claims of the Liberals to pose as the
champions of the masses. His views were to a large extent accepted by
the official Conservative leaders in the treatment of the Gladstonian
Franchise Bill of 1884. Lord Randolph insisted that the principle of the
bill should be accepted by the opposition, and that resistance should be
focused upon the refusal of the government to combine with it a scheme
of redistribution. The prominent, and on the whole judicious and
successful, part he played in the debates on these questions, still
further increased his influence with the rank and file of the
Conservatives in the constituencies. At the same time he was actively
spreading the gospel of democratic Toryism in a series of platform
campaigns. In 1883 and 1884 he invaded the Radical stronghold of
Birmingham itself, and in the latter year took part in a Conservative
garden party at Aston Manor, at which his opponents paid him the
compliment of raising a serious riot. He gave constant attention to the
party organization, which had fallen into considerable disorder after
1880, and was an active promoter of the Primrose League, which owed its
origin to the happy inspiration of one of his own "fourth party"
colleagues.

In 1884 the struggle between stationary and progressive Toryism came to
a head, and terminated in favour of the latter. At the conference of the
Central Union of Conservative Associations, Lord Randolph was nominated
chairman, notwithstanding the strenuous opposition of the parliamentary
leaders of the party. The split was averted by Lord Randolph's voluntary
resignation; but the episode had confirmed his title to a leading place
in the Tory ranks. It was further strengthened by the prominent part he
played in the events immediately preceding the fall of the Liberal
government in 1885; and when Mr Childers's budget resolutions were
defeated by the Conservatives, aided by about half the Parnellites, Lord
Randolph Churchill's admirers were justified in proclaiming him to have
been the "organizer of victory." His services were, at any rate, far too
important to be refused recognition; and in Lord Salisbury's cabinet of
1885 he was appointed to no less an office than that of secretary of
state for India. During the few months of his tenure of this great post
the young free-lance of Tory democracy surprised the permanent officials
and his own friends by the assiduity with which he attended to his
departmental duties and the rapi