Autograph letter signed : Rochdale, to George Barnett Smith, 1886 March 4.

Thanking Smith for sending "your volume on the Prime Minister" (possibly Smith's biography of Gladstone) and writing that "it cannot be complete, but I doubt not it will be interesting"; commenting on the current political situation: "As to any advice I can give to the country at this time, I am silent because the crisis is so serious, & the chance of doing harm is so great. The present Parl[iamen]t situation is intolerable, & we must be extricated from it by some means. I am not prepared to suggest a mode of deliverance. I wait therefore to see what our responsible rulers have to propose. It will be difficult to satisfy the rebel party, & to do only what Great Britain may approve."