not been defeated. The question
set on fire by him will never be extinguished until the combustible
matter has gone to ashes. But personally he meets a sharp rebuff. The
Tories may well raise hurrahs over that. Radicals have to admit it, and
point to the grounds of it. Between a man's enemies and his friends there
comes out a rough painting of his character, not without a resemblance to
the final summary, albeit wanting in the justly delicate historical touch
to particular features. On the one side he is abused as 'the one-man
power'; lauded on the other for his marvellous intuition of the popular
will. One can believe that he scarcely wishes to march dictatorially, and
full surely his Egyptian policy was from step to step a misreading of the
will of the English people. He went forth on this campaign, with the
finger of Egypt not ineffectively levelled against him a second time.
Nevertheless he does read his English; he has, too, the fatal tendency to
the bringing forth of Bills in the manner of Jove big with Minerva. He
perceived the necessity, and the issue of the necessity; clearly defined
what must come, and, with a higher motive than the vanity with which his
enemies charge him, though not with such high counsel as Wisdom at his
ear, fell to work on it alone, produced the whole Bill alone, and then
handed it to his Cabinet to digest, too much in love with the thing he
had laid and incubated to permit of any serious dismemberment of its
frame. Hence the disruption. He worked for the future, produced a Bill
for the future, and is wrecked in the present. Probably he can work in no
other way than from the impulse of his enthusiasm, solitarily. It is a
way of making men overweeningly in love with their creations. The
consequence is likely to be that Ireland will get her full measure of
justice to appease her cravings earlier than she would have had as much
from the United Liberal Cabinet, but at a cost both to her and to
England. Meanwhile we are to have a House of Commons incapable of
conducting public business; the tradesmen to whom the Times addressed
pathetic condolences on the loss of their season will lose more than one;
and we shall be made sensible that we have an enemy in our midst, until a
people, slow to think, have taken counsel of their native generosity to
put trust in the most generous race on earth.

CONCESSION TO THE CELT--1886

Things are quiet outside an ant-hill until the stick has been thrust