On their return to
London they took up their work where they had left it a few months
before. In July they had the mortification of finding that Lord
Rosebery had given away the coveted post of Morocco, which had been
as good as promised to them by Lord Salisbury, to some one else. It
was during their few months' absence from England that the change
of Government had taken place, and Lord Salisbury's brief-lived
Administration of 1886 had yielded place to a Liberal Government.
Such are the vicissitudes of official life. Had Lord Salisbury been
in office, Sir Richard would probably have got Morocco. It was perhaps
all for the best that he did not get the post, although it was a sore
disappointment to them at the time. Even Lady Burton came to take this
view. She writes: "I sometimes now think that it was better so, and
that he would not have lived so long had he had it, for he was decidedly
breaking up. The climate did not appear to be the one that suited him,
and the anxiety and responsibilities of the post might have hurried on
the catastrophe. . . . It was for the honour of the thing, and we saw
for ourselves how uneasy a crown it would be."
Perhaps there was another reason too, for when Lady Burton remonstrated a
Minister wrote to her in friendly chaff: "We don't want to annex Morocco,
and we know that you two would be Emperor and Empress in about six
months." This was an evident allusion to the part which they had played
during their brief reign at Damascus.
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