Liberal Party railed, they only had to sit still; and the lesson learnt in 1884 was applied in each succeeding crisis down to August 1911. It has always been to me an amazing instance of Gladstone's powers of self-deception that to the end of his life he spoke of this pernicious surrender as a signal victory. Early in 1885, it became my duty to receive at the Local Government Board a deputation of the Unemployed, who then were beginning to agitate the habitual calm of the well-fed and the easy-going. It was a curious experience. The deputation consisted of respectable-looking and apparently earnest men, some of whom spoke the language of _Alton Locke_, while others talked in a more modern strain of dynamite, Secret Societies, and "a life for a life." The most conspicuous figure in the deputation was an engineer called John Burns,[40] and those who are interested in political development may find something to their mind in the report of the deputation in _The Times_ of February 17th, 1885. There they will read that, after leaving Whitehall, the crowd adjourned to the Embankment, where the following resolution was carried, and despatched to the President of the Local Government Board: "That this meeting of the unemployed, having heard the answer given by the Local Government Board to their deputation, considers the refusal to start public works to be a sentence of death on thousands of those out of work, and the recommendation to bring pressure to bear on the local bodies to be a direct incitement to violence; further, it will hold Mr. G. W. E. Russell and the members of the Government, individually and collectively, guilty of the murder of those who may die in the next few weeks, and whose lives would have been saved had the suggestion of the deputation been acted on. (Signed) JOHN BURNS, _Engineer_. JOHN E. WILLIAMS, _Labourer_. WILLIAM HENRY, _Foreman_. JAMES MACDONALD, _Tailor_."