It was not at all surprising that the cabinet should ask what new reason had come to light why Zobeir should be trusted; why he should oppose the Mahdi whom at first he was believed to have supported; why he should turn the friend of Egypt; why he should be relied upon as the faithful ally of England. To these and other doubts Gordon had excellent answers (March 8). Zobeir would run straight, because it was his interest. If he would be dangerous, was not the Mahdi dangerous, and whom save Zobeir could you set up against the Mahdi? You talked of slave-holding and slave-hunting, but would slave-holding and slave-hunting (M62) stop with your own policy of evacuation? Slave-holding you cannot interfere with, and as for slave-hunting, that depended on the equatorial provinces, where Zobeir could be prevented from going, and besides he would have his hands full in consolidating his power elsewhere. As for good faith towards Egypt, Zobeir’s stay in Cairo had taught him our power, and being a great trader, he would rather seek Egypt’s close alliance. Anyhow, said Gordon, “if you do not send Zobeir, you have no chance of getting the garrisons away.” The matter was considered at two meetings of the cabinet, but the prime minister was prevented by his physician from attending.(100) A difference of opinion showed itself upon the despatch of Zobeir; viewed as an abstract question, three of the Commons members inclined to favour it, but on the practical question, the Commons members were unanimous that no government from either side of the House could venture to sanction Zobeir. Mr. Gladstone had become a strong convert to the plan of sending Zobeir. “I am better in chest and generally,” he wrote to Lord Granville, “but unfortunately not in throat and voice, and Clark interdicts my appearance at cabinet; but I am available for any necessary communication, say with you, or you and Hartington.” One of the ministers went to see him in his bed, and they conversed for two hours. The minister, on his return, reported with some ironic amusement that Mr. Gladstone considered it very likely that they could not bring parliament to swallow Zobeir, but believed that he himself could. Whether his confidence in this was right or wrong, he was unable to turn his cabinet. The Queen telegraphed her agreement with the prime minister. But this made no difference. “On Saturday 15,” Mr. Gladstone notes, “it seemed as if by my casting vote Zobier was to be sent to Gordon. But on Sunday —— and —— receded from their ground, and I gave way. The nature of the evidence on which judgments are formed in this most strange of all cases, precludes (in reason) pressing all conclusions, which are but preferences, to extremes.” “It is well known,” said Mr. Gladstone in the following year when the curtain had fallen on the catastrophe, “that if, when the recommendation to send Zobeir was made, we had complied with it, an address from this