8 _novembre_.--Vous avez vu le resultat de nos elections, qui ont ete plus heureuses pour la cause generale du parti conservateur que pour ce qui me regarde particulierement. Si nous ne vivions pas dans un temps ou toutes les previsions sont trompees par une certaine inertie generale qui amortit toutes les passions et ralentit le cours naturel des evenements, je croirais qu'une crise violente est assez prochaine, les elements extremes se trouvant reums et rapproches dans l'Assemblee nouvelle, de maniere a former un melange explosible comme la chimie redoute d'en amener. De part ni d'autre, d'ailleurs, il n'y a d'homme en etat de diriger les evenements; ils iront done probablement tout seuls, commes des chevaux qui n'ont pas de cocher, ce qui est le moyen a peu pres sur d'aller dans le fosse. CHAPTER XXII RETIREMENT Christmas and the early days of the New Year were passed at Foxholes. On January 15th the Reeves returned to Rutland Gate. Parliament met on the 21st, and, as had been foreseen, the Government was defeated on an amendment to the Address. Lord Salisbury's resignation was announced on February 1st, and, on the 3rd, Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet was formed, Sir William Harcourt being Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Rosebery Foreign Secretary, and Mr. John Morley Secretary for Ireland. Sir Henry James, now Lord James of Hereford, declined the office of Lord Chancellor; Lord Hartington, the present Duke of Devonshire, declined office of any sort in a Ministry whose policy, as yet but dimly shown, was generally understood to be on the lines of advanced Radicalism. For his part, Reeve abhorred Radicalism. He had never approved of Gladstone as a politician, and now less than ever. He looked on him as a danger to the Empire, to be fought against, to be resisted, to be crushed. Nor was he singular in this. It is customary to speak of the extraordinary influence which Gladstone exercised. It was this influence, directed by sentiment or by vanity, which constituted the danger. There were many who believed the country to be on the eve of a violent, perhaps a sanguinary, revolution, fomented and abetted by Mr. Gladstone; and this belief was strengthened when, on February 8th, an East-end mob, meeting in Trafalgar Square, was allowed, without opposition, to march by Pall Mall, St. James' Street and Piccadilly, to Hyde Park, breaking the windows and plundering the shops on the way. When to this supposed revolutionary tendency of the new Ministry was added their avowed intention to bring in a measure for the pacification of Ireland, which--in the absence of details--was believed to mean the disintegration of the kingdom, the feeling of alarm, which must be very well remembered by many who read these pages, can be easily understood. _From Lord Ebury_ [Footnote: Lord Ebury died at the age of 92, in 1893.] Moor Park, January 4th, 1886.