Mr. Goschen next proceeded to indicate the attitude Liberals should
immediately assume. They should strenuously watch to see that nothing they had done was undone. They must not, as Lord Sandon said the Tories had been, be bewildered by their misfortunes, but assert themselves throughout the country, so that the Tories might do Liberal work, as they would do, for they had a chief who was not a Conservative, and a majority which dare not use its power. " A Conservative chief is only permitted to reign while he cajoles Conservatives into sanctioning Liberal measures." The Liberal party in the Commons now showed a strong disposi- tion to unite, and outside they had unshaken confidence in the leader who for five years had led them to victory, and never won a triumph which did not redound to the interest and greatness of the country. During five years of work no member of Mr. Glad- stone's Cabinet had quitted it, and if differences had appeared afterwards, why, the Tories were quarrelling in their honeymoon. It would be most impolitic to invent a " cry ;" for power would come back the moment Mr. Disraeli failed in his increasingly diffi- cult task of educating his followers. No part of the speech, as we have noticed elsewhere, was received more enthusiastically than the reference to Mr. Gladstone, whose name, as his Income-tax manifesto is forgotten, is again becoming a spell.
