r, Lord Hartington said on the point of Mr.
Gladstone's consistency: "When I look back to the declarations that
Mr. Gladstone made in parliament, which have not been infrequent;
when I look back to the increased definiteness given to these
declarations in his address to the electors of Midlothian and in his
Midlothian speeches; when I consider all these things, I feel that I
have not, and that no one has, any right to complain of the
declaration that Mr. Gladstone has recently made."--Speech at the
Eighty Club, March 5, 1886.

_ 183 Hans._ 304, p. 1106.

M107 Position Of Mr. Chamberlain

184 January 30, 1886. _Hans._ 304, p. 1185.

185 As for the story of my being concerned in Mr. Gladstone's conversion
to home rule, it is, of course, pure moonshine. I only glance at it
because in politics people are ready to believe anything. At the
general election of 1880, I had declined to support home rule. In
the press, however, I had strenuously opposed the Forster Coercion
bill of the following winter, as involving a radical misapprehension
of the nature and magnitude of the case. In the course of that
controversy, arguments pressed themselves forward which led much
further than mere resistance to the policy of coercion. Without
having had the advantage of any communication whatever with Mr.
Gladstone upon Irish subjects for some years before, I had still
pointed out to my constituents at Newcastle in the previous
November, that there was nothing in Mr. Gladstone's electoral
manifesto to prevent him from proposing a colonial plan for Ireland,
and I had expressed my own conviction that this was the right
direction in which to look. A few days before the fall of the tory
government, I had advocated the exclusion of Irish members from
Westminster, and the production of measures dealing with the
land.--Speech at Chelmsford, January 7, 1886.

186 The cabinet was finally composed as follows:--

Mr. Gladstone, _First lord of the treasury_.
Lord Herschell, _Lord chancellor_.
Lord Spencer, _President of council_.
Sir W. Harcourt, _Chancellor of exchequer_.
Mr. Childers, _Home secretary_.
Lord Rosebery, _Foreign secretary_.
Lord Granville, _Colonial secretary_.
Lord Kimberley, _Indian secretary_.
Mr. Campbell-Banner