should come into operation together. What they
contended was, that to tack redistribution on to franchise, was to scotch
or kill franchise. "I do not hesitate to say," Mr. Gladstone told his
electors, "that those who are opposing us, and making use of this topic of
redistribution of seats as a means for defeating the franchise bill, know
as well as we do that, had we been such idiots and such dolts as to
present to parliament a bill for the combined purpose, or to bring in two
bills for the two purposes as one measure--I say, they know as well as we
do, that a disgraceful failure would have been the result of our folly,
and that we should have been traitors to you, and to the cause we had in
hand."(75) Disinterested onlookers thought there ought to be no great
difficulty in securing the result that both sides desired. As the Duke of
Argyll put it to Mr. Gladstone, if in private business two men were to
come to a breach, when standing so near to one another in aim and
profession, they would be shut up in bedlam. This is just what the
judicious reader will think to-day.

The controversy was transported from parliament to the platform, and a
vigorous agitation marked the autumn recess. It was a double agitation.
What began as a campaign on behalf of the rural householder, threatened to
end as one against hereditary legislators. It is a well-known advantage in
movements of this sort to be not only for, but also against, somebody or
something; against a minister, by preference, or if not an individual,
then against a body. A hereditary legislature in a community that has
reached the self-governing stage is an anachronism that makes the easiest
of all marks for mockery and attack, so long as it lasts. Nobody can doubt
that if Mr. Gladstone had been the frantic demagogue or fretful
revolutionist that his opponents thought, he now had an excellent chance
of bringing the question of the House of Lords irresistibly to the front.
As it was, in the midst of the storm raised by his lieutenants and
supporters all over the country, he was the moderating force, elaborately
appealing, as he said, to the reason rather than the fears of his
opponents.

One reproachful passage in his speeches this autumn acquires a rather
peculiar significance in the light of the events that were in the coming
years to follow. He is dealing with the argument that the hereditary House
protects the nation against fleeting opinions:--

How is it with