"On the other hand, our chiefs were nowhere. Mr. Gladstone was in the sulks, and Mr. Forster had been returned by Tory votes at Bradford, than which nothing is more weakening to a Liberal politician. Mr. Cardwell and Mr. Chichester Fortescue had gone to the Whig heaven; and Sir William Harcourt, whose great abilities were beginning to be recognized, was draping himself in the mantle of Lord Palmerston, and looked rather to a distant than to an immediate future. "As though to strengthen the Conservative position, we were at the same time on our side called upon to surrender our parliamentary liberties as independent members to a triumvirate, composed of Mr. Goschen, Lord Hartington, and Mr. Forster--the title of the first being founded upon the fact that he was the intimate friend of Mr. Gladstone, whom the country had just condemned; that of the second, that he was a serious Marquis, the son of a highly respectable Duke; and that of the third, that he had the confidence of gentlemen who sat upon the other side of the House. Believing, as we did, that Mr. Disraeli never made mistakes, it was not easy to foresee the end of his administration. "When people talked about the extinction of the Whigs, it certainly then seemed, on the contrary, that that party, instead of being extinct, had become all-embracing, for one knew nobody who was not a Whig. With a Whig Government in office under Mr. Disraeli, and a disorganized Whig opposition on the other side, there seemed to be in question only persons, and not principles. At the Same time, many Liberals thought that it would be better, as far as principles went, to keep the Conservatives in office, inasmuch as they possessed a majority in the House of Lords, and, being forced by the House of Commons and the country into passing Whig measures, would have to carry them through both Houses and into law, instead of dropping them halfway, as our people had often been compelled to do." In this speech he assailed Mr. Disraeli's Government for legislation which laid restrictions only on "the poor and the lower middle classes, and which put down a servants' betting club, though it had precisely the same rules as prevail at Tattersall's." The Friendly Societies Bill, again, seemed to him "harassing," and drawn on the assumption that working men have not sense enough to investigate for themselves the position of the society which they wish to join. "There cannot be too little interference with the great self-governed popular Societies. I think that this Bill is the thin end of the wedge, that espionage is the first step to control, and that control is a long step on the road which leads to the destruction of the Societies, and to the creation of a single Government provident organization, which I should regard as a great evil."