of censure, on the ground that the disasters in the Soudan were due to “the vacillating and inconsistent policy” pursued by the Government. Possibly the disaster of the division in the Commons when this motion was rejected may have in turn been traceable to the “vacillating and inconsistent” tactics of the Opposition. They toiled with wearisome iteration to prove that England, having incurred responsibility for the government of Egypt after Tel-el-Kebir, was responsible for the massacre of Hicks Pasha and his army. So she was; but instead of drawing the logical inference from the facts, namely, that the English authorities in Egypt were to blame for not vetoing Hicks’s expedition, Sir Stafford Northcote and Lord Salisbury blamed the English Government for not helping him with “advice,” and for not forcing the Khedive to make his army strong enough for its task. Here it became manifest to the House of Commons that the Opposition had only got up a sham faction fight. For when Sir Stafford Northcote hotly repudiated the notion that he would have sent a British army to reinforce Hicks or avenge his death, he gave up his whole case. It was then seen that the alternative policy of the Opposition was to have goaded the Egyptian Government to a war of re-conquest in the Soudan, and in the event of failure to leave it in the lurch. Alike in the Commons and in the Lords the responsible leaders of the Opposition admitted that Mr. Gladstone was right in advising Egypt to abandon the Soudan, and in refusing to send British troops there to conduct the evacuation. What they argued was that he was wrong in not telling the Khedive’s Cabinet how to get out of the Soudan, though he would in that event, according to them, have been quite right to refuse the Khedive aid, if, in acting on Mr. Gladstone’s suggestions, his Highness met with disaster in the rebellious province. It was a sad surprise to Lord Salisbury to find his censure carried in the Upper House only by a vote of 181 to 81--for the majority did not represent half of a Chamber two-thirds of which were his followers. It was, however, no surprise to Sir Stafford Northcote to find his motion rejected in the House of Commons, though he had the advantage of the Irish vote. As for the country, its verdict was that there was no difference between the two parties except on one point. The Tories would have pestered the Khedive with instructions, but would have repudiated responsibility for them if when acted on they had ended in failure. The Government had, through fear of incurring this responsibility, left the Khedive too much to his own devices, and when these brought trouble they found they could not get rid of all responsibility for it.