Gorst ... knows his powers, his position in the House, his hitherto barely recognised claims, and it makes me perfectly wretched to feel that it must occur to his mind that his failure to obtain that for which so many persons of knowledge consider he is fitted in every way is due to lukewarmness on my part. If I did not know what the general feeling of the House of Commons will be as regards myself on this point, I would have hesitated to trouble you; but I am certain that if with respect to these two cases things remain in the position you gave me to understand this morning they would be, I shall be considered to have failed my friends, and my powers, whatever they may be, of being useful to your Government will be impaired. Yours most sincerely, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL. Lord Salisbury, thus appealed to, consented to submit Mr. Gorst’s name to the Queen for the office of Solicitor-General and Sir Henry Wolff’s for a Privy Councillorship. When the lavish hand with which high appointments were distributed among persons who had borne no share in the battle is remembered, it cannot be said that these rewards were disproportioned to services or talent. The difficulties within the Conservative party were now settled; but the delays in the formation of the Government and consequent uncertainty were prolonged in order to extract from Mr. Gladstone further assurances in regard to the passage of necessary public business while the Government were in a minority in the House of Commons; and meanwhile Lord Salisbury retreated to Hatfield. Of the interviews and negotiations incidental upon this, a complete account was afterwards given to Parliament; and on June 23 the acceptance of office by Lord Salisbury and the composition of the Ministry, the main features of which had become generally known, were formally announced, and the constitutional and party crisis came to an end. ‘What a triumph!’ wrote Mr. Chamberlain on June 18, when the issue became apparent. ‘You have won all along the line. _Moriturus te saluto_.’ And with this an important chapter in Lord Randolph Churchill’s life may be conveniently closed. CHAPTER X THE ‘MINISTRY OF CARETAKERS’ ‘This is no man of system, then; he is only a man of instincts and insights. A man, nevertheless, who will glare fiercely on any object; and see through it, and conquer it; for he has intellect, he has will, force beyond other men. A man not with _logic-spectacles_; but with an _eye_!’--CARLYLE on Mirabeau, _French Revolution_, bk. iv. ch. iv.