d's
Prayer was found to be [Greek: thelema]. As Finlay truly says, it would
have been much more to the point to accept the word as it was meant by
those who used it. As to that no mistake was possible. Some say that he
ought plainly to have told them they had violated the constitution, to
have dissolved them, and above all to have stopped their pay. Instead of
this he informed them that they must put their wishes into the shape of
a petition to the Queen. The idea was seized with alacrity (January 29).
Oligarchs and demagogues were equally pleased to fall in with it, the
former because they hoped it would throw their rivals into deeper
discredit with their common master, the latter because they knew it
would endear them to their constituents.

OPENING OF THE IONIAN SESSION

The Corfiotes received the declaration of the assembly and the address
to the Queen with enthusiasm. Great crowds followed the members to their
homes with joyous acclamations, all the bells of the town were set
ringing, there was a grand illumination for two nights, and the
archbishop ordered a _Te Deum_. Neither te-deums nor prayers melted the
heart of the British cabinet, aware of the truth impressed at the time
on Mr. Gladstone by Lytton, that neither the English public nor the
English parliament likes any policy that '_gives anything up_.' The
Queen was advised to reply that she could neither consent to abandon the
obligations she had undertaken, nor could permit any application from
the islands to other Powers in furtherance of any similar design.

Then at last came the grand plan for constitutional reconstruction. Mr.
Gladstone after first stating the reply of the Queen, read an eloquent
address to the assembly (February 4) in Italian, adjuring them to reject
all attempts to evade by any indirect devices the duty of pronouncing a
clear and intelligible judgment on the propositions now laid before
them. His appeal was useless, and it was received exactly as plans for
assimilating Irish administration to English used to be. The
nationalists knew that reform would be a difficulty the more in the way
of separation, the retrogrades knew it would be a spoke in the wheel of
their own jobbery. Mr. Gladstone professed extreme and truly
characteristic astonishment in respect of the address to the Queen, that
they should regard the permission to ask as identical with the promise
to grant, and the right to petition as equivalent to the