Mr. Gladstone seems seldom to have made a speech but his friends favoured him with their criticisms. Thus, when in 1871 he visited Yorkshire and made speeches at Wakefield and Whitby, Lord Houghton wrote, after praising one of his speeches: ‘I cannot say as much for your Whitby speech, for it confirmed my feelings that on the high mountain where you stand there is a demon, not of demagogism, but of demophilism, that is tempting you sorely. I am no alarmist, but it is undeniable that a new and thoroughly false conception of the relations of work and wealth is invading society, and of which the Paris Commune is the last expression. Therefore one word from such a man as you, implying that you look on individual wealth as anything else than a reserve of public wealth, and that there can be any antagonism between them, seems to me infinitely dangerous.’ Mr. Gladstone replied, writes Lord Houghton’s biographer, with his usual frankness and friendliness to the remonstrances of his old friend, ‘whose criticisms are marked by the kindly tone which is habitual with you, though I do not agree with everything you say about property.’ Sir Francis Doyle will have it that to Mr. Disraeli is due the fact that Mr. Gladstone left the Conservatives. ‘We may all of us recollect,’ he writes, ‘the Irish soldiers who marched up to and then passed a standard erected by William III. Some regiments moved to the right and others to the left, the right-hand division taking service under Louis XIV., the other division submitting to the English Government. On their first separation they were but an inch or two apart, but the distance gradually widened between them till they or their representatives met face to face at Fontenoy. So, after Sir Robert Peel’s death, Lord Beaconsfield’s presence established like that standard a line of demarcation between the two portions of the Tory party. Had it not been for the line fixed across their path, I think Mr. Gladstone, Herbert, and the other Peelites would have joined Lord Derby instead of the Whigs. Nor would Mr. Gladstone’s logic have been in fault (when is it?), or failed to justify abundantly the course he had taken.’ CHAPTER XVII. AT HOME.