The break-up of the Government revealed to all the world the fact that the Liberal Party was cleft in twain. The Whig section was led by Lord Hartington, and the Radical section by Mr. Chamberlain. Gladstone did his best to mediate between the two, and so to present an unbroken front to the common foe. But the parting of the ways soon became painfully apparent. The fall of the Government involved, of course, the return of Lord Spencer from Ireland, and some of his friends resolved, after the manner of admiring Englishmen, to give him a public dinner. The current phrase was that we were to "Dine Spencer for coercing the Irish." As he had done that thoroughly for the space of three years, and, at the risk of his own life, had destroyed a treasonable and murderous conspiracy, he was well entitled to all the honours which we could give him. So it was arranged that the dinner was to take place at the Westminster Palace Hotel on the 24th of July. Shortly before the day arrived, Mr. Chamberlain said to me: "I think you had better not attend that dinner to Spencer. I am not going, nor is D----. Certainly Spencer has done his duty, and shown capital pluck; but I hope we should all have done the same, and there's no reason to mark it by a dinner. And, after all, coercion is not a nice business for Liberals, though we may be forced into it." However, as I had greatly admired Lord Spencer's administration, and as his family and mine had been politically associated for a century, I made a point of attending, and a capital evening we had. There was an enthusiastic and representative company of two hundred Liberals. Lord Hartington presided, and extolled Lord Spencer to the skies; and Lord Spencer justified the Crimes Act by saying that, when it was passed, there was an organization of thirty thousand Fenians, aided by branches in Scotland and England, and by funds from America, defying the law of the land in Ireland. Not a word in all this about Home Rule, or the Union of Hearts, but we cheered it to the echo, little dreaming what the next six months had in store for us.