IV
Writing on November 1 to Madame Novikoff, Mr. Gladstone said:—
Nov. 1, '78.—My opinion is that this government is moving to [pg 583] its doom, and I hope the day of Lord Granville's succession to it may be within a twelvemonth. It is not to be desired that this should take place at once. The people want a little more experience of Beaconsfield toryism.
Unfortunately this experience, whatever be the precise name for it, now came with disastrous promptitude, and the nation having narrowly escaped one war, found itself involved in two. The peril of a conflict in Europe had hardly passed, before the country found itself committed to an attack for which the government themselves censured their high-handed agent, upon the fiercest of the savage tribes of South Africa. A more formidable surprise was the announcement that, by a headlong reversal of accepted Indian policy, war had been declared against the Ameer of Afghanistan.