'On June 2nd Chamberlain wrote: "I suppose we shall have a dissolution immediately and an awful smash." On that day I spoke on the Irish Registration Bills in the House of Commons--almost the only utterance which I made in the course of this short Parliament. 'On June 4th Sir Robert Sandeman, who had sought an interview with me to thank me for what I had done previously about the assigned districts on the Quetta frontier, came to see me, to tell me the present position and to discuss with me Sir Frederick Roberts's plans for defence against the eventuality of a Russian advance.' The defeat of the Home Rule Bill by a majority of thirty came on June 8th, and the General Election followed. [Footnote: See Morley's _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii., p. 337, which gives one o'clock on the morning of the 8th as the time of decision. Sir Charles's Memoir contains among its pages an article from _Truth_ of October 14th, 1908, marked by him. The article, which is called 'The Secret History of the First Home Rule Bill,' states that Mr. Gladstone's language did not make clear that the proposal to exclude Irish representatives from the Imperial Parliament was given up. Mr. Chamberlain, who had made the retention of the Irish members a condition of giving his vote for the second reading, left the House, declaring that his decision to vote against the Bill was final. The _Life of Labouchere_, by Algar Thorold, chap, xii., p. 272 _et seq_., gives the long correspondence between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Labouchere prior to this event.] Sir Charles voted for the Bill. 'On July 5th I was beaten at Chelsea, and so left Parliament in which I had sat from November, 1868. 'The turn-over in Chelsea was very small, smaller than anywhere else in the neighbourhood, and showed that personal considerations had told in my favour, inasmuch as we gained but a small number of Irish, it not being an Irish district, and had it not been for personal considerations should have lost more Liberal Unionists than we did. 'Some of my warmest private and personal friends were forced to work and vote against me (on the Irish Question), as, for example, John Westlake, Q.C., and Dr. Robert Cust, the learned Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, and Sir Henry Gordon--General Charles Gordon's brother--who soon afterwards died, remaining my strong friend, as did these others. 'James wrote to Lady Dilke, July 26th: '"No one but your husband could have polled so many Gladstonian votes. London is dead against the Prime Minister."'