Gladstone moved and carried a resolution allowing Mr. Bradlaugh to affirm at his own risk, and subject to any penalties he might incur by doing so, if it were found by the Courts that he had broken the law. Three points had been gained. Lord Randolph Churchill and his friends had forced Sir Stafford Northcote to follow their lead. They had blocked Government business. They had, to some extent, disseminated an impression abroad that the Cabinet was a champion of Atheism--and no doubt there were many good people who looked with suspicion on Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright for endeavouring to prevent Northampton from being disfranchised by a combination of faction and bigotry in the House of Commons. During the interval between the appointment of the Ministry and the reading of the Queen’s Speech, a last attempt was made by the foreign allies of Lord Beaconsfield--and not without some success--to damage the new Government. One of the strange incidents of the Election had been the appearance every morning in the London papers of extracts from the Continental Press urging the English people to vote for Lord Beaconsfield’s supporters. Lord Beaconsfield, as the candidate of the foreigner, was pressed on the constituencies with abject servility by Tory speakers, who, if they had reflected for a moment, must have seen that they were deeply offending the insular instincts and prejudices of Englishmen. But the zenith of imprudence was attained when one morning a semi-official telegram purporting to emanate from the British Embassy at Vienna, appeared in a Ministerial organ informing Englishmen that it was the august desire of the Emperor of Austria that Mr. Gladstone should be defeated in Midlothian. No Englishman will tolerate, even from a foreign Emperor, any interference between him and his constituents during a contested election. Mr. Gladstone accordingly treated the Emperor of Austria as if he had been an interloper from the Carlton Club, who had come down to Midlothian to give extraneous aid to Lord Dalkeith, the Conservative candidate. He snubbed the successor of the Cæsars mercilessly, and greatly to the delight of the British Democracy. This called forth a denial from Sir Henry Elliot that the Emperor of Austria had ever used the words attributed to him, though Sir Henry did not explain how the correspondent of the _Standard_ had come to publish them. Mr. Gladstone retorted that the interest of Austria in preventing his election lay in his known determination to upset her plans for absorbing the heritage of the rising nationalities in Turkey. Austria had always shown herself to be an incompetent tyrant in dealing with subject races, and his warning to the Austrian intriguers, who hoped, if Lord Beaconsfield were returned to power, to make a dash for Salonica, was “Hands Off.” When Mr. Gladstone became Premier this speech was brought up for dissection. Would his Ministry quarrel with Austria? Would Count Karolyi ask for his papers? Then