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numbers; but for the first 300 miles every station at which we stopped for water--there were no passengers-was protected by one or two soldiers, who had formed for themselves a sort of underground miniature fortress. The winds here are so tremendous, when they blow over the prairie, that men are glad to excavate, dig out the earth, and form a habitation which cannot be blown away. We looked into one of these underground huts, of which walls, roof, and everything were earth, and although it was very rough, it showed the occupier was well-to-do. There was a profusion of firearms, saddles, &c., and one or two large American trunks, holding clothes, &c.

Towards afternoon a tree or two became visible, and we approached a small stream of water. Then large herds of cattle, some three or four thousand in a herd, took the place of buffalo, and wooden shanties became almost frequent. At 10 P.M. I arrived at Junction City, where I had to leave the Pacific train in order to go south to Emporia. The names are great, and the laying out of streets implies great expectations; but at present backwood cities do not come up to the Old World ideas of what constitutes cities. Here and there a brickand-stone house, a clay-built one, thirty or forty wooden shanties, and a good many open spaces covered with weeds, and there is the city before you. But there is always a milliner or two to be found, several lawyers, a dry-goods store, and a schoolhouse.

CHAPTER IX.

1873-1874.

The first Administration of Mr Gladstone now entered upon its fifth year of existence with the shadow of unpopularity deepening on its course. So many apprehensions had been aroused, such powerful interests harassed, that it might have seemed to Ministers that their only chance of conducting affairs towards the natural term of the Parliament lay in avoiding sensational enterprise in legislation and in allaying rather than rousing opposition.

Aliter visum! In a fatal hour for the Government the

been known to destroy themselves by charging a railway train in blind fury. At the present day the only traces left of them are piles of whitening bones and horns.

Prime Minister plunged once more into the troubled tide of Irish politics. Already he had prevailed to destroy the Irish Church and revolutionise the tenure of Irish landed property; there remained a third question, the settlement of which he had in his electioneering speeches of 1868 declared to be essential to the conciliation of Irish disaffection. Perhaps in doing so he had yielded to the temptation, irresistible to less experienced orators, of casting rhetoric in a triple mould it is difficult to assign any other reason for his having discovered in the state of Irish University Education a grievance more crying than the irreconcilable variance of the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches in temporal matters. Although he can hardly have calculated on the complexity and multiplicity of opposition which was to be called into existence by the mere mention of this question in the Queen's Speech, it has ever been a characteristic of this remarkable statesman never to be so happy as when dragging hesitating and even reluctant followers. through the turmoil of parliamentary war to an issue which they would fain avoid.

Such was the task he undertook in tabling his Irish University Bill. The event proved that in essaying to satisfy the claims of the Irish Roman Catholic clergy without rousing alarm among his Protestant and Nonconformist supporters in all three kingdoms, he had put his hand to a work beyond his power to accomplish.

There is no need to dwell on what turned out to be an abortive plan: enough to say that though the design was so complete and elaborate as to command admiration for its author, long before the day fixed for the Second Reading it had become clear that Ministerialists were sharply divided on its policy. Professor Henry Fawcett1 led the Opposition

1 Postinaster-General in Mr Gladstone's second Administration, 1880-84.

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against the bill, and was followed on the same side by Dr Lyon Playfair1 and Mr Horsman. As the debate proceeded, the Government betrayed their weakness by offering to leave several important points as open questions to be settled in Committee, but that was a stage which this ill-starred measure was destined never to reach. It was thrown out on Second Reading by a majority of 3-287 votes to 284.

In consequence of this defeat the Government resigned, but as Disraeli declined attempting to form a Cabinet, the opinion went abroad that the only way out of the dilemma was an appeal to the constituencies. A singular feature of the situation was the promulgation by the rival leaders of the reasons inducing each to adopt the course he did, by means of letters addressed to the Sovereign. Mr Gladstone in his letter contended warmly that an Opposition which had overthrown a Government was bound to attempt the administration of affairs, a view which Mr Disraeli in his letter firmly repudiated. This correspondence formed the subject of debate in the House of Commons, in the course of which Mr Gladstone announced that the Government had resumed its functions, and Ministers had returned to their Departments.

Under these conditions matters settled down again, and there was little more excitement within the walls of Parliament during the rest of that session. Smith's name will be found in the annals of Hansard associated with various educational and metropolitan objects of discussion. He moved resolutions condemning the schemes promulgated for the management of the Greycoat School and Guy's Hospital, and called attention to some anomalies in the incidence of local taxation. But the most important action which he took

1 Afterwards Postmaster-General in 1873-74, Chairman of Ways and Means, 1880-83, and Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education in 1886; created Baron Playfair in 1892.

was in regard to the Budget resolutions. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had a surplus, but it had been in great part forestalled by the award of the Alabama Commissioners, under which this country had been adjudged to pay an indemnity of £3,200,000. Half of this sum was to be paid during the current year, the sugar-duties were to be remitted, and a penny was to be taken off the income-tax. Smith's amend

ment was to the effect that, before remitting indirect taxation by the remission of the sugar-duty, the House ought to be in possession of the views of the Government as to the adjustment of local and imperial taxation.

The Government have been urged to exempt altogether from Income-tax the first £150 of everybody's income, and I believe that that course will, if the Government are bent upon touching the Income-tax at all, be much better than the course which they have adopted. A justification might be found for that course, for there is a large class among the artisans and labourers in this country who are earning £150 a-year, and are not 'only not paying Income-tax, but whom it will be impossible, or if possible, very undesirable, to compel to pay. I will venture to ask the House what the policy of the Budget really is. The policy of the Budget is to swallow up every farthing of surplus which can exist this year and next year. The policy of the Budget is to deprive the House of Commons of dealing with a question [Local and Imperial Taxation] which it has already decided to be of very grave and serious import to the taxpayers of the country. The policy of the Budget is, I venture to think, to embarrass the hands of any right honourable member who may next year or the year after stand in the position now occupied by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The general tenor of his complaint against the financial proposals of the Government was that, while giving relief where it was not wanted, they did nothing to remedy an admitted grievance. Mr Lowe with great warmth resisted the amendment, which he referred to as "a crowning insult"; but judging from comments on the debate in Ministerialist journals, he earned little gratitude outside the House for his exposition of the principles on which he had framed his Budget. The matter dropped, and the session moved uneventfully to its close.

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But if Ministers succeeded in holding their own in Parliament, the omens in the country were sinister. Since 1869 nine seats, all vacated by various Ministers appointed to permanent places or removed to the House of Lords, had been captured by Conservatives; six more had fallen into the hands of the enemy during 1873; and against this category of calamity the Liberals could only reckon gains at Bath and Truro. There were known to be grievous dissensions among Ministers themselves: Mr Baxter resigned the Secretaryship of the Treasury because he could not agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Lowe); Mr Lowe was removed from the Treasury and appointed Home Secretary; and Lord Ripon and Mr Childers both resigned office.

All this, of course, was watched with satisfaction by the Conservatives, who were biding their time; but they too were not without chill tremors of apprehension, arising from the adverse effect on their prospects which secret voting might have in a general election. Those in possession of what are described, with somewhat grim humour, as the "sweets of office" were far from happy, while their opponents were weighed down by the prospect of worse things which might come to pass.

Perhaps it is to this sense of uneasiness that must be traced the beginning of that sharper acerbity and scanter courtesy to opponents which of late years has characterised party politics. There was plenty of hard fighting in the days when the House of Commons was spoken of as the best club in London; but a chivalrous understanding prevailed between the two parties; debates and divisions were arranged to suit mutual convenience; to snap a division on a great question in the dinner-hour would have been regarded as a positive breach of good-breeding. How greatly things are changed now many a weary member can sorrowfully testify.