Bill,' he said at Chelsea, 'it will be our Local Government Bill which
they will propose.' He notes: 'They proposed two-thirds of it, and
carried one-third, in 1888.'

'At this moment, not knowing how far Mr. Gladstone was willing to go
in the Home Rule direction, and that there was, therefore, any
chance of his securing the real support of the Irish party, I was
opposed to the attempt to turn out the Government and form a Liberal
Administration resting on the support of a minority, and I spoke in
that sense to my constituents. My view was that it would be
disastrous to advanced Liberalism to form a Government resting on a
minority, as it would be impossible to carry any legislation not of
a Conservative type.'

'Chamberlain wrote to me on December 15th, with regard to one of my
speeches, that I was too polite to the Tories. "This," he added, "is
where I never err."

'On December 18th I received some copies of important letters. Mr.
Gladstone's scheme had got out on the 16th, [Footnote: Lord Morley's
_Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii., pp. 264,265, shows that the "scheme
got out" owing to Sir Charles Dilke's speech to his constituents.
Mr. Herbert Gladstone came to town on the 14th partly in consequence
of a speech "made a few days before by Sir Charles Dilke," and the
talk it caused. The speech was "taken to mean" that the two Radical
leaders preferred keeping the Tories in power "in the expectation
that some moderate measures of reform might be got from them, and
that meanwhile they would become committed with the Irishmen.
Tactics of this kind were equivalent to the exclusion of Mr.
Gladstone, for in every letter that he wrote he pronounced the Irish