In January 1892 Colonel Wauchope began his third tour of Midlothian, carrying it on with energy for the next three months. Still the dogged determination to do well and thoroughly what he had undertaken is patent in all the steps of his progress. The 'forlorn hope' was now looking more hopeful, and his opponents were beginning to take alarm. At one meeting it had been insinuated that Mr. Gladstone being an old man of eighty-two, he was only working with a view to ultimately taking the great statesman's place. He repudiated the idea with all the eloquence he could command. 'It had been said that he was waiting to step into dead men's shoes. That, he thought, was striking a bit below the belt. He certainly could look any man in Midlothian straight in the face--ay, into his very eye--and say that he was waiting to fill no dead man's shoes. He was telling the truth, and nothing but the truth, when he said he hoped Mr. Gladstone might live for many years. He knew that a greater statesman than Mr. Gladstone perhaps never lived in this country; but, despite that, he was sorry to say he could not agree with his policy. Indeed, the more he admired Mr. Gladstone's genius, and the more wonderful he considered all that he had done, the more deeply and the more profoundly did he regret the course he had pursued in regard to the Irish Home Rule question. There was no doubt that the greatest men had made the greatest mistakes.' Home Rule he characterised in another speech as 'Federalism that would completely change the character of the Government of the United Kingdom,' and 'he could not help feeling it was a measure which would never be sanctioned by the people of this country.' {122} As a counteractive to the Colonel's prolonged canvass, a great Liberal demonstration took place in Edinburgh on 29th March, when, in addition to the great statesman himself, Lord Carrington, Governor of New South Wales, appeared.