On April 27 Mr. Gladstone asked the House of Commons for his vote of credit of 11,000,000_l._ He unfolded the ‘case for preparation’ in an impressive harangue. Tory blood, long chilled, stirred in his veins. The eloquence and authority of his great war speech covered everything behind it--even the total abandonment of the Soudan, which was foreshadowed almost incidentally--and carried everything before it. He sat down while the House was ringing with the united acclamations of Radicals who hated war and of Tories who hated him. The debate collapsed. Notices of motion and amendment disappeared as if by magic. The vote was carried without a single protest. But it was no part of the policy of the Opposition to allow Mr. Gladstone to obtain personal triumphs of this character. Though for the time they were dazzled by his rhetoric, they felt no confidence that the honour of the country was safe in his hands; and the parlous condition to which British relations with Russia had come, only made them more anxious to get possession of the Government. Lord Randolph, who had freed himself altogether from the Gladstone spell, saw in the collapse of the debate only another proof of that feeble and ineffective leadership of the Opposition against which he had warred so ruthlessly. Hitherto his communications with Lord Salisbury had been scanty and formal. Since the settlement of the National Union dispute no letters had passed between them; and although they were supposed to be working in harmonious agreement, they hardly knew each other at all. But Lord Randolph’s vexation prompted him to write with much more freedom than he had yet allowed himself; and this proved the beginning of an intimate correspondence and association only to cease after the crisis in British politics was over. _Private._ Turf Club, Piccadilly: April 27, 1885. 11 P.M.