government. In April, 1886, Mr, Gladstone, having become Prime
Minister for the third time, asked Parliament to grant home rule
to Ireland through an Irish Parliament sitting at Dublin. Parnell
and his following supported the measure, but the Liberal party
was rent in twain. Lord Hartington, Joseph Chamberlain, John
Bright, and others of less note, deserted their old chief. Enough
of these "Liberal Unionists" seceded to defeat the bill. In
August, 1892, the aged Liberal chieftain again carried the
elections and took the seals of office for the fourth time. Home
Rule was again the principal plank in his platform, and all the
energies of the "Grand Old Man" were mustered to carry a new law
differing somewhat from the bill of 1886. Though it passed the
Commons (301 to 267) it was thrown out by the Lords by 419 to 41,
and his successor, Lord Rosebery, had no mind to renew the
contest.

The Gladstonian foreign policy was such as might have been
expected from a leader whose motto was "Peace, Retrenchment, and
Reform." It was never aggressive, and in the opinion of many, it
was lacking in the assertion of British rights. Thus, in 1871,
when Russia refused to be bound longer by the treaty stipulations
forbidding her to maintain a war fleet on the Euxine, Mr.
Gladstone did not hold her to her engagement. In England it was
thought to be a sign of weakness in his government to allow the
"Alabama" and "San Juan Boundary" questions to be settled by
arbitrators instead of by diplomacy or a show of force. In 1881,
when the Boers of the Transvaal had worsted the British at Majuba
Hill, they received from Gladstone an honorable peace instead of
extermination. The abandonment of the Egyptian Soudan, in 1883,
which carried with it the massacre of General Gordon, at