One more incident which arose out of the Reform Bill must be noticed in its place. When Parliament assembled for the winter session the Conservative leaders agreed with Lord Randolph Churchill to offer a regular though perfunctory resistance to the second passage of the Reform Bill through the House of Commons, in order to strengthen the position of the House of Lords in effecting the compromise which was now recognised as inevitable. Lord Randolph accordingly placed on the paper an amendment to the second reading, setting forth ‘that any measure purporting to provide for the better representation of the people must be accompanied by provisions for the proper arrangement of electoral areas.’ This seemed to repeat as a general principle the amendment which Colonel Stanley had moved as a precise instruction on May 23, when the Bill was for the first time in Committee, which amendment Lord Randolph and the Fourth Party had opposed and indeed denounced. The political situation was entirely changed; but the verbal similarity did not escape one acute, retentive mind. In Lord Randolph’s absence at the funeral of Lord Londonderry his amendment was moved by Mr. Stanhope. To the surprise of his party Mr. Gorst rose from below the gangway and thereupon criticised and opposed the amendment in terms which bore a sufficiently close resemblance to those in which Lord Randolph had opposed it when it had last been moved. By this very able and perfectly consistent speech Mr. Gorst gave great offence to all sections of the Conservative party, who were now united in an embrace of unaffected love. Lord Randolph, when he read the newspapers next day, accepted it as a personal declaration of war. He was very angry. ‘Gorst,’ he said, ‘must be punished’; and accordingly on the next sitting of the House (November 7) he administered to his mutinous lieutenant a castigation prolonged, deliberate, and severe. ‘I have yet to learn,’ he observed, with undisturbed gravity, ‘that either the traditions of party warfare or Parliamentary etiquette teaches one to desert one’s party and stand aloof from it and refrain from giving assistance to it, simply because of the very inadequate and miserable reason that in one’s own poor and very feeble judgment one does not altogether approve of the course which may have led them into that difficulty.’ The mirth which this grimace excited was strengthened by the joy and relief alike of Government and Opposition at the breaking-up of the formidable confederacy at whose hands they had endured so much.