Mundella himself wrote to his sister Theresa: "I was received with loud cheering when I entered the House, when I rose to address it, and the loudest from all sides when I sat down. Men crowded round me all night to shake hands with me, and all my colleagues said I had done it so admirably and with so much dignity" Of some consolation were tributes from Gladstone and Rosebery (the latter insisting that it was a "source of grief and weakness" to the Government to be deprived of his "great" services), and the hundreds of resolutions of sympathy from workers all over the country which reached him, thanking him for his life-long services to labour. He was not to return to ministerial power, and served on the backbenches until the General Election of 1895.