he will abdicate and leave them to find another leader
fully responded to by him. 13.--Defeat of the opposition last
night; great triumph of Disraeli; a surprise, I believe, to both
parties; 289 voted with Gladstone. What will he do? _Query._--Ought
he on account of the defection of 20 to leave so considerable a
party?

(M69) The occasion just mentioned marked a climax. Mr. Gladstone moved an
amendment to remove the personal payment of rates as an essential
qualification, and to confer the franchise on the householder whether he
paid the rate direct or through the landlord. The next day the diary
records: _April 12._--"Spoke in reply and voted in 289-310. A smash perhaps
without example. A victory of 21 for ministers." A new secession had taken
place, and 43 liberal members voted with the government, while nearly 20
were absent. The Cranborne secession was small, and some who had been
expected to stay away voted with the government. "Gladstone expressed
himself strongly to five or six members of the late government whom he
summoned to his house in the morning. He spoke of retiring to a back
bench, and announcing that he would give up the ostensible post of leader
of the opposition. He was dissuaded from doing this at the present moment,
and went out of town, as indeed did almost everybody else."(161) Still the
notion of a back bench did lodge itself in his mind for long. The "smash"
was undoubtedly severe. As Mr. Gladstone wrote to one of the members for
the City, a supporter, it showed that the liberals whose convictions
allowed united action upon reform were not a majority but a minority of
the House of Commons. Considering the large number who supported his
proposal, he told his correspondent that though he would move no further
amendment of his own, he was not less willing than heretofore to remain at
the service of the party. "The friendly critics," he said to Brand, "note
a tone of despondency in my letter to Crawford. That is all owing to
Granville and others who cut off a fine peacock's tail that I had
appended." So day after day amid surf and breakers he held to his oar. If
Mr. Gladstone was much buffeted in the house of his friends, he was not
without valiant backers, and among them none was more stout than Mr.
Bright, the least effusive of all men in the direction of large panegyric.
Speaking to his constituents at Birmingham, "Who is there in the House of
Commons," he demanded, "who equa