illing submission with which it
was received.

The pre-eminence of the Premier was, indeed, the most noteworthy feature
which the new House presented to the student of Parliamentary life.
Whether considered morally or intellectually, he seemed to tower a head
and shoulders above his colleagues, and above the Front Opposition
Bench. The leader of the Opposition was the amiable and accomplished Sir
Stafford Northcote, afterwards Lord Iddesleigh, a

"scrupulous, good man,
Who would not, with a peremptory tone,
Assert the nose upon his face his own."

In his youth he had been Gladstone's Private Secretary, and he still
seemed to tremble at his old chief's glance.

But, when everything looked so fair and smiling, Speaker Brand quietly
noted in his diary, that the Liberal Party "were not only strong, but
determined to have their way in spite of Mr. Gladstone." And this
determination to "have their way" was soon and startlingly manifested,
and challenged the personal ascendancy of which we had heard so much.

Charles Bradlaugh, a defiant Atheist, and the teacher of a social
doctrine which decent people abhor, had been returned as one of the
Members for Northampton. When the other Members were sworn, he claimed a
right to affirm, which was disallowed on legal grounds. He thereupon
proposed to take the oath in the ordinary way; the Tories objected, and
the Speaker weakly gave way. The House, on a division, decided that
Bradlaugh must neither affirm nor swear. In effect, it decreed that a
duly elected Member was not to take his seat. On the 23rd of June,
Bradlaugh came to the table of the House, and again claimed his right to
take the oath. The Speaker read the Resolution of the House forbidding
it. Thereupon Bradlaugh asked to be heard, and addressed the House from
the Bar. I happened to be dining that night with Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone
in Downing Street. Gladstone came in full of excitement, and pronounced
Bradlaugh's speech "consummate." However, it availed nothing. Bradlaugh
was ordered to withdraw from the House; refused, and was committed to a
farcical imprisonment of two days in the Clock Tower; and so, as Lord
Morley says, there "opened a series of incidents that went on as long as
the Parliament, clouded the radiance of the Party triumph, threw the new
Government at once into a minority, dimmed the ascendancy of the great
Minister, and showed human nature at its worst." From the da