In the House of Lords that night, and in the House of Commons, the outgoing Ministers made their explanations. As our business at the present moment is with the Commons, we will confine ourselves to their chamber, and will do so the more willingly because the upshot of what was said in the two places was the same. The outgoing ministers were very grave, very self-laudatory, and very courteous. In regard to courtesy it may be declared that no stranger to the ways of the place could have understood how such soft words could be spoken by Mr Daubeny, beaten, so quickly after the very sharp words which he had uttered when he only expected to be beaten. He announced to his fellow-commoners that his right honourable friend and colleague Lord de Terrier had thought it right to retire from the Treasury. Lord de Terrier, in constitutional obedience to the vote of the Lower House, had resigned, and the Queen had been graciously pleased to accept Lord de Terrier’s resignation, Mr Daubeny could only inform the House that Her Majesty had signified her pleasure that Mr Mildmay should wait upon her tomorrow at eleven o’clock. Mr Mildmay — so Mr Daubeny understood — would be with Her Majesty tomorrow at that hour. Lord de Terrier had found it to be his duty to recommend Her Majesty to send for Mr Mildmay. Such was the real import of Mr Daubeny’s speech. That further portion of it in which he explained with blandest, most beneficent, honey-flowing words that his party would have done everything that the country could require of any party, had the House allowed it to remain on the Treasury benches for a month or two — and explained also that his party would never recriminate, would never return evil for evil, would in no wise copy the factious opposition of their adversaries; that his party would now, as it ever had done, carry itself with the meekness of the dove, and the wisdom of the serpent — all this, I say, was so generally felt by gentlemen on both sides of the House to be “leather and prunella”, that very little attention was paid to it. The great point was that Lord de Terrier had resigned, and that Mr Mildmay had been summoned to Windsor.

The Queen had sent for Mr Mildmay in compliance with advice given to her by Lord de Terrier. And yet Lord de Terrier and his first lieutenant had used all the most practised efforts of their eloquence for the last three days in endeavouring to make their countrymen believe that no more unfitting Minister than Mr Mildmay ever attempted to hold the reins of office! Nothing had been too bad for them to say of Mr Mildmay — and yet, in the very first moment in which they found themselves unable to carry on the Government themselves, they advised the Queen to send for that most incompetent and baneful statesman! We who are conversant with our own methods of politics, see nothing odd in this, because we are used to it; but surely in the eyes of strangers our practice must be very singular. There is nothing like it in any other country — nothing as yet. Nowhere else is there the same good humoured, affectionate, prize-fighting ferocity in politics. The leaders of our two great parties are to each other exactly as are the two champions of the ring who knock each other about for the belt and for five hundred pounds a side once in every two years. How they fly at each other, striking as though each blow should carry death if it were but possible! And yet there is no one whom the Birmingham Bantam respects so highly as he does Bill Burns the Brighton Bully, or with whom he has so much delight in discussing the merits of a pot of half-and-half. And so it was with Mr Daubeny and Mr Mildmay. In private life Mr Daubeny almost adulated his elder rival — and Mr Mildmay never omitted an opportunity of taking Mr Daubeny warmly by the hand. It is not so in the United States. There the same political enmity exists, but the political enmity produces private hatred. The leaders of parties there really mean what they say when they abuse each other, and are in earnest when they talk as though they were about to tear each other limb from limb. I doubt whether Mr Daubeny would have injured a hair of Mr Mildmay’s venerable head, even for an assurance of six continued months in office.

When Mr Daubeny had completed his statement, Mr Mildmay simply told the House that he had received and would obey Her Majesty’s commands. The House would of course understand that he by no means meant to aver that the Queen would even commission him to form a Ministry. But if he took no such command from Her Majesty it would become his duty to recommend Her Majesty to impose the task upon some other person. Then everything was said that had to be said, and members returned to their clubs. A certain damp was thrown over the joy of some excitable Liberals by tidings which reached the House during Mr Daubeny’s speech. Sir Everard Powell was no more dead than was Mr Daubeny himself. Now it is very unpleasant to find that your news is untrue, when you have been at great pains to disseminate it. “Oh, but he is dead,” said Mr Ratler. “Lady Powell assured me half an hour ago,” said Mr Ratler’s opponent, “that he was at that moment a great deal better than he had been for the last three months. The journey down to the House did him a world of good.” “Then we’ll have him down for every division,” said Mr Ratler.

The political portion of London was in a ferment for the next five days. On the Sunday morning it was known that Mr Mildmay had declined to put himself at the head of a liberal Government. He and the Duke of St Bungay, and Mr Plantagenet Palliser, had been in conference so often, and so long, that it may almost be said they lived together in conference. Then Mr Gresham had been with Mr Mildmay — and Mr Monk also. At the clubs it was said by many that Mr Monk had been with Mr Mildmay; but it was also said very vehemently by others that no such interview had taken place, Mr Monk was a Radical, much admired by the people, sitting in Parliament for that most Radical of all constituencies, the Pottery Hamlets, who had never as yet been in power. It was the great question of the day whether Mr Mildmay would or would not ask Mr Monk to join him; and it was said by those who habitually think at every period of change that the time has now come in which the difficulties to forming a government will at last be found to be insuperable, that Mr Mildmay could not succeed either with Mr Monk or without him. There were at the present moment two sections of these gentlemen — the section which declared that Mr Mildmay had sent for Mr Monk, and the section which declared that he had not. But there were others, who perhaps knew better what they were saying, by whom it was asserted that the whole difficulty lay with Mr Gresham. Mr Gresham was willing to serve with Mr Mildmay — with certain stipulations as to the special seat in the Cabinet which he himself was to occupy, and as to the introduction of certain friends of his own; but — so said these gentlemen who were supposed really to understand the matter — Mr Gresham was not willing to serve with the Duke and with Mr Palliser. Now, everybody who knew anything knew that the Duke and Mr Palliser were indispensable to Mr Mildmay. And a liberal Government, with Mr Gresham in the opposition, could not live half through a session! All Sunday and Monday these things were discussed; and on the Monday Lord de Terrier absolutely stated to the Upper House that he had received Her Majesty’s commands to form another government, Mr Daubeny, in half a dozen most modest words — in words hardly audible, and most unlike himself — made his statement in the Lower House to the same effect. Then Mr Ratler, and Mr Bonteen, and Mr Barrington Erle, and Mr Laurence Fitzgibbon aroused themselves and swore that such things could not be. Should the prey which they had won for themselves, the spoil of their bows and arrows, be snatched from out of their very mouths by treachery? Lord de Terrier and Mr Daubeny could not venture even to make another attempt unless they did so in combination with Mr Gresham. Such a combination, said Mr Barrington ............