Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/84

 Like most places blessed with a dean and chapter, the Carlisle electors are in truth any thing but a model constituency. It is but likely that an obnoxious ex-mayor of the city petitioned against the return of two municipal councillors on the ground of bribery and treating, and had them duly unseated, the joke of the affair being that among the more systematic treaters figured some of the most active members of Sir Wilfrid's committee. Altogether the trial revealed a state of social habits and political practices so reprehensible, that one can only be thankful that so questionable a constituency should elect to be represented in Parliament by so unquestionable a member as Sir Wilfrid Lawson. It is one of the advantages of virtue that vice is always compelled to pay it a certain unwilling homage.

It remains to speak of Sir Wilfrid's legislative career, and of certain conceptions of the common weal with which his name has become indissolubly associated in the public mind. Two interests of transcendent importance—one social, the other political—he has made peculiarly his own; viz., those of temperance and peace. He is the sworn foe of publicans and soldiers. He regards both as hostes humani generis, whom it is the duty of all good citizens to unite to extirpate. In place of strong drink he offers us cold water, and in place of war a court of arbitration. Was there ever such a visionary? Why, since the dawn of human history till now, these are the twin Molochs to which countless generations have sacrificed their first-born. Who are we that we should depart from the wisdom of our ancestors? Did not the Son of man himself come eating and drinking? Are not the princes and poten-