Page:Radicalism, what is it?.djvu/17

13 meeting on the Sabbath in Hyde Park to express their pent up feelings. One can fancy Mr. Gladstone, a gentleman of lofty character and of deep religious feeling, thanking them for their sympathy, disabusing them of their opinion about the Lords, (among whom some of his friends sit,) but stating most unequivocally that being a man of religious principles he could not sanction any political meeting whatever on Sunday in Hyde Park or any where else.

Can it be believed that for the sake of popularity with such men, under such a leader, he gave them an answer, which, if it meant anything, implied that they might possibly have a good reason for what they were doing?

Its restless love of novelty. Politicians who depend upon the breath of popular applause, find the true duties of the statesman irksome, uninteresting and uninviting. Such labours besides are unaccompanied by the gratification of political excitement. Any fanciful crotchet likely to beguile the unthinking—any subject that offers the chance of agitation is therefore eagerly embraced by them. Such matters as Female Suffrage, Confiscation of land in Ireland, and philosophic nostrums of all kinds are preferred to practical national good. What is new, startling, or plausible, readily usurps the place of unostentatious patriotic work. A Session of Parliament has been frittered away, and remedial measures of all kinds postponed to gratify this whim about the Irish