He subscribed, however, to the funds of those who took charge of the fugitives on both sides.
The agitation offended him by its extravagance. "If Gladstone goes on much longer, I shall turn Turk," he wrote to Sir William Harcourt. There was general disquiet in the Liberal party. On October 10th, 1876, Sir William Harcourt wrote:
"Things here are in the most damnable mess that politics have ever been in in my time. Gladstone and Dizzy seem to cap one another in folly and in pretence, and I do not know which has made the greatest ass of himself. Blessed are they that hold their tongue and wait to be wise after the event. To this sagacious policy you will see we" (i.e., the Hartington section) "have adhered, and shall adhere. I had a long letter from Hartington from Constantinople (whither, as you will see, he has prudently retired), full of his usual good sense and caution. I quite concur with him that, though a strong case can be made against the Government for their deliberate status quo policy during the months of June, July, and August, there is little fault to find with what they have been doing since Derby has taken the matter into his own hands in September. There is a decided reaction against Gladstone's agitation. The Brooksite Whigs are furious with him, and so are the commercial gents and the Norwood-Samuda [Footnote: Leading shipowners and Members of Parliament.] lot, whose pecuniary interests are seriously compromised. The Bucks election [Footnote: This by- election, on September 22nd, 1876, was consequent on Mr. Disraeli's acceptance of a Peerage. The Conservative (Hon. T. F. Fremantle) beat the Liberal (Mr. R. Carington, brother to Lord Carrington), but only by 186 votes on a poll of over 5,000.] has a good smell for Dizzy. All the Rothschild tenants voted Tory, though, to save his own skin, Nat. went on Carington's committee. The Rothschilds will never forgive Gladstone and Lowe for the Egyptian business. Chamberlain and Fawcett … are using the opportunity to demand the demission of Hartington and the return of Gladstone. But you need not … prepare for extreme measures."
By the same post came a letter from Mr. Chamberlain, who declared that he was "not Gladstonian," but considered that—
"After all, he is our best card. You see Forster's speech—trimming as usual, and trying to dish the Radicals by bidding for the Whigs and Moderates. Gladstone is the best answer to this sort of thing, and if he were to come back for a few years he would probably do much for us, and pave the way for more. Lord Hartington … is away and silent, besides which he is pro-Turk. If Gladstone could be induced formally to resume the reins, it would be almost equivalent to a victory, and would stir what Bright calls 'the masses of my countrymen' to the depths."
Sir Charles's own considered opinion was written to Sir William Harcourt on October 16th:
"I, as you know, think Hartington the best man for us—the Radicals— because he is quite fearless, always goes with us when he thinks it safe for the party, and generally judges rightly—or takes the soundest advice on this point. In fact, I don't think he's ever made a mistake at all—as yet; but Chamberlain seems, by a sort of quasi- hereditary Birmingham position, to look at him as Bright used to look at Palmerston. This is serious, because Chamberlain is a strong man and does not easily change, unlike the other member of our triumvirate, Cowen, who is as fickle as the wind, one day Hartington, one day you, one day Gladstone, and never seeming to know even his own mind."
Mr. Gladstone's return to leadership was more and more assured, but he would not find his old antagonist face to face with him in the House of Commons. At the close of the Session of 1876 Sir Charles had unknowingly witnessed a great withdrawal.
'On the night of August 11th I had listened to Mr. Disraeli's last speech as a Commoner, and had noticed that on leaving the House in a long white overcoat and dandified lavender kid gloves, leaning on his secretary's arm, he had shaken hands with a good many people, none of whom knew that he was bidding farewell to the House of Commons.'
This withdrawal marked no lessening of power. As Sir Charles had perceived, Disraeli was his own Foreign Secretary, and a Foreign Minister's influence gained by being exercised in the House of Lords. Meanwhile, in Gladstone's absence the Liberal party seemed broken and divided beyond hope of recovery. In the country, though the campaign launched by the Bulgarian pamphlet had seemed so immediately effective that a Tory county member said to Mr. Gladstone, "If there were a dissolution now, I should not get a vote," yet the reaction, spoken of in Harcourt's letter to Dilke on October 10th, very quickly developed. Those who supported Mr. Gladstone identified themselves unreservedly with the Slav as against the Turk. But by others the demand for ejection of the Turk, "bag and baggage," from Bulgaria was construed as an invitation for Russia to seize Constantinople, and thus as a direct infringement of British interests in Egypt and the Mediterranean. Lord Beaconsfield skilfully played upon this feeling, and there ensued a condition of affairs in which Mr. Gladstone made triumphal progresses through the north of England, and was hooted weekly in the streets of London.