irst step towards the improvement of his lot.
The General Election of 1880 was, as nearly as our constitutional
forms admit, a plebiscite on foreign policy; but to many a man who
was then beginning public life the emancipation of the labourer was
an object quite as dear as the dethronement of Lord Beaconsfield.
It was not for nothing that we had read _Hodge and His Masters_,
and we were resolved that henceforward "Hodge" should be not a
serf or a cipher, but a free man and a self-governing citizen.

We carried our Bill in 1884, and as the General Election of 1885
drew on, it was touching to feel the labourer's gratitude to all
who had helped him in the attainment of his rights. By that time
Gladstone had lost a great deal of his popularity in the towns,
where Chamberlain was the hero. But in the rural districts the
people worshipped Gladstone, and neither knew nor cared for any
other politician. His was the name to conjure with. His picture
hung in every cottage. His speeches were studied and thumbed by
hard hands till the paper was frayed into tatters. It was Gladstone
who had won the vote for the labourer, and it was Gladstone who was
to lead them into the Land of Promise. "Three Acres and a Cow,"
from being a joke, had passed into a watchword, though Gladstone
had never given it the faintest sanction. And the labourers vaguely
believed that the possession of the vote would bring them some
material benefit. So they voted for Gladstone with solid enthusiasm,
and placed their Mirage in his return to power. But alas! they only
realized a new and a more tragical disappointment. In January,
1886, an amendment to the Address embodying the principle of "Three
Acres and a Cow" was carried against the Tory Government; Gladstone
became Prime Minister, and the disconsolate labourers found that
the Mirage had cheated them once again. It is not easy to depict
the sorrow and mortification which ensued on this discovery. The
vote, after all, was only a Dead Sea apple. The energies which
were to have been bestowed on the creation of better surroundings
for English labourers were suddenly transferred to the creation
of an Irish Parliament, and in wide areas of rural population the
labourers sank back again into hopelessness and inactivity. Once
bit, twice shy. They had braved the wrath of their employers and
all the banded influences of the Hall and the Vicarage in order
to vote Liberal in December, 1885. They had got nothing by thei