'saying that his mind had been greatly exercised with regard to the motion of which he had given notice, and which had originally been suggested to him by Trevelyan, that he had come to the conclusion to leave the matter in my hands, but that he thought it one which ought to be brought before the House. "Of course," he added, "I shall go into the lobby with you if you divide the House." This, however, he did not do.' No ordinary moral courage was needed to face the demonstration which had been carefully prepared. The House of Commons has seldom witnessed a stormier scene. When Sir Charles stood up in a crowded House, charged with that atmosphere which the expectation of a personal incident always engenders there, Lord Bury intervened with an appeal to privilege, and, backed by tempestuous cheers, asked the Speaker to refuse the member for Chelsea a hearing on the ground that by declaration of republican principles he had violated the oath of allegiance. When this appeal had been dismissed, Sir Charles, on rising again to address the House, was, in the discreet words of Hansard, "received with much confusion." There was a "chorus of groans and Oh's and ironical cheers." But the House, after a brief demonstration, settled down to hear the speaker, who proceeded to set out the grounds on which he asked for full information concerning the Civil List under a number of tabulated heads, "his object," said the London correspondent of the New York Tribune, "clearly being to crowd as many facts as possible into a certain amount of time." It was, he says himself, 'solid and full of matter, but studiously wooden, 'unutterably dull,' and 'towards the latter part of the speech members went trooping out of the House, and conversation was general.' At last Sir Charles sat down, and men crowded in, all agog to hear Mr. Gladstone, who had sat uneasily on his bench, "longing to be at him," says one reporter; and at him he went, with tremendous artillery of argument, sarcasm, and declamation, while the Opposition cheered every point to the echo, though the Liberals sat in glum silence. Probably many of them shared the feeling which Sir Wilfrid Lawson reflects in his _Reminiscences_, that Mr. Gladstone was "often most unfair in debate," and on this occasion (not for the first time) "simply tried to trample upon Dilke, having the whole House at his back." The Prime Minister ended with an appeal for the division to be taken at once, but Sir Charles's seconder, one of the most picturesque figures in the politics of that time, insisted upon claiming his part in the condemnation. Not so much Radical as Anarchist, converted from the traditional Toryism of his surroundings by the influence of J. S. Mill and Ruskin, Auberon Herbert was at this moment vehemently republican, and nothing would serve him but to rise and, in supporting this motion purely on the Civil List, to make an avowal of republican principles: