Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/314

308 have taken long ago, and which British opinion would have approved. We should have stood better with Germany – better with France – better with every European Power, if we had known our own mind, set our foot down, and acted as the honour and interests of Great Britain required. Alas! we are in the hands of men to whom such considerations come second to the necessity of keeping a Parliamentary majority together at any and every hazard; and until the electoral body throughout the country awake to a knowledge of the weakness, vacillation, and incapacity which at present shield themselves behind the name of Mr Gladstone, Great Britain must be content to accept humiliation and shame from nations who are blessed with wiser, braver, and more patriotic statesmen. Printed by William Blackwood & Sons.