'I write you, on this first day of my going regularly to my arduous work, to express my profound regret that any circumstances of the moment should deprive me of the opportunity and the hope of enlisting on behalf of a new Government the great capacity which you have proved in a variety of spheres and forms for rendering good and great service to Crown and country. 'You will understand how absolutely recognition on my part of an external barrier is separate from any want of inward confidence, the last idea I should wish to convey. 'Nor can I close without fervently expressing to you my desire that there may be reserved you a long and honourable career of public distinction. 'Believe me always, 'Yours sincerely, 'W. E. Gladstone.' Less than a fortnight later the divorce case was heard: the charge against Sir Charles was dismissed with costs, the Judge saying expressly that there was no case for him to answer. The Prime Minister's attitude made it inevitable that while the case was untried Sir Charles should be excluded from the new Ministry; but not less inevitably his position before the world was prejudiced by that exclusion. Had Parliament met, as it usually meets, in February; had the whole thing so happened that the judgment had been given before the Ministry came to be formed, exclusion would have been all but impossible. We may take it that Mr. Chamberlain would have insisted on Sir Charles's inclusion as a condition of his own adherence; it would have been to the interest of every Gladstonian and of every follower of Chamberlain to maintain the judgment. As it was, the effect of Sir Charles's exclusion had been to prepare the way for a vehement campaign directed against him by a section of the Press. By the law a wife's confession of misconduct is evidence against herself, entitling the husband to a divorce; but if unsupported by other witnesses it is no evidence against the co-respondent. But a question arose which afterwards became of capital importance. Should Sir Charles go into the witness-box, deny on oath the unsworn charges made against him, and submit himself to cross-examination? His counsel decided that there was no evidence to answer; they did not put their client into the box, and the course was held by the Judge to be the correct one.