The crisis is becoming so serious, and the complications with which this country is beset in all parts of the world are so menacing, that the incapacity displayed by the Cabinet in its external relations is becoming a national danger. Much is forgiven to men who have a reputation; but in face of continual and glaring proofs of failure to conduct the most ordinary affairs, the country may speedily be driven to the conclusion that there would at least be no harm in trying what can be clone by persons with less high-sounding names. … Whatever the powers of the men who now compose the Government, they are collectively cursed with an infirmity of will and a blindness to facts which are rapidly involving the country in difficulties and dangers such as the most powerful State may shrink from encountering.

These sentences, taken from a leading article in the ‘Times’—a journal which up to that date had uniformly given independent support to whatever Government happened to be in power—were ominous of the general displeasure entertained at the beginning of 1885 on account of the way the affairs of this country were being conducted. The outcome of five years' administration of foreign affairs by Lord Granville had been to leave Great Britain almost without a friend among the great Powers.