ad failed to
obtain employment for the day. On one of these occasions--and very
pathetic they were--I was the host, and the _Saturday Review_ treated me
to some not unkindly ridicule.

Child of the Whigs whose name you flout,
Slip of the tree you fain would fell;
Your colleagues own, I cannot doubt,
Your plan, George Russell, likes them well,
"What will regain," you heard them cry,
"That popular praise we once enjoyed?"
And instant was your smart reply,
"Free Breakfasts to the Unemployed."

And then, after six more verses of rhythmical chaff, this prophetic
stanza:

And howsoe'er profusely flow
The tea and coffee round the board,
The hospitality you show
Shall nowise lack its due reward.
For soon, I trust, our turn 'twill be,
With joy by no regret alloyed,
To give the present Ministry
A Breakfast for the Unemployed.

The Parliamentary work of 1885 was Redistribution. The principles had
been settled in secret conclave by the leaders on both sides; but the
details were exhaustively discussed in the House of Commons. By this
time we had become inured to Tory votes of censure on our Egyptian
policy, and had always contrived to escape by the skin of our teeth;
but we were in a disturbed and uneasy condition. We knew--for there was
an incessant leakage of official secrets--that the Cabinet was rent by
acute dissensions. The Whiggish section was in favour of renewing the
Irish Crimes Act. The Radicals wished to let it expire, and proposed to
conciliate Ireland by a scheme of National Councils. Between the middle
of April and the middle of May, nine members of the Cabinet, for one
cause or another, contemplated resignation. After one of these disputes
Gladstone said to a friend: "A very fair Cabinet to-day--only three
resignations." Six months later, after his Government had fallen, he
wrote: "A Cabinet does not exist out of office, and no one in his senses
could covenant to call _the late Cabinet_ together." The solution of
these difficulties came unexpectedly. The Budget introduced by Hugh
Childers on the 30th of April proposed to meet a deficit by additional
duties on beer and spirits; and was therefore extremely unpopular.
Silently and skilfully, the Tories, the Irish, and the disaffected
Liberals laid their plans. On Sunday, June 7th, Lord Henry Lennox--a
leading Tory--told me at luncheon that we were to be tur