e years
a too sanguine and high-coloured anticipation of our future, I
should like to be reminded of it. I remain, and I hope always to
be, your affectionate friend.

The correspondence with Lord Granville sets out more clearly than anything
else could do Mr. Gladstone's general view of the situation of the party
and his own relation to it, and the operative words in this
correspondence, in view of the maelstrom to which they were all drawing
nearer, will be accurately noted by any reader who cares to understand one
of the most interesting situations in the history of party. To Lord
Granville he says (September 9, 1885), "The problem for me is to make if
possible a statement which will hold through the election and not to go
into conflict with either the right wing of the party for whom Hartington
has spoken, or the left wing for whom Chamberlain, I suppose, spoke last
night. I do not say they are to be treated as on a footing, but I must do
no act disparaging to Chamberlain's wing." And again to Lord Granville a
month later (Oct. 5):--

You hold a position of great impartiality in relation to any
divergent opinions among members of the late cabinet. No other
person occupies ground so thoroughly favourable. I turn to myself
for one moment. I remain at present in the leadership of the
party, first with a view to the election, and secondly with a view
to being, by a bare possibility, of use afterwards in the Irish
question if it should take a favourable turn; but as you know,
with the intention of taking no part in any schism of the party
should it arise, and of avoiding any and all official
responsibility, should the question be merely one of liberal _v._
conservative and not one of commanding imperial necessity, such as
that of Irish government may come to be after the dissolution.

He goes on to say that the ground had now been sufficiently laid for going
to the election with a united front, that ground being the common
profession of a limited creed (M86) or programme in the liberal sense,
with an entire freedom for those so inclined, to travel beyond it, but not
to impose their own sense upon all other people. No one, he thought, was
bound to determine at that moment on what conditions he would join a
liberal government. If the party and its leaders were agreed as to
immediate measures on local government, land, and registration, were not
these enoug