the Second Reading, and in Committee--the Government, as we have just
seen, yielded to clamour, and proposed on Report to alter the clause by
limiting the Right of Search to day-time. I opposed this alteration, as
providing a "close time for murder," and had the satisfaction of helping
to defeat the Government. The Big-Wigs of the Party were extremely
angry, and Mr. R. H. Hutton, in _The Spectator_, rebuked us in his most
grandmotherly style. In reply, I quoted some words of his own. "There is
nothing which injures true Liberalism more than the sympathy of its left
wing with the loose ruffianism of unsettled States." "Such a State," I
said, "is Ireland; and if, under the pressure of extraordinary
difficulties, Ministers vacillate or waver in their dealings with it,
the truest Liberalism, I believe, is that which holds them firmly to
their duty."

In that sad Session of 1882 the troubles of the Government "came not
single spies, but in battalions," and the most enduring of those
troubles arose in Egypt. For the benefit of a younger generation, let me
recall the circumstances.

Ismail Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, had accumulated a national debt of
about L100,000,000, and the pressure on the wretched peasants who had to
pay was crushing. Presently they broke out in revolt, partly with the
hope of shaking off this burden, and partly with a view to establishing
some sort of self-government. But the financiers who had lent money to
Egypt took fright, and urged the Government to interfere and suppress
the insurrection. A meeting of Tories was held in London on June 29th
and the Tory Leaders made the most inflammatory speeches. Unhappily, the
Government yielded to this show of violence. It was said by a close
observer of Parliamentary institutions that "When the Government of the
day and the Opposition of the day take the same side, one may be almost
sure that some great wrong is at hand," and so it was now. On July 10th
our fleet bombarded Alexandria, smashing its rotten forts with the
utmost ease, and killing plenty of Egyptians. I remember to this day the
sense of shame with which I read our Admiral's telegraphic despatch:
"Enemy's fire weak and ineffectual."

The protest delivered on the following day, by Sir Wilfrid Lawson, the
most consistent and the most disinterested politician whom I ever knew,
deserves to be remembered.

"I say deliberately, and in doing so I challenge either Tory or Liberal
to contradict me, that n