During the month of February, while the Press campaign against him was ripening, Sir Charles had little freedom of mind for politics. Yet this was the moment when Mr. Chamberlain's action, decisive for the immediate fate of a great question, had to be determined. Sir Charles had been a conducting medium between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain. He was so no longer. "I wonder," wrote Chamberlain, years after, on reading Dilke's Memoir, "what passed in that most intricate and Jesuitical mind in the months between June and December, 1885." Perhaps the breach that came was unavoidable. But at all events the one man who might have prevented it was at the critical moment hopelessly involved in the endeavour to combat the scandal that assailed him. [Footnote: There is a letter of this date to Mr. John Morley:
'76, Sloane Street, S.W.,
'February 2nd.
'My Dear Morley,
'As I must not yet congratulate you on becoming at a bound Privy Councillor and member of the Cabinet, let me in the meantime congratulate you on your election as a V.P. of the Chelsea Liberal Association. But seriously, there can be no doubt that you now have sealed the great position which you had already won. My one hope is that you will work;—my hope, not for your own sake, but for the sake of Radical principles—as completely with Chamberlain as I did. It is the only way to stand against the overwhelming numbers of the Whig peers. I fear Mr. Gladstone will find his new lot of Whig peers just as troublesome as the old.
'As long as I am out and my friends are in, I shall sit, not in my old place below the gangway, but behind, and do anything and everything that I can do to help.
'Yours ever,
'Chs. W. D.
'I hope it is true that Stansfeld is back?'
It was not till March 3rd, 1886, that