It is necessary at this point to revert to the session of 1884. Mr. Gladstone had resolved on a further extension of the Parliamentary electorate by carrying out the equalisation of the county and borough franchise. His Bill was received by the Conservative Opposition with that half-hearted resistance which comes of inward disapproval, tempered by dread of alienating the new electors, whom they were not strong enough to exclude. In the end they took their stand on the ground that no such Reform Bill should pass without a corollary measure redistributing seats. It passed the Commons, but the House of Lords declined to consider it until they had the redistribution scheme before them. In vain Lord Granville pledged the Government to introduce a Redistribution Bill the following year, if their Lordships would allow the Franchise Bill to pass at once. Lord Salisbury declared that he was not going to discuss redistribution with a rope round his neck. At last, after much wrangling, after the usual denunciations of the House of Lords on public platforms, and after sundry processions and demonstrations in London, it was agreed to hang up the Franchise Bill, prorogue Parliament, and call it together in the autumn to consider the complete scheme. This was done accordingly; the Franchise Bill was passed, and the Redistribution Bill read a second time, and the Committee stage postponed till after the Christmas recess. [Illustration: _Baron H. von Angeli._} {_From the Royal Collection, by permission of Mr. Franz Hanfstaengl._ HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN WEARING THE SMALL IMPERIAL CROWN, 1885.] [Sidenote: The Afghan Frontier.] But before that subject could be taken up again, the troubles of the Government had multiplied. Not only had Khartoum fallen, thereby rendering the Nile expedition as fruitless as it was costly, but the violation by the Russians of the Afghan frontier, seemed to render war with Russia all but inevitable, if our treaty engagements were to be held sacred. "The House will not be surprised," said the Prime Minister, referring to the defeat of the Amir's troops by General Komaroff, "when I say, speaking with measured words in circumstances of great gravity, that to us ... this attack bears the appearance of an unprovoked aggression." Still more profound grew the conviction that the country was on the eve of a great war when, on April 27, Mr. Gladstone came down to the House to ask for a vote of credit for £11,000,000. But he did not tell the House, in the course of a magnificent and most stirring speech, that the Government practically had averted the danger by recalling Sir Peter Lumsden, the British Commissioner in Afghanistan, thereby condoning the offence of the Russians which he (Mr. Gladstone) had denounced already as "unprovoked aggression." [Sidenote: Defeat and Resignation of Ministers.]