o Tory Government could have done what the
Liberal Government did yesterday in bombarding those forts. If such a
thing had been proposed, what would have happened? We should have had
Sir William Harcourt stumping the country, and denouncing Government by
Ultimatum. We should have had Lord Hartington coming down, and moving a
Resolution condemning these proceedings being taken behind the back of
Parliament. We should have had Mr. Chamberlain summoning the Caucuses.
We should have had Mr. Bright declaiming in the Town Hall of Birmingham
against the wicked Tory Government; and as for Mr. Gladstone, we all
know that there would not have been a railway-train, passing a roadside
station, that he would not have pulled up at, to proclaim
non-intervention as the duty of the Government."

On the 12th of July John Bright retired from the Government, as a
protest against the bombardment, and made a short speech full of solemn
dignity. "I asked my calm judgment and my conscience what was the path I
ought to take. They pointed it out to me, as I think, with an unerring
finger, and I am humbly endeavouring to follow it."

But it was too late. The mischief was done, and has not been undone to
this day. I remember Mr. Chamberlain saying to me: "Well, I confess I
was tired of having England kicked about all over the world. I never
condemned the Tory Government for going to war; only for going to war on
the wrong side." It was a characteristic saying; but this amazing lapse
into naked jingoism spread wonder and indignation through the Liberal
Party, and shook the faith of many who, down to that time, had regarded
Gladstone as a sworn servant of Peace. The Egyptian policy of 1882 must,
I fear, always remain the blot on Gladstone's scutcheon; and three
years later he gave away the whole case for intervention, and threw the
blame on his predecessors in office. In his Address to the Electors of
Midlothian before the General Election of 1885 he used the following
words: "We have, according to my conviction from the very first (when
the question was not within the sphere of Party contentions), committed
by our intervention in Egypt a grave political error, and the
consequence which the Providential order commonly allots to such error
is not compensation, but retribution."

But, though Providence eventually allotted "retribution" to our crimes
and follies in Egypt, and though they were always unpopular with the
Liberal Party out of doors, it w