use the parks for the purposes of political discussion. But he faced the Fenian conspiracy with courage. He refused to commute the capital sentence passed on the Fenian murderers at Manchester, although a disorderly mob forced its way into the home office. His life was repeatedly threatened, and warnings which he received compelled him to impose special restrictions on Queen Victoria's movements. The intimate relations which he established with Queen Victoria [q. v. Suppl. I] at this critical period were maintained throughout her reign.
After the resignation of the Disraeli ministry in 1868 Hardy rendered telling service to his party in debate, especially in conflict with Gladstone. His impassioned speech on the second reading of the Irish church disestablishment bill on 25 March 1869 proved a formidable, if 'an uncompromising, defence of laws and institutions as they are' (Morley, Life of Gladstone, 1903, ii. 265). As occasional leader of the opposition in Disraeli's absence he lost few opportunities of provoking collision with the prime minister. The appointment of Sir Robert Collier (afterwards Lord Monkswell) [q. v.] to the judicial committee of the privy council and the Ewelme rectory presentation in 1872 prompted him to scathing criticism, which damaged the government.
On the formation of Disraeli's second administration Hardy was appointed secretary of state for war on 21 Feb. 1874. Soon after assuming office he had a passing difference with his chief on church matters. A moderate although sincere churchman, he opposed on 9 July 1874 the public worship regulation bill, despite the protection given it by Disraeli, and he supported Gladstone in a speech which was. listened to with some disapproval by his own side (Lucy, Diary of the Disraeli Parliament, 1885, p. 34). Hardy remained at the war office more than four years. The army reforms which Viscount Card well [q. v.] had inaugurated were still incomplete, and it fell to his successor to supplement and carry on his work. His regimental exchanges bill, which was passed in 1875, legalised the payment of money by officers to those desirous of exchanging regiments with them, and was denounced by the opposition as restoring the purchase system under another name. In the debates on the Eastern question (1876-8) Hardy took a prominent part, cordially supporting Disraeli's philo-Turkish policy, and busily occupying himself during 1878 in making preparations for the despatch of an expeditionary force to the Mediterranean in the event of war. In the debate on 4 Feb. 1878, when Gladstone urged the House of Commons to reject the vote of credit of 6,000,000l. which was demanded by the government. Hardy impressively denounced Gladstone's active agitation in the country {ibid. p. 385).
When Disraeli was forced by ill-health to leave the House of Commons in August 1876 Hardy expected to fill the place of leader, and he was disappointed by the selection of Sir Stafford Northcote [q. v.], but his strong instinct of party loyalty led him quickly to resign himself to the situation.
In the rearrangement of the cabinet which followed the resignation of the foreign minister, Edward Henry Stanley, fifteenth earl of Derby [q. v.], in March 1878, Hardy became secretary for India in succession to Lord Salisbury, who went to the foreign office. Reluctance to come into competition with Sir Stafford Northcote, the new leader of the House of Commons, mainly accounted for Hardy's retirement to the House of Lords on 11 May 1878, when he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Cranbrook of Hemstcd. He took his title from his country seat in Kent, and at the desire of his family he assumed the additional surname of Gathorne.
Lord Cranbrook's first official duty at the India office was to sanction the Vernacular Press Act of 1878, which empowered the government to silence Indian newspapers that promoted disaffection, but he struck out the clause exempting from the act editors who submitted their articles to an official censor. He expressed doubt of the general principle of the act, declaring that the vernacular press was a valuable and one of the few available means of ascertaining facts of the Indian people's social condition and political sentiment (Paul, History of Modern England, 1905, iv. 78). His relations with the viceroy. Lord Lytton, were invariably cordial. When Lytton exercised his prerogative of overruling his council on the question of reducing the cotton duties, Cranbrook in the council at home confirmed Lytton's action by his casting vote (East India Cotton Duties, White Paper, 1879). Lord Cranbrook fully shared the viceroy's apprehensions of Russian expansion in central Asia, and supported Lytton's forward policy on the north-west frontier, which aimed at restoring British influence in Afghanistan. When Ameer Shere Ali refused to receive the
