'On May 3rd I noted in my diary: "The Liberal party will next week cease to exist. I have already eighty-eight names of men who will vote with Gladstone, and, the Front Bench having foolishly decided to support the previous question, the party will be equally divided, and Hartington will resign. Gladstone will, I think, refuse to lead. Hartington will be asked to come back, but Goschen's friends may spoil the absolute unanimity of the request, and Hartington then refusing, Goschen would succeed. This seems to be the Goschen intrigue. I am sincerely sorry. The Front Bench people might perfectly well have voted against the 'previous question' on the ground that they support the first resolution, and yet have spoken against Gladstone's later resolutions."' He added later: 'I have still in my possession (1890) the list of the party as made up by me, showing who would have voted with Mr. Gladstone, who would have voted with Lord Hartington, ... and who had stated that they would abstain. The analysis is of interest, as the facts have never been made known.' [Footnote: For analysis see Appendix at end of this chapter, p. 223.] The outcome was a day in which Mr. Gladstone had to sustain singlehanded from half-past four to seven a Parliamentary wrangle of the most embarrassing kind, concerning the alteration of the form (and possibly the substance) of his original motion, and then to speak for another two hours and a half.[Footnote: See _Life of Gladstone_, vol. ii., chap, iv., p. 565.] 'At the last moment Mr. Gladstone executed a sudden change of front, which prevented a break-up of the party, but made his own position somewhat foolish. I was lunching with old Mrs. Duncan Stewart to meet Mrs. Grote and Lady Aberdare, the wife of Mr. Gladstone's former colleague (Bruce, the Home Secretary), when I heard what was to happen. But publicity was only given to the change at the last moment. 'On May 8th I recorded in my diary that "Gladstone's noble delivery of his peroration last night saved the evening from being a complete fiasco, but only just saved it. The Duke of Westminster, who was to have presided at the meeting at St. James's Hall, absented himself on account of the change of front; but the meeting was not told that the third and fourth resolutions were to be withdrawn. Both Gladstone and also the rest of the Front Bench people are in the wrong--he for moving at all in a sense hostile to Lord Hartington unless he meant to go through with the thing, and they for not finding a better way out. Such a way was clear last night. If Hartington had given notice of a direct vote of censure on the new reply to Russia published yesterday, as he might have done consistently with his views, Gladstone could have withdrawn in face of it."' A general note on his personal difficulties follows later: