struggle on the one side for empire, and on the other for power. If it did not make absolute nonsense of the speaker's words, it certainly robbed them of all their point and meaning, and yet history is based upon blunders like this. And years afterwards I saw in a certain volume this mutilated sentence printed as Lord Russell's judgment upon the causes of the great rebellion. Never did anybody feel more ashamed of himself than I did at that time, and never again was I caught in a similar dilemma. Newcastle was very fond in those days of entertaining the distinguished stranger. Lord Russell's visit in 1861 had been such a success that twelve months later the Liberals of the town resolved to invite Mr. Gladstone to be their guest. Mr. Gladstone was at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was not very long since he had ceased to be a Conservative; but already he had incurred the suspicions of a section of the Liberal Party, and the old Whigs of Northumberland would have nothing to do with his visit to the Tyne. But Mr. Gladstone did not need the sympathy or countenance of the Brahmins of Liberalism. He came, he was seen, and he conquered. Rarely have I seen anything to compare with the enthusiasm which fired the people of Tyneside during the two days he spent amongst them in October, 1862. I have said elsewhere that this visit was one of the turning-points in Mr. Gladstone's life. He himself practically acknowledged this to me in after-days. It was the first occasion in his career on which he had been brought into close contact with a great industrial community. It was the first time that he was treated as the popular idol by an overwhelming multitude of his fellow men. On the first day of his visit he was entertained at a banquet in the Town Hall, and it was in his speech after dinner that he made one of the notable mistakes of his great career. The Civil War in America, to which Lord Russell had alluded twelve months before, was still raging. I need hardly say that the sympathies of the upper classes were enthusiastically with the South. The names of the public men of eminence who favoured the North might have been counted upon one's fingers. Mr. Gladstone believed in the cause of the Confederates, and in this speech at Newcastle he declared that Jefferson Davis had created not merely an army and a navy, but a nation. The speech caused a great sensation. Naturally enough, it aroused bitter indignation on the other side of the Atlantic, whilst the sympathisers with the North in this country felt deeply aggrieved by it. In subsequent years Mr. Gladstone publicly made amends to the great Republic for his error of judgment, but it was a long time before he was allowed to forget it.