Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/74

 To add to all these manifold activities, Mr. Cowen has for twenty years been the proprietor and political director of "The Newcastle Chronicle," one of the most influential journals in provincial England. It has writers, who, for range of political knowledge and absolute fidelity to principle, have no superiors in or out of London. The result was seen at the general election of 1874. "When the Conservative re-action ran high everywhere else, the Northumbrian Liberals smote their Tory opponents hip and thigh all along the line. Twelve Liberals to one Tory were the Durham district returns.

In 1852 appeared "The English Republic" and "The Northern Tribune," republican prints, pitched in a very lofty key; and to these Mr. Cowen contributed largely in prose, verse, and, what was even more essential, money. In those days Mr. Cowen was in fact, I presume, what he now is only in theory, a stanch republican.

With regard to Mr. Cowen's parliamentary career, it is hard to speak with impartiality. His fervid Jingoism has affected with profound regret his warmest admirers, myself among the rest. There have not even been wanting some base enough to attribute his support of the wicked and disastrous foreign policy of the Beaconsfield government to motives other than disinterested. The true explanation of his aberration is quite otherwise. He is still a Hungarian, a Polish insurgent. Nothing is changed. Russia is his mortal foe. Like a true Bourbon, he has neither learned nor forgotten. Any stick is good enough to beat the Muscovite dog with. He advocated the Crimean war in the hope that something might "turn up" for his exiled