Page:Note of an English republican on the Muscovite crusade (IA noteofenglishrep00swiniala).pdf/6

 some limit, however indefinable, to Mr. Carlyle's admiration of the strongest hand. But why the single exception which is to prove the else universal rule should be that particular instance which apparently it is, we may surely be permitted in all loyalty and humility to inquire. What is the peculiar sanctifying quality in the Bulgarian which is to exempt him at need from the good offices of 'beneficent whip' and 'portable gallows,' as from things insupportable and maleficent to him alone of human kind? What tie can it be which binds together such allies as Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Carlyle on a question of political philanthropy? Misery, we all know, makes strange bedfellows; but there would seem to be sympathies, religious or political, which bring stranger matches about than ever were made by misery. Is it a common love of liberty which links the veteran of letters to the veteran of politics? In this very epistle published by the Times of November 28 we see that the new champion of oppressed Christendom cannot resist the overwhelming temptation to turn aside and spit on the very name of liberty—'divine freedom, &c.' His innate loathing of the mere word is too rabid end ungovernable an appetite to be suppressed or disguised for an instant. And yet it is not of conceding to their subjects too much of that mortal poison, of that damnable dissolvent, that the Turks now stand accused. Their Bashi-Bazouks are shamefully and incredibly maligned if they have earned no right to claim fellowship with the torturers, the hangmen, and the women-whippers of Hungary, of Poland, and of