So far as prudence, tact, and knowledge of business could enable him to discharge these duties, Northcote discharged them admirably. It was his good fortune to have behind him in Lord Beaconsfield, who had recently gone to the House of Lords, a chief of the whole party who trusted him, and with whom he was on the best terms. The immense authority of that chief secured his own authority. His party was--as the Tory party usually is--compact and loyal; and his majority ample, so he had no reason to fear defeat. In the conflicts that arose over Eastern affairs in 1877-79, affairs at some moments highly critical, he was cautious and adroit, more cautious than Lord Beaconsfield, sometimes repairing by moderate language the harm which the latter's theatrical utterances had done. When a group of Irish Nationalist members, among whom Mr. Parnell soon came to the front, began to evade the rules and paralyse the action of the House by obstructive tactics, he was less successful. Their ingenuity baffled the Ministry, and brought the House into sore straits. But it may be doubted whether any leader could have overcome the difficulties of the position. It was a new position. The old rules framed under quite different conditions were not fit to check members who, far from regarding the sentiments of the House, avowed their purpose to reduce it to impotence, and thereby obtain that Parliament of their own, which could alone, as they held, cure the ills of Ireland.
After ten years of struggle and experiment, drastic remedies for obstruction were at last devised; but in the then state of opinion within the House, those remedies could not have been carried. Members accustomed to the old state of things could not for a good while make up their minds to sacrifice part of their own privileges in order to deal with a difficulty the source of which they would not attempt to cure. On the whole, therefore, though he was blamed at the time, Northcote may be deemed to have passed creditably through his first period of leadership.