[The letter in question is as follows:—­]

April 30, 1889.

Dear Lord Hartington,

I am assured by those who know more about the political world than I do, that if Lord Salisbury would hold his hand and let his party do as they like about the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill which is to come on next week, it would pass.  Considering the irritation against the bishops and a certain portion of the lay peers among a number of people who have the means of making themselves heard and felt, which is kept up and aggravated, as time goes on, by the action of the Upper House in repeatedly snubbing the Lower, about this question, I should have thought it (from a Conservative point of view) good policy to heal the sore.

The talk of Class versus Mass is generally mere clap-trap; but, in this case, there is really no doubt that a fraction of the Classes stands in the way of the fulfilment of a very reasonable demand on the part of the Masses.

A clear-headed man like Lord Salisbury would surely see this if it were properly pressed on his attention.

I do not presume to say whether it is practicable or convenient for the Leader of the Liberal Unionist party to take any steps in this direction; and I should hardly have ventured to ask you to take this suggestion into consideration if the interest I have always taken in the D.W.S.  Bill had not recently been quickened by the marriage of one of my daughters as a Deceased Wife’s Sister.

I am, etc.

[Meantime the effect of Eastbourne, which Sir John Donnelly had induced him to try, was indeed wonderful.  He found in it the place he had so long been looking for.  References to his health read very differently from those of previous years.  He walked up Beachy Head regularly without suffering from any heart symptoms.  And though Beachy Head was not the same thing as the Alps, it made a very efficient substitute for a while, and it was not till April that the need of change began to make itself felt.  And so he made up his mind to listen no more to the eager friends who wished him to pitch his tent near them at either end of Surrey, but to settle down at Eastbourne, and, by preference, to build a house of the size and on the spot that suited himself, rather than to take any existing house lower down in the town.  He must have been a trifle irritated by unsolicited advice when he wrote the following:—­]

It is very odd that people won’t give one credit for common sense.  We have tried one winter here, and if we tried another we should be just as much dependent upon the experience of longer residents as ever we were.  However, as I told X. I was going to settle matters to-morrow, there won’t be any opportunity for discussing that topic when he comes.  If we had taken W.’s house, somebody would have immediately told us that we had chosen the dampest site in winter and the stuffiest in summer, and where, moreover, the sewage has to be pumped up into the main drain.