In this year--1883--Gladstone's Government had regained some portion of the popularity and success which they had lost; but when the year ran out, their success was palpably on the wane, and their popularity of course waned with it. The endless contradictions and perplexities, crimes and follies, of our Egyptian policy became too obvious to be concealed or palliated, and at the beginning of 1884 the Government resolved on their crowning and fatal blunder. On the 18th of January, Lord Hartington (Secretary of State for War), Lord Granville, Lord Northbrook, and Sir Charles Dilke had an interview with General Gordon, and determined that he should be sent to evacuate the Soudan. Gladstone assented, and Gordon started that evening on his ill-starred errand. In view of subsequent events, it is worth recording that there were some Liberals who, from the moment they heard of it, condemned the undertaking. The dithyrambics of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ drew from William Cory[38] the following protest: "January 21, 1884. "It's really ludicrous--the P. M. G. professing a clearly suprarational faith in an elderly Engineer, saying that he will cook the goose if no one interferes with him ... as if he could go to Suakim, 'summon' a barbarous potentate, make him supply his escort to Khartoum, and, when at Khartoum, issue edicts right and left; as if he could act without subaltern officers, money, stores, gold, etc.; as if he were an _homme drapeau_, and had an old army out there ready to troop round him, as the French veterans round Bonaparte at Frejus."