that it was unwise in the Protectionists assuming office when, on this
occasion and on subsequent ones, they were far from being certain of
a majority in the House of Commons. It should, however, be remembered,
that unless they had dared these ventures, they never could have formed
a body of men competent, from their official experience and their
practice in debate, to form a ministry. The result has rather proved
that they were right. Had they continued to refrain from incurring
responsibility, they must have broken up and merged in different
connections, which, for a party numerically so strong as the
Protectionists, would have been a sorry business, and probably have led
to disastrous results.

Mr. Bertie Tremaine having been requested to call on the Protectionist
prime minister, accordingly repaired to headquarters with the list
of his colleagues in his pocket. He was offered for himself a post of
little real importance, but which secured to him the dignity of the
privy council. Mr. Tremaine Bertie and several of his friends had
assembled at his house, awaiting with anxiety his return. He had to
communicate to them that he had been offered a privy councillor's post,
and to break to them that it was not proposed to provide for any other
member of his party. Their indignation was extreme; but they naturally
supposed that he had rejected the offer to himself with becoming scorn.
Their leader, however, informed them that he had not felt it his duty
to be so peremptory. They should remember that the recognition of their
political status by such an offer to their chief was a considerable
event. For his part, he had for some time been painfully aware that the
influence of the House of Commons in the constitutional scheme was fast
waning, and that the plan of Sir William Temple for the reorganisation
of the privy council, and depositing in it the real authority of the
State, was that to which we should be obliged to have recourse. This
offer to him of a seat in the council was, perhaps, the beginning of
the end. It was a crisis; they must look to seats in the privy council,
which, under Sir William Temple's plan, would be accompanied with
ministerial duties and salaries. What they had all, at one time, wished,
had not exactly been accomplished, but he had felt it his duty to
his friends not to shrink from responsibility. So he had accepted the
minister's offer.

Mr. Bertie Tremaine was not long in the busy enjoyment of hi