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474 his cargo and his course, who both thinks and acts with a mind applied to consequences, who can appraise the saying of the philosopher, that liberalism will lose India, and the Prussian minister's speech to our countryman : "You will cease to be a nation before you have time to put your hand into your breeches-pocket." He avoids glaring contrasts and exact definitions, and abstains with excessive abnegation from the statement of private opinion. The Oxford movement was a wave of conservatism, and a Liberal is by the hypothesis an enemy of the Church, a man who wants to set the bishops' house in order, a follower of Colenso. Men like Cardinal Newman and the Dean of St. Paul's still interpret the term in that sense, and German Lutherans, for their own constitutional reasons, do the same. Dr. Bright accepts the Tractarian nomenclature without remonstrance, regardless of men who would thereby surrender the ground beneath their feet, and who, believing that the doctrines of Laud are to those of Bradlaugh as heaven to hell, yet glorify the Providence that sent the primate to the Tower and the atheist to the House of Commons. With the same extreme reserve, he likes to speak conditionally of foreign countries. "Whatever may be thought of the political aspect of the coup d'état" is the form of his judgment upon it. The want of sharp outlines reminds one of the Prague poet who went to see Béranger in 1847, and had to answer a few questions. Was Prague in Hungary or in Poland ? In neither one nor the other. Was Bohemia in Austria or in Germany ? In both. Was the Prussian monarchy absolute or constitutional ? Partly one, partly the other. At last Béranger lost patience. "Frenchmen," he cried, "like things to be clear. What is not clear is not French." The scruples and qualifications and optatives of this history would not be admitted in a French compendium.

All this caution is dismissed at the approach of transactions which betray the faults of the national character, and are subject to considerations by which we all are bound, not those for which man is not accountable to man.