ents.
Will you allow me to assure you that I have never in my life taken
a decision which turned upon those relations.

You assure me that I have ever been mistaken in failing to place
you among my friends or admirers. Again I pray you to let me say
that I have never known you penurious in admiration towards any one
who had the slightest claim to it, and that at no period of my
life, not even during the limited one when we were in sharp
political conflict, have I either felt any enmity towards you, or
believed that you felt any towards me.

At the present moment I am awaiting counsel which at Lord Derby's
wish I have sought. But the difficulties which he wishes me to find
means of overcoming, are broader than you may have supposed. Were I
at this time to join any government I could not do it in virtue of
party connections. I must consider then what are the conditions
which make harmonious and effective co-operation in cabinet
possible--how largely old habits enter into them--what connections
can be formed with public approval--and what change would be
requisite in the constitution of the present government, in order
to make any change worth a trial.

I state these points fearlessly and without reserve, for you have
yourself well reminded me that there is a Power beyond us that
disposes of what we are and do, and I find the limits of choice in
public life to be very narrow.--I remain, etc.

THE SECOND DERBY GOVERNMENT

The next day Mr. Gladstone received Graham's letter already described.
The interpretation that he put upon it was that although Graham appeared
to lean in favour of acceptance, 'yet the counsel was indecisive.' On
ordinary construction, though the counsellor said that this was a case
in which only the man himself could decide, yet he also said that
acceptance would be for the public good. 'Your affirmative advice, had
it even been more positive, was not approval, nor was Lord Aberdeen's.
On the contrary it would have been like the orders to Balaam, that he
should go with the messengers of Balak, when notwithstanding the
command, the act was recorded against him.' We may be quite sure that
when a man draws all these distinctions, between affirmative advice,
positive advice, approval, he is going to act without any advice at all,
as Mr. Gladstone was in so grave a cas