ates. Again, what other nation was charged with the same
responsibility in the exercise of its moral influence abroad, in the
example it is called upon to set, in the sympathy it must feel with the
cause of right and justice and constitutional freedom wherever that cause
is at issue? As for our fellow subjects abroad, we had given them
practical freedom. It was our duty to abstain as far as may be from
interference with their affairs, to afford them the shelter and protection
of the empire, and at the same time to impress upon them that there is no
grosser mistake in politics than to suppose you can separate the blessings
and benefits of freedom from its burdens. In other words, the colonies
should pay their own way, and if the old dream of making their interests
subservient to those of the mother country had passed away, it was just as
little reasonable that the mother country should bear charges that in
equity belonged to them, and all the more if the colonies set up against
the industry and productions of England the mischiefs and obstructions of
an exploded protective system. On foreign policy he enforced the
principles that, after all, had given to Europe forty years of peace, and
to England forty years of diplomatic authority and pre-eminence. "It is
impossible that to a country like England the affairs of foreign nations
can ever be indifferent. It is impossible that England, in my opinion,
ever should forswear the interest she must naturally feel in the cause of
truth, of justice, of order, and of good government." The final word was
an admonition against "political lethargy." For the first time, I think,
he put into the forefront the tormenting question that was to haunt him to
the end. "They could not look at Ireland," he told them, "and say that the
state of feeling there was for the honour and the advantage of the united
kingdom."

_Oct. 14, '64._--So ended in peace an exhausting, flattering, I
hope not intoxicating circuit. God knows I have not courted them.
I hope I do not rest on them. I pray I may turn them to account
for good. It is, however, impossible not to love the people from
whom such manifestations come, as meet me in every quarter....
Somewhat haunted by dreams of halls, and lines of people, and
great assemblies.

It was observed of this Lancashire tour, by critics who hardly meant to
praise him, that he paid his hearers the high compliment of assuming that
they