post in
the Government of the part of the kingdom, which had fallen under the
sway of such an organization as the National League, was in itself a
revolution. The new Chief Secretary had no official experience, and no
parliamentary position. A favoured