Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/26

 Toryism, is now, as the limit of life is approached, a majestic river, whose ample flood will never be stinted or stayed till it is lost in the ocean of eternity.

At the general election of 1874 the British Philistine was fat, and kicked. The constituencies deliberately cried out, "Not this man, but Barabbas!" Is it necessary to add the emphatic, "Now, Barabbas was a robber"? But since then many things, as Earl Beaconsfield would say, have happened. The general election of 1880 reversed the verdict of 1874 with a decisiveness that fairly astonished all parties. In opposition, though no longer ostensible leader of the Liberal host, Mr. Gladstone had evinced a moral grandeur and an intellectual vigor never equalled by any British statesman; and on all hands he was felt to be the man of a very difficult situation, of which the end is not j-et. In proportion as he succeeds or fails will be the nation's gain or loss. In any case, if he has not done enough for humanity,—if he has still, as he says, a whole catalogue of "unredeemed pledges" to submit,—he has done enough, and more than enough, to enshrine his name imperishably in the hearts of all good men:—