ough till they got the Redistribution Bill
from the Commons. Meanwhile, all sorts of mysterious negotiations were
going on between the "moderate" men on both sides; and it was known that
Gladstone dared not dissolve on the old franchise, as he was sure to be
beaten in the Boroughs. His only hope was in the agricultural
labourers. Then, acting under pressure which is not known but can be
easily guessed, he suddenly announced, on the 17th of November, that he
was prepared to introduce the Redistribution Bill before the Lords went
into Committee on the Franchise Bill. It was the point for which the
Tories had been contending all along, and by conceding it, Gladstone
made an absolute surrender. All the sound and fury of the last six
months had been expended in protesting that we could never do what now
we meekly did. It was the beginning of troubles which have lasted to
this day. The House of Lords learned the welcome lesson that, when the
Liberal Party railed, they only had to sit still; and the lesson learnt
in 1884 was applied in each succeeding crisis down to August 1911. It
has always been to me an amazing instance of Gladstone's powers of
self-deception that to the end of his life he spoke of this pernicious
surrender as a signal victory.

Early in 1885, it became my duty to receive at the Local Government
Board a deputation of the Unemployed, who then were beginning to agitate
the habitual calm of the well-fed and the easy-going. It was a curious
experience. The deputation consisted of respectable-looking and
apparently earnest men, some of whom spoke the language of _Alton
Locke_, while others talked in a more modern strain of dynamite, Secret
Societies, and "a life for a life." The most conspicuous figure in the
deputation was an engineer called John Burns,[40] and those who are
interested in political development may find something to their mind in
the report of the deputation in _The Times_ of February 17th, 1885.
There they will read that, after leaving Whitehall, the crowd adjourned
to the Embankment, where the following resolution was carried, and
despatched to the President of the Local Government Board:

"That this meeting of the unemployed, having heard the answer given
by the Local Government Board to their deputation, considers the
refusal to start public works to be a sentence of death on
thousands of those out of work, and the recommendation to bring
pressure to bear on the