The majority for Lord Randolph Churchill was 127, or more than double that by which he had been returned in 1880. Needless to relate, the declaration of the poll was received with the utmost satisfaction by the crowd in front of the Bear Hotel, to whom Lady Randolph, Lord Curzon, Sir Henry Wolff, and later on Mr. Corrie Grant made brief but appropriate speeches; and the fact that over six hundred ‘result messages’ were despatched from the local post-office that evening showed the interest taken by the world at large in this the last of the Woodstock elections. Even before Lord Randolph was re-elected for Woodstock, he was required in the House of Commons. Portentous extracts were read from his speeches as a private member, and his secretary in the House was cross-questioned about them. Did he still adhere to his charges against the Khedive? Were his views on Ireland what he had declared them to be at Edinburgh? To all such inquiries Lord Randolph sent a simple answer, which may be recommended to others similarly circumstanced: ‘I neither withdraw nor apologise for anything that I have said at any time, believing as I do that anything which I may have said at any time was perfectly justified by the special circumstances of that time, and by the amount of information I may have had in my possession.’ The new Ministers met Parliament with general statements of their views and intentions on July 6. In both Houses they made a good appearance. They achieved at once the requisite pomposity of public utterance, and handled power as to the manner born. To the Peers Lord Salisbury declared that the pledges of any British Government were sacred, and that all existing obligations would be faithfully observed in the further conduct of the negotiations with the Court of Russia. In answer to the taunt, made out-of-doors, that the Conservatives would postpone the date of the election for the purpose of prolonging their enjoyment ‘of what some persons are pleased to call the sweets of office,’ he invited Lord Granville to admit that the new Government had endeavoured to amend the Redistribution Bill so as even to accelerate the dissolution. Lord Carnarvon justified the attempt to govern Ireland under the ordinary law by statistics which showed the diminution of agrarian crime. He spoke of former statesmen who had failed in Ireland--‘so many that the wrecks of them lie strewn about’--and he seemed to wrestle modestly, but hopefully, against the conviction that he himself would be added to the number. In the Commons Mr. Bradlaugh again presented himself and was received by the new Leader of the House with the usual resolutions of prohibition and exclusion, affirmed by the usual majorities. The next day Sir Michael Hicks-Beach explained the few uncontentious legislative projects which the Government would try to carry through and asked for the time of the House to enable them to wind up the business of the Session. Mr. Gladstone declared that the request