politics, and never would again.  In this case the despondency of old age was added to the despondency of disappointment; but among younger men hope was beginning to dawn again, and the Mirage beckoned with its treacherous gleam.  The Agricultural Labourers’ Union, starting on its pilgrimage from the very heart of England, forced the labourer’s wants and claims upon the attention of the land-owners, the farmers, and the clergy.

Those who had been brought by early association into touch with the agricultural population knew only too well how deep and just was the discontent of the villages, and how keen the yearning for better chances.  To secure the vote for the agricultural labourer seemed to be the first step towards the improvement of his lot.  The General Election of 1880 was, as nearly as our constitutional forms admit, a plebiscite on foreign policy; but to many a man who was then beginning public life the emancipation of the labourer was an object quite as dear as the dethronement of Lord Beaconsfield.  It was not for nothing that we had read Hodge and His Masters, and we were resolved that henceforward “Hodge” should be not a serf or a cipher, but a free man and a self-governing citizen.

We carried our Bill in 1884, and as the General Election of 1885 drew on, it was touching to feel the labourer’s gratitude to all who had helped him in the attainment of his rights.  By that time Gladstone had lost a great deal of his popularity in the towns, where Chamberlain was the hero.  But in the rural districts the people worshipped Gladstone, and neither knew nor cared for any other politician.  His was the name to conjure with.  His picture hung in every cottage.  His speeches were studied and thumbed by hard hands till the paper was frayed into tatters.  It was Gladstone who had won the vote for the labourer, and it was Gladstone who was to lead them into the Land of Promise.  “Three Acres and a Cow,” from being a joke, had passed into a watchword, though Gladstone had never given it the faintest sanction.  And the labourers vaguely believed that the possession of the vote would bring them some material benefit.  So they voted for Gladstone with solid enthusiasm, and placed their Mirage in his return to power.  But alas! they only realized a new and a more tragical disappointment.  In January, 1886, an amendment to the Address embodying the principle of “Three Acres and a Cow” was carried against the Tory Government; Gladstone became Prime Minister, and the disconsolate labourers found that the Mirage had cheated them once again.  It is not easy to depict the sorrow and mortification which ensued on this discovery.  The vote, after all, was only a Dead Sea apple.  The energies which were to have been bestowed on the creation of better surroundings for English labourers were suddenly transferred to the creation of an Irish Parliament, and in wide areas of rural population the labourers sank back again into hopelessness and inactivity.