THE SECOND VOTE OF CENSURE. 171 in the Red Sea territory that it became a serious question whether they ought to be sacrificed or involved in imminent danger by any attempt to relieve the smaller garrisons. Directly Gordon reached a point where telegrams and messages could reach him the doubt was solved, and General Graham's expedition against the followers of Osman Digma was completed and promptly commenced operations.

It must, of course, be remembered that the government had absolutely forsworn any military operations with British troops for the purpose of retaining or regaining the territory of the Soudan, and at any rate the main body of the opposition, and even the Conservative leaders, were not provided with any definite alternative policy. Their words of censure were vague, and their attitude was feeble, timid, and uncertain. All they seemed to desire to do was to drive the Liberal government from power. They could refer with bitter intensity to the sufferings of the garrisons at Tokar and Sinkat, and they could bestow fanciful epithets upon the primeminister and his colleagues, but they did not venture plainly to proclaim their readiness to take the responsibility for a bold and unmistakable policy of intervention which would have involved the actual establishment of a British protectorate in Egypt. They denounced the government for not doing something which they failed to define, and it was evident that they were unable to grasp the situation for not grappling with which they persistently twitted the ministry.

The second vote of censure was proposed by Sir Michael Hicks Beach on the 12th of May, at a time when intelligence I rem Gordon had for some time ceased to be received and public excitement ran high, but again the opposition could frame no positive declarations of their own. To condemn the government for not having done what they were not prepared to declare they would have done themselves, was not an effectual mode of representing public opinion; and the Marquis of Hartington, to whom the reply was committed, could hold his own without great difficult}-, even though he had against him the independent opinion of men on the Liberal side, Mr. Lorster and Sir Wilfrid Lawson.