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he thought General Gordon was right, and that he should have
yielded to his importunity if he had not believed that had he done
so a motion might have been made which would have placed the
Government in a minority. ... Her Majesty's Government were
not to be animated by the sense of what was right, and by their
duty to the Queen and country, but were to pursue that particular
line of conduct which would secure them a majority. ..."

While the debate was going on, there rang from the Liberal
benches a voice which reflected the real, and not the sham,
Liberal feeling of the country.

"The Ministry desire"(said Mr. Joseph Cowen) "to dissociate
General Gordon from the garrisons. This is impossible. They
sneakingly suggest that he should sacrifice his comrades in cap-
tivity and decamp. But they mistake their man. It was the
helpless to help, and the hopeless to save, that sent him on his
forlorn and chivalrous mission, and he spurns such cowardly
counsels. ... He has been accused of inconsistency. The charge
cannot in equity be sustained. He has never faltered in his purpose,
though he has varied his plan to the exigencies. All his plans have
been rejected. He has been systematically contravened, thwarted,
restrained, and trammelled. Not a single request he has made
has been complied with, not a solitary proposal has been acted
upon. And the Cabinet, after having committed every error the
circumstances allowed, are shabby enough to attribute their own
failure to their baulked but sedulous and heroic agent."

Sir Charles Dilke, who once boasted that the Ministry had given
carte blanche to Gordon, tried to propitiate public feeling by aver-
ring in the House, 13th May, "For the protection of General
Gordon we intend to do that which practically can be done."*
He admitted that they had reason to believe Khartoum had
provisions for not more than five months from the 7th April.

With inexpressible meanness, Sir C. Dilke insinuated that on
the 27th February Gordon's plans were culpably changed. No
one knew better than the shuffling baronet knew, that on arriving
at Khartoum (18 February) Gordon demanded Zebehr, and that
on the 22nd Granville perpetrated the great refusal. Yet Dilke
upbraided Gordon for altered conduct, because Gordon, when thus
betrayed, took measures to protect Khartoum against the sur-rounding Arabs.

* The Ministry had received from the Adjutant-General, on the 8th April, details of
measures for relieving Khartoum by the Nile route and by Suakim, and though the
Nile rises at Cairo in the beginning of July, it was not until the 26th August that they
resolved to send Wolseley to Egypt, and he reached it two months after the Nile had
risen! Mr. Egerton had telegraphed on the 6th August: "The Nile will soon be
high, and the time is short within which any river expedition is possible." (Blue-Book. No. 35, p. 6.)