'I acquired in the early months of this Session a knowledge of the registration and rating systems which lasted for a good many years, and the plan for the restoration of compounding, which was accepted by Mr. Goschen and moved by him in the form of new clauses in his Bill in April, 1869, was of my suggestion. By the joint operation of this plan, and of the Registration Act of 1878, which was my own, an immense increase of the electorate in boroughs was effected.' No subject could have appeared less attractive than all this dull lore of compound householders and lodger's franchises. But the spirit of official Liberalism was constantly at war with Radical views. 'My diary continually expressed my regret at what I thought the timidity of Mr. Gladstone's Government.' Thus, when it was beaten by the abstention of Liberals on Fawcett's Election Expenses Bill, which proposed to throw the necessary expenses of returning officers on the local rates, Charles Dilke 'was angry with the Government for not having so much as named the Bill upon their Whip.' Again, when his group had proposed to penalize a corrupt borough, the member for which had been unseated on petition, the entry ran: 'We Radicals beaten by Government and Tories on the Bewdley writ,' the issue of which the Radicals had moved to postpone for twelve months. In the case of Fawcett's motion to abolish University Tests, of whose injustice Dilke had personal experience: [Footnote: Having taken his Master's degree at Cambridge in this year, Dilke was 'immediately nominated to the Senate as an examiner for the Law Tripos by the Regius Professor of Laws.' But on further inquiry it appeared that an examiner for honours in Law must be a member of the Senate, and that a member of the Senate must declare himself a member of the Church of England. Dilke, strongly objecting to this exclusiveness, had refused to make the required profession. The 'grace,' therefore, was withdrawn, and he was not allowed to examine. Sir Roundell Palmer became Chancellor in 1872, on the retirement of Lord Hatherley. He was again Chancellor from 1880 to 1885.] 'My diary records a division in connection with which Sir Roundell Palmer did us some harm, the fact being that the great lawyer, who was afterwards Lord Selborne, was one of those gentlemen calling themselves Liberals in whom it was difficult to find any agreement with Liberal principles at any time or upon any subject. He was, in fact, a High Church Tory, as I found when I served with him in a Liberal Cabinet.'