ABSTRACT
Queen Victoria, indeed, rescued by Mr. Gladstone from the worst effects of the Royal Grants controversy of 1889, thanks to her age and half a century of Press adulation, well on the way to an unchallenged pedestal as the Empire’s universal grandmother. Meanwhile, big Conservative efforts were made to bring the country to a high pitch of alarm as to the grave consequences that would follow if Gladstone returned to power, committed to Home Rule. On February 23rd the first big Division took place on a private member’s motion for Welsh Disestablishment. The result was Salisbury’s resignation and the construction of a fourth Gladstone Cabinet. Mr. Gladstone had intervened in the debate which was to take him to his fourth Prime Ministership with another of the remarkable speeches that all who heard considered well-nigh miraculous to come from a man of eighty-two.
