ignation by occasionally advocating the principles of economy and
retrenchment in the debates on the naval and military estimates. In
April 1889, on the death of Mr Bright, he was asked to come forward as a
candidate for the vacant seat in Birmingham, and the result was a rather
angry controversy with Mr Chamberlain, terminating in the so-called
"Birmingham compact" for the division of representation of the Midland
capital between Liberal Unionists and Conservatives. But his health was
already precarious, and this, combined with the anomaly of his position,
induced him to relax his devotion to parliament during the later years
of the Salisbury administration. He bestowed much attention on society,
travel and sport. He was an ardent supporter of the turf, and in 1889 he
won the Oaks with a mare named the Abbesse de Jouarre. In 1891 he went
to South Africa, in search both of health and relaxation. He travelled
for some months through Cape Colony, the Transvaal and Rhodesia, making
notes on the politics and economics of the countries, shooting lions,
and recording his impressions in letters to a London newspaper, which
were afterwards republished under the title of _Men, Mines and Animals
in South Africa_. He returned with renewed energy, and in the general
election of 1892 once more flung himself, with his old vigour, into the
strife of parties. His seat at South Paddington was uncontested; but he
was active on the platform, and when parliament met he returned to the
opposition front bench, and again took a leading part in debate,
attacking Mr Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill with especial energy. But
it was soon apparent that his powers were undermined by the inroads of
disease. As the session of 1893 wore on his speeches lost their old
effectiveness, and in 1894 he was listened to not so much with interest
as with pity. His last speech in the House was delivered in the debate
on Uganda in June 1894, and was a painful failure. He was, in fact,
dying of general paralysis. A journey round the world was undertaken as
a forlorn hope. Lord Randolph started in the autumn of 1894, accompanied
by his wife, but the malady made so much progress that he was brought
back in haste from Cairo. He reached England shortly before Christmas
and died in London on the 24th of January 1895.

Lord Randolph Churchill married, in January 1874, Jennie, daughter of Mr
Leonard Jerome of New York, U.S.A., by whom he had two sons. In 1900
Lady Rando