'A day or two afterwards I received at a public meeting at Chelsea Town Hall an address signed by 11,000 inhabitants of Chelsea, congratulating me on my return to public life. It was signed by persons on both sides of politics. In reply, I made another good speech; but it was a great occasion.'
Among the letters which reached him from all quarters was one from Sir
Henry Parkes, who wrote:
'Chief Secretary, New South Wales,
'Sydney, March 9th, 1891.
'I still hold the belief that few men have before them a broader path of honourable usefulness than you. May you succeed in nobly serving the dear old country!'
He received now and henceforward many invitations to address labouring men, especially from the miners of Great Britain.
At Cannock Chase, in August, 1890, he attended his first miners' meeting. How rapidly the list increased may be judged by the fact that, speaking in July, 1891, at Ilkeston, he alluded to his conferences with miners of Yorkshire, of Lancashire, of Cheshire, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire, Staffordshire, and the Swansea and Neath districts in England and Wales, and of Fife and Ayrshire in Scotland. Attempts had not been wanting to stimulate against him the strong puritanism of these people, especially in South Wales; the answer had come from men like Tom Ellis, [Footnote: Mr. Thomas E. Ellis was a Liberal Whip at this time.] who brought him to address the quarrymen of Blaenau Festiniog, or like Mabon—William Abraham—miner, bard, and orator, who organized a gigantic torchlight procession of his own constituents in the Rhondda Valley to welcome Sir Charles and Lady Dilke, and who, at Lydney, when Sir Charles finally accepted their invitation, congratulated the Forest of Dean on having secured the services of 'one who was not only a political leader, but a real Labour leader.'
Parliamentary action in favour of an Eight Hours Bill formed the burden of Sir Charles's discourse at all these meetings. Accepting a special invitation to the annual conference of miners in the beginning of 1892, he dealt with the proposal, then strongly advocated, of a general international strike, pointing out that this measure 'should not be even talked about until they had seen the exhaustion of all other means of obtaining what they wanted.' It meant civil war; would 'disorganize the whole economic condition of the country and the trade of the Empire, and produce also a great feeling of exasperation between classes.' He pressed them to consider whether, in the event of such an international conflict, the whole brunt would not fall on Great Britain. In Belgium and in France there was no such strength of organization as among them; and a general strike succeeding in Great Britain, but failing on the Continent, would be a national danger. He proposed, as an alternative, co-operation with the British representatives of other trades, for whom also Parliamentary interference was demanded. In the discussion which followed, the weight of his argument was fully recognized, and a resolution favouring the international strike was amended into one calling for Parliamentary action.
In the following June Sir Charles Dilke attended the Miners' International Congress, and spoke at the banquet given to foreign delegates. A month later, when the General Election came on, 'thousands of handbills and posters,' says Mr. Thomas Ashton, 'were sent to the Forest of Dean by our federation recommending the workers to vote for the working man's candidate.'
Nor were his public utterances on Labour questions limited to Great Britain; request came from a society of the Belgian economists for a lecture on some subject connected with Greater Britain, and he chose the Australian strike and the position of Labour in the Colonies. This discourse was delivered by Sir Charles in Brussels on his way back from France at the beginning of 1891, and he then, he says, 'made the acquaintance of all the leading people on both sides in that city.'
As early as May, 1891, Dilke had made up his mind (and stated it in a letter to Count Herbert Bismarck) that the Liberal party would win the next election. The question of the Leadership was raised at the end of the session in a letter from Chamberlain: