Parliamentary action in favour of an Eight Hours Bill formed the burden of Sir Charles's discourse at all these meetings. Accepting a special invitation to the annual conference of miners in the beginning of 1892, he dealt with the proposal, then strongly advocated, of a general international strike, pointing out that this measure 'should not be even talked about until they had seen the exhaustion of all other means of obtaining what they wanted.' It meant civil war; would 'disorganize the whole economic condition of the country and the trade of the Empire, and produce also a great feeling of exasperation between classes.' He pressed them to consider whether, in the event of such an international conflict, the whole brunt would not fall on Great Britain. In Belgium and in France there was no such strength of organization as among them; and a general strike succeeding in Great Britain, but failing on the Continent, would be a national danger. He proposed, as an alternative, co-operation with the British representatives of other trades, for whom also Parliamentary interference was demanded. In the discussion which followed, the weight of his argument was fully recognized, and a resolution favouring the international strike was amended into one calling for Parliamentary action. In the following June Sir Charles Dilke attended the Miners' International Congress, and spoke at the banquet given to foreign delegates. A month later, when the General Election came on, 'thousands of handbills and posters,' says Mr. Thomas Ashton, 'were sent to the Forest of Dean by our federation recommending the workers to vote for the working man's candidate.' Nor were his public utterances on Labour questions limited to Great Britain; request came from a society of the Belgian economists for a lecture on some subject connected with Greater Britain, and he chose the Australian strike and the position of Labour in the Colonies. This discourse was delivered by Sir Charles in Brussels on his way back from France at the beginning of 1891, and he then, he says, 'made the acquaintance of all the leading people on both sides in that city.' As early as May, 1891, Dilke had made up his mind (and stated it in a letter to Count Herbert Bismarck) that the Liberal party would win the next election. The question of the Leadership was raised at the end of the session in a letter from Chamberlain: 'I am told that Mr. Gladstone is much shaken by his late illness, and I cannot see how he can ever lead the House again, though his name will always be a tower of strength in the constituencies.' But in December Mr. Chamberlain said that he did not think the prospects of a General Election were so good for Mr. Gladstone as they had been six months ago.