Legislature, the Crown, the Lords, and the Commons; and, if they were of his mind, they would go in for a much more sweeping franchise. The vote was a right and not a privilege, and every man, not a criminal, ought to possess it, or he was defrauded of his right. He went in for residential manhood suffrage, for free education, for which he would apply the Church revenues and the misused charities. He was opposed to all indirect taxation, and advocated what had been described as equality of sacrifice in general and local taxation--that was, he would have a graduated income tax, and, in no case, tax the necessaries of life. In {249} conclusion he said he hoped Mr. Chamberlain would succeed Mr. Gladstone as Prime Minister, and as for the Whigs they were welcome to go over to the Tories. He would not refuse to accept Lord Hartington, if he elected to fight under the Radical party, but he would refuse to sink his own personal opinions for any one."[1] [1] _Times_, October 15, 1885. {250} CHAPTER XI IN OPPOSITION (JUNE, 1885--DECEMBER, 1885) Mr. Labouchere was not only a zealous friend and advocate of the Irish members in Parliament, but a variety of circumstances conspired with his own aptitudes to constitute him an unofficial ambassador between conflicting parties in the House, and, in particular, between the Liberal Cabinet and the Nationalist leader. "His real influence," wrote Sir Henry Lucy recently, "was exercised beyond the range of the Speaker's eye. Nothing pleased him more than being engaged in the lobby, the smoking-room,[1] or a remote corner of the corridors, working out some little plot. By conviction a thorough Radical, such was the catholicity of his nature that he was on terms of personal intimacy with leaders of every section of party, not excepting those who sat on the Treasury Bench. He was one of the few men--perhaps the only man--whom Parnell treated with an approach to confidence. He watched the growth of the Fourth Party with something like paternal interest. Lord Randolph Churchill and he were inseparable. In these various episodes and connections he delighted to play the part of the friendly broker."[2] In this way, far more effectively than by formal speech or resolution, though here too {251} he was untiring in the fight, he was able to use what is called "the personal factor in politics." And in his case the personal factor was no light weight. His extreme opinions, in which he had never wavered since the days when, as a young man, he had scornfully declined the succession to his uncle's peerage, secured him the confidence both of the Irish and of the left wing of the Liberals, while, by birth, education, and habit of life, he was the welcome intimate of men who sat on the other side of the House. Eton, Trinity, and the diplomatic service were an unusual training for an ultra-Radical and gave an attractive flavour of sacrilege to his views. No one appreciated this circumstance more than he did