A GLORIOUS ELECTION 297 



The dissolution of Parliament, which came along on 

 25th June 1886, in consequence of the first Home Rule 

 Bill, brought St Stephen's Review to the zenith of its 

 prosperity. We were never doing less than 10,000 a 

 week of the paper, and as for the cartoons, they went 

 by hundreds of thousands. Tom Merry could not print 

 them fast enough, and other lithograph firms had to assist. 

 Those cartoons were rough and ready vulgar if you 

 like such as Gladstone being kicked into the air by 

 Liberal Unionists : " The wild mob's million feet will 

 kick you from your place " ; Gladstone as Stiggins 

 being ducked in the horse trough by old Weller (John 

 Bright), and other such cartoons all through that excit- 

 ing time, when I personally felt that we were doing 

 National and Imperial service by helping to break up 

 the Gladstone Government. It was worth anything 

 to make an end of them, and ended they were when 

 316 Conservatives and 76 Liberal Unionists were 

 elected as against only 192 Gladstonians and 86 

 Parnellites. 



Naturally Gladstone resigned and Lord Salisbury took 

 office, Lord Randolph leading the House of Commons. 

 Those were great days, and though I did not see my way 

 at the moment to go into Parliament, for which I had 

 long been on the list of candidates, all seemed to be 

 working right that way. 



What I mean is that I would never have contested a 

 seat unless at my own expense, and I venture to think that 

 any member who has had his expenses paid for him by a 

 party or a trade union is as bad as a voter who has sold 

 his vote. 



Before this time I had made the acquaintance of Colonel 

 McMurdo, an American, who was a great man, whatever 

 his financial methods may have been. It was he who 

 first exploited the gold possibilities of the Transvaal 

 and brought out the Balkis Company, in the promotion 

 of which Albert Grant had some share. Gwyn Owen, a 

 Welsh Nonconformist minister if I remember rightly 



