agreed to consider its details, without much hope of final assent. Harcourt had no hesitation in accepting Gladstone's guidance. Party loyalty was a paramount obligation. He would not desert the party ship and was sanguine of an early reunion with former colleagues who refused to join a home rule cabinet. He was very active in helping Gladstone to form the now ministry. He took the post of chancellor of the exchequer. He thus definitely became Gladstone's first lieutenant. He was acting leader of the house in the prime minister's absence, with the reversion, according to frequent precedent, to the headship of the government whenever a vacancy should arise.
Early in March Harcourt, while announcing the government's refusal to deal that session with disestablishment in Wales, treated the proposal with benevolence. On 8 April Gladstone introduced his home rule bill. Harcourt supported it in a powerful and impressive speech. All other methods of restoring tranquillity to Ireland had failed. The apparent suddenness of his conversion exposed him to bitter attack from the opposition and from dissentient liberals. He retorted that he had repudiated in the previous year the policy of coercion, and that home rule was the only alternative.
Harcourt's first budget, which he introduced on 15 April, was unexciting. A deficit of two and a half millions was to be supplied by existing taxes. The only innovation abolished, at a cost of 16,000l., the tax upon beer brewed in cottages with a rental under 8l.
On the second reading debate of the home rule bill, which Gladstone moved on 10 May, Harcourt made one of the best speeches in defence, but the division, which was taken on 7 June, gave the government only 311 votes against 341.
At the general election which followed Harcourt retained his seat at Derby with difficulty, but outside his own constituency he prosecuted a vigorous campaign. With his aggressive temper there went a curious sensitiveness to attack by his former colleagues, and when Lord Hartington was announced (in June 1886) to speak against him at Derby, Harcourt wrote to protest, with the result that Lord Hartington cancelled his engagement. The conservatives, however, returned to power with a working majority of 113. Harcourt's term of office as chancellor of the exchequer ended on 20 July, having lasted less than six months. He was succeeded by Lord Randolph Churchill, and from the opposition benches mercilessly criticised the new government's Irish programme at the opening of the new parliament. But Harcourt still hoped to re-unite the liberal party, and at the end of 1886 he suggested a conference with that end. On 13 Jan. Lord Herschell, Harcourt, and Mr. (afterwards Viscount) Morley, representing the liberals, met Mr. Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan, representing the liberal-unionists, at Harcourt's London house. The deliberations continued at frequent intervals for two months, when the Round Table conference broke up without tangible results. During the Salisbury parliament, 1886–1892, Harcourt, next to Gladstone himself, did more than any man by speeches in the House of Commons and the country to keep up the spirits of the liberal party. He was relentless in attack on the coercive policy of the conservative government in Ireland. Through 1887 he denounced the government's treatment of the attacks on Parnell and his colleagues by 'The Times' newspaper and strongly censured the constitution of the royal commission of inquiry into the charges. At the same time he fought hard for a reduction in national expenditure: he championed the social reforms of the party programme. Brilliant passages of arms with Mr. Chamberlain delighted the house. But Harcourt was no blind partisan. He helped to improve the government's Irish land bill, July, and the Allotments Act, Aug. 1887.
In the course of 1889 Harcourt delivered no less than nineteen set speeches at various liberal demonstrations in different parts of the country. His services to Gladstone proved invaluable and the relations between the two soon grew very close. During the Whitsuntide recess Gladstone stayed with him at Malwood, his country residence in the New Forest which he acquired in 1885, and Harcourt returned the visit to Hawarden in October. On the first night of the next session (12 Feb. 1890) Harcourt moved to condemn the publication of the Pigott letters in 'The Times' as a breach of privilege, but after a stormy debate, which lasted the whole evening, the motion was defeated by 260 to 212. During the session he opposed in his old 'Historicus' vein, by a long array of precedents and authorities, the cession of Heligoland to Germany. Towards the end of the summer the position of affairs was hopeful for the liberal party, but the condemnation of Parnell in the divorce court on 17 Nov. raised a new difficulty. On 21 Nov. Harcourt and Mr. John Morley attended the annual national
