Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/79

 support the Budget without a violation of our pledges, and we voted against the Government, who were turned out of office by a majority of only nineteen. The support of the League would have given them a majority of over twenty. The landowners obtained delay by this sudden coup, but they made the final settlement more stringent. All the principles which they resisted at that time are now the law of the land; but a crop of new demands has sprung up from the exasperation of hope deferred. At this time I made a hasty excursion to France, to see John Dillon and his family, who had made a visit to Europe, and came as near the mother country as the English authorities permitted him. Wilson Gray accompanied me, and we found we had been preceded by some other friends. "Dillon (says my diary) looks vigorous and tranquil; he preserves the sweet serenity that distinguished him of old." I cannot pause on this visit except to note two lessons I got—one against prejudice, one teaching magnanimity. On Sunday morning Gray and I strolled to the local church without waiting for the Dillons. After we came out we compared notes, and agreed that French women had an unrivalled art of dressing. One petite dame, who knelt before us, was, we agreed, the best-dressed woman we had seen for a decade, showing that only the French, &c. When she walked out of the church we discovered that the belle dame was our countrywoman, Mrs. Dillon. The example of magnanimity was furnished by Dillon himself. We told him what was being done in Ireland, not only above the surface, but, as we understood, beneath the surface. "We ought to consider," says Dillon, "that what we call England is the only country in Europe where the personal liberty of men is secure. Here we are living under a perpetual spy system. We don't know that our servants are not spies, and it is little better in Germany and Italy. It goes against my conscience to see anything done in the pursuance of our just quarrel which is not done in broad day." When we consider that the exile was shut out of his own country by the Power he was judging so generously this was surely finely magnanimous.

When the Derby administration fell, a Coalition Government under Lord Aberdeen was formed. There had been a