cabinet often showed as bold a liberalism as any of the commoners.
This notwithstanding, it happened on more than one critical occasion, that
all the peers _plus_ Lord Hartington were on one side, and all the
commoners on the other. Lord Hartington was in many respects the lineal
successor of Palmerston in his coolness on parliamentary reform, in his
inclination to stand in the old ways, in his extreme suspicion of what
savoured of sentiment or idealism or high-flown profession. But he was a
Palmerston who respected Mr. Gladstone, and desired to work faithfully
under him, instead of being a Palmerston who always intended to keep the
upper hand of him. Confronting Lord Hartington was Mr. Chamberlain, eager,
intrepid, self-reliant, alert, daring, with notions about property,
taxation, land, schools, popular rights, that he expressed with a
plainness and pungency of speech that had never been heard from a privy
councillor and cabinet minister before, that exasperated opponents,
startled the whigs, and brought him hosts of adherents among radicals out
of doors. It was at a very early stage in the existence of the government,
that this important man said to an ally in the cabinet, "I don't see how
we are to get on, if Mr. Gladstone goes." And here was the key to many
leading incidents, both during the life of this administration and for the
eventful year in Mr. Gladstone's career that followed its demise.

The Duke of Argyll, who resigned very early, wrote to Mr. Gladstone after
the government was overthrown (Dec. 18, 1885), urging him in effect to
side definitely with the whigs against the radicals:--

From the moment our government was fairly under way, I saw and
felt that speeches _outside_ were allowed to affect opinion, and
politically to commit the cabinet in a direction which was not
determined by you deliberately, or by the government as a whole,
but by the audacity ... of our new associates. Month by month I
became more and more uncomfortable, feeling that there was no
paramount direction--nothing but _slip_ and _slide_, what the
Scotch call "slithering." The outside world, knowing your great
gifts and powers, assume that you are dictator in your own
cabinet. And in one sense you are so, that is to say, that when
you choose to put your foot down, others will give way. But your
amiability to colleagues, your even extreme gentleness towards
them, whilst it has alwa