Though I was thoroughly in favour of resolute dealing with murder and outrage, I was also--and this was a combination which sorely puzzled _The Spectator_--an enthusiastic Radical, and specially keen on the side of social reform. My views on domestic politics were substantially the same as those set forth with extraordinary vigour and effect in a long series of speeches by Mr. Chamberlain, who was now unmuzzled, and was making the fullest use of his freedom. He was then at the very zenith of his powers, and the scheme of political and social reform which he expounded is still, in my opinion, the best compendium of Radical politics; but it tended in the direction of what old-fashioned people called Socialism, and this was to Gladstone an abomination. One day, to my consternation, he asked me if it was true that Socialism had made some way among the younger Liberals, of whom I was then one. Endeavouring to parry a question which must have revealed my own guilt, I feebly asked if by Socialism my venerable Leader meant the practice of taking private property for public uses, or the performance by the State of what ought to be left to the individual; whereupon he replied, with startling emphasis: "I mean both, but I reserve my worst Billingsgate for the attack on private property." On the 18th of September Gladstone issued his Address to the Electors of Midlothian--an exceedingly long-winded document, which seemed to commit the Liberal Party to nothing in particular. _Verbosa et grandis epistola_, said Mr. John Morley. "An old man's manifesto," wrote the _Pall Mall_. By contrast with this colourless but authoritative document, Mr. Chamberlain's scheme became known as "The Unauthorized Programme," and of that programme I was a zealous promoter. As soon as the Franchise Bill and the Redistribution Bill had passed into law, it was arranged that the dissolution should take place in November. The whole autumn was given up to electioneering. The newly-enfranchised labourers seemed friendly to the Liberal cause, but our bewildered candidates saw that their leaders were divided into two sections--one might almost say, two camps. This was a condition of things which boded disaster to the Liberal Party; but Gladstone never realized that Chamberlain was a power which it was madness to alienate.