Yet if we put to ourselves the question-of all the doings of ...

Yet if we put to ourselves the question-of all the doings of the mid-seventies, which in the long run mattered most?-we might find that our difficulty lay in deciding between the municipal administration of Chamberlain and the industrial legislation of Cross. 'I only hope that the Corporations generally will become very much more expensive than they have been-not expensive in the sense of wasting money, but that there will be such nobleness and liberality amongst the people of our towns and cities as will lead them to give their Corporations power to expend more money on those things which, as public opinion advances, are found to be essential to the health and comfort and improvement of our people.' Jan.

29, 1864. Note the Ruskinian touch in 'nobleness'. THE events of 1874 and 18 80 lend some colour to the view that the electors never vote for a party but only against one. Disraeli came in because the country was tired of the Liberals, and the Liberals came back because the country distrusted Disraeli.

The brief recovery of the early seventies had been followed by a long

depression and a series of

calamitous harvests and the whole world was labouring under the disturbance of the French indemnity, and the wild speculation which had followed it in Germany. For four years, too, the country had lived under the costly excitement of Imperial politics, war, annexation, debt, and a contingent liability for fresh debts, fresh annexations, and fresh wars.

It was time to ring a halt.

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