hty still is that hearts should be bound together
by a reasonable extension, at fitting times and among _selected_ portions
of the people, of every benefit and every privilege that can be justly
conferred upon them."

The thunderbolt of a sentence about every man's moral title to a vote
startled the House with an amazement, half delight and half consternation,
that broke forth in loud volleys of cheering and counter-cheering. It was
to little (M37) purpose that the orator in the next breath interposed his
qualifications. One of the fated words had been spoken that gather up
wandering forces of time and occasion, and precipitate new eras. A
conservative speaker instantly deplored the absence of the prime minister,
and the substitution in his stead of his "intractable chancellor of the
exchequer." An important liberal speaker, with equal promptitude, pointed
out that one effect of the speech would be, in the first place, loss of
conservative support to the government, and, in the second place, a very
great gain to the health and vigour of the liberal party. Two whigs ran
off to tell Phillimore that Gladstone had said something that would make
his hair stand on end. Speculations began to hum and buzz whether the
oracular deliverance would not upset the government. In the press a
tremendous storm broke. Mr. Gladstone was accused of ministering aliments
to popular turbulence and vanity, of preaching the divine right of
multitudes, and of encouraging, minister of the crown though he was, a
sweeping and levelling democracy. They charged him with surveying mankind
in the abstract and suffrage in the abstract, and in that kingdom of
shadows discovering or constructing vast universal propositions about
man's moral rights. Mr. Disraeli told him that he had revived the doctrine
of Tom Paine. The radicals were as jubilant as whigs and tories were
furious. They declared that the banner he had raised aloft was not what
the tories denounced as the standard of domestic revolution, but the long
lost flag of the liberal party. "There is not a statesman in England of
the very first rank," said one newspaper, "who has dared to say as much,
and Mr. Gladstone, in saying it, has placed himself at the head of the
party that will succeed the present administration." This was true, but in
the meantime the head of the existing administration was still a marvel of
physical vigour, and though at the moment he was disabled by gout,
somebody must have