'"I have always said that, if kept for no other reason, the Lords should remain as a place for the Secretary of State for the Foreign Department, and I think also for the Prime Minister. Between ourselves, you will not have quite a fair chance in being Secretary of State for the Foreign Department under Mr. Gladstone, because Mr. Gladstone will trust to his skill in the House of Commons, and will speak and reply when the prudent Under-Secretary would ask for long notice or be silent. Lord Granville was always complaining, and Mr. Gladstone always promising never to do it again, and always doing it every day. [Footnote: See supra, p. 51 and note.] I am going to put down a notice to-day to strengthen your hands against France in re Diego Suarez."
'From Bryce I heard that he had been appointed Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign Department, and asking me whom he should take as his private secretary; and I told him Austin Lee, and he took him at once.'
'To the Prince of Wales I wrote to say that I should not attend the Levee, and had from him a reply marked by that great personal courtesy which he always shows.'
Thus came into being Mr. Gladstone's third Administration. In 1885 the continuance of Mr. Gladstone's leadership had seemed necessary in order to bridge the gap between Lord Hartington and the Radicals. Now in 1886 Lord Hartington was out, to mark his opposition, not to Chamberlain, but to Gladstone; and Chamberlain was in, though heavily handicapped. Yet none of these contradictions which had defied anticipation was so unforeseen as the exclusion of Sir Charles Dilke.
APPENDIX
See p. 196. Letter of Mr. Gladstone to Lord Hartington, December 17th, 1885:
'The whole stream of public excitement is now turned upon me, and I am pestered with incessant telegrams which I have no defence against but either suicide or Parnell's method of self-concealment. The truth is I have more or less of opinions and ideas, but no intentions or negotiations. In these ideas and opinions there is, I think, little that I have not more or less conveyed in public declarations: in principle, nothing. I will try to lay them before you. I consider that Ireland has now spoken, and that an effort ought to be made by the Government without delay to meet her demand for the management, by an Irish legislative body, of Irish as distinct from Imperial affairs. Only a Government can do it, and a Tory Government can do it more easily and safely than any other.
'There is first a postulate—that the state of Ireland shall be such as to warrant it.
'The conditions of an admissible plan, I think, are—
'(1) Union of the Empire and due supremacy of Parliament.