'Northcote had taken tea with him on the previous evening. The Lords would not part with the Franchise Bill till the Redistribution Bill was in their House. As regarded Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford Northcote, Mr. Gladstone considered the door absolutely closed, but he was informed that the Duke of Richmond and Lord Cairns did not agree with the leaders. We then drew up a statement to be made on Monday, November 17th, in both Houses of Parliament as to the steps we had taken to produce conciliation, Harcourt saying: "This is the apple-woman spitting on her old apples and shining 'em up!"—the fact being that it was only done to put the Lords in the wrong.'
'On Monday, November 17th, when I returned from Sandringham, I had to see Lord Rowton, who had been sent to me by the Prince of Wales to try and produce a settlement of the Redistribution difficulty, but we only sat and smiled at one another; he saying that he had come because he had been told to come, and I saying that I had nothing new to tell him, for Lord Salisbury knew all we had to say.'
'On November 19th there was a Cabinet. The first matter mentioned was the arrangement with the Conservatives for an interview, and at four o'clock on this day, November 19th, occurred the first meeting of the parties: an interview between Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford Northcote on the one side, and Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville on the other. Lord Salisbury had written to me about it already, and had privately seen my papers the previous day at the Commission, and had asked me a great number of questions, and I had given him my division of the Metropolis and of Lancashire at his wish, and received from him the following note: "I do not know whether it will be possible to discuss the application of the one-member principle to the Counties and the Metropolitan Constituencies and the suburbs of the larger towns." The hesitating way in which he asked shows that we might have avoided the single-members had we fought upon the point. But, as I liked them myself, I fought the other way, against Mr. Gladstone. At the interview between the leaders of the two parties and the two Houses it was merely decided that the real interview should take place on Saturday, November 22nd, at noon between the two Conservative chiefs and Mr. Gladstone, Lord Hartington, and me, Lord Granville being left out as knowing nothing of the subject. On November 21st I continued my private conference with Lord Salisbury at the Royal Commission, and we settled who the Boundary Commissioners should be. On Saturday, November 22nd, I had a conference with Chamberlain before going to the meeting with Lord Salisbury. Chamberlain was in favour of two-member seats as against single members, especially for boroughs. He was as clear as was Lord Salisbury that the single-member system would damage the Liberal party in the Metropolis.
'In the afternoon the Conference took place, and there never was so friendly and pleasant a meeting. I fully described it in three letters to Chamberlain, in which I said, among other things: "It looks as though Lord Salisbury is really anxious that we should pass our Bill." No memorandum on this day passed in writing, and the written compact was concluded between Lord Salisbury and me only on November 28th. The meeting of the 22nd was known at the time as the Downing Street meeting; and the other as "the Arlington Street compact."
'On Sunday, November 23rd, Lord Salisbury wrote to me a letter which I sent on to Mr. Gladstone and which he kept. Mr. Gladstone replied on the same day undertaking to move the adjournment of the House for a week, and showing that he was not at all sure that Lord Salisbury, having got from us the whole of our scheme and given us nothing in writing which was worth anything, did not mean to sell us. Chamberlain wrote on the same day in reply to my letters, "I cannot make head or tail of Salisbury. He appears to be swallowing every word that he has ever written or spoken about Redistribution…. I wonder if he will carry his party with him…. On the whole, you seem to be doing very well."'
Discussion now went on by correspondence between Sir Charles and Lord Salisbury, and it touched subjects which might easily have led to friction. Lord Salisbury proposed to create a number of urban constituencies by grouping; his plan being to get the small towns taken out of rural districts which he looked upon as otherwise Conservative, and to group them with small manufacturing boroughs:
'I was aghast at this suggestion, because it was a very difficult thing, in a Parliamentary sense, to create a few such groups in England; and if the thing was to be carried far and not confined to a few cases only it would entirely have destroyed the whole of the work that we had done, because all the counties would have had their numbers altered. I therefore fought stoutly for my own scheme, which I succeeded in carrying almost untouched. Lord Salisbury's letter crossed one from me to him in which, after Mr. Gladstone's leave (conveyed in the words "I see no objection to sending him this excellent and succinct paper marked Secret"), I had communicated to Lord Salisbury my views and the grounds on which they were based.'
'On the 26th, at four o'clock, we met at Downing Street, all five being present…. Lord Salisbury, yielding to my reasoning, gave up grouping,' on the understanding that the Boundary Commissioners were 'to keep the urban patches as far as possible by themselves…. Ultimately it was settled that single-member districts should be universal in counties, and that we should leave open for the present the question of how far it should be applied to boroughs.'
Lord Salisbury wished to retain the minority clause in places where he thought it had worked well, but he did not ask for it in Birmingham and Glasgow. 'All this showed great indecision,' says Sir Charles, and he observes that 'Lord Salisbury did not seem to me thoroughly to understand his subject.' It is probable, at all events, that he was no match on the details either for Sir Charles or for Mr. Gladstone, who, after the Conference, thus summed up his impressions in a letter dated November 26th:
'My Dear Dilke,