Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/283

 the condition of the English agricultural laborers, I found that a large number of Britons were slaves,—slaves to artificial oppressive circumstances, for the maintenance of which the governing classes stood, in my eyes, responsible; and upon the discovery of this I determined, that, if during the whole of my life I could carry but a single handful of earth towards the foundation of a better state of society, that handful I would carry." Accordingly, the admiral, acting on his well-worn maxim, "People who do not care for politics do not care for their fellow-creatures," has twice, as has been said, sought the suffrages of popular constituencies.

At Southampton, in 1868, he addressed himself more particularly to questions affecting the land and education. He is a fluent, forcible speaker, too earnest to be amusing, but always attractive because instructive. You feel that his mind is made up, and that what he says he will infallibly perform. But he does not see the by-play of electioneering; and, from sheer honesty of purpose and detestation of chicane, he falls into the most obvious traps laid for him by the enemies of his cause. "Leading questions" are put to him, which he answers with ruinous candor. He knows nothing of the Scotsman's art of answering one inconvenient question by asking another. He seems never even to have profited by the illustrious example of Mr. Gladstone's "three courses," which intimates to the caviller, "You pays your money, and you gets your choice." It is seemingly impossible to get into the admiral's head what is almost an axiom in electioneering; viz., that the shortest line that can be drawn between two political points is often a mighty circumbendibus. Neither