His early speeches were chiefly on foreign policy, and the intimate knowledge he showed respecting treaties of all kinds was an additional link between him and the leader of his new party. His favorite theme was Egypt, and he rarely missed an opportunity of condemning Mr. Gladstone's policy in respect to that country. Later on he interested himself more especially in colonial affairs. Here his personal acquaintance with the North American colonies stood him in good stead, and gained him the ear of the House of Lords. Thus it was scarcely surprising that when Lord Salisbury came into office he chose him as Under Secretary of State for the colonies, a post he again filled on the return of the Conservatives to power in 1886. Soon after he had taken office the second time, the Newfoundland Government passed an act prohibiting the French fishermen from purchasing bait in the colony. This act the imperial government at first declined to ratify. Lord Dunraven sided with the local legislators, on the ground that Newfoundland was a self-governing colony. He pressed this view of the case at Downing Street, and, as the government declined to yield, resigned his Under Secretaryship. Some say he resigned merely to support his friend, Lord Randolph Churchill, who had just given up the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, but, although the two resignations may have had some connection, the immediate cause of Lord Dunraven's leaving the Colonial Office was as I have stated. Being out of office and out of favor with his chief, Lord Dunraven turned his attention to social questions, and, when Mr. Burnett's report on the Sweating System at the East End of London was presented to Parliament, he moved the House of Lords for a select committee to inquire into the subject. The request was granted, and he was appointed chairman. For more than two years the committee sat, and during all that time Lord Dunraven worked most energetically, examining and cross-examining the various witnesses sent up from all parts of the United Kingdom, for he was not long in discovering that the system was practised quite as much in the provincial cities as in the East End of London, and quickly took steps to have the reference extended. With much care he drafted an exhaustive report, giving, as the chief causes of the existence of sweating, unrestricted foreign immigration and over-competition. Lord Derby and Lord Thring declined to accept this view, and Lord Dunraven, finding himself in a minority, retired from the chairmanship. Subsequent events have shown that Lord Dunraven was not so far out in his diagnosis as his colleagues supposed. The evil effects of foreign immigration upon the unskilled labor market so impressed him that, on his own initiative and at his own expense, he formed a society for the express purpose of making these effects known to the public, and of forcing them upon the attention of Parliament.