changes. They think that he will realise two longings of which
they are deeply conscious, even while they express their
hopelessness of speedy realisation. They believe, with certain
misgivings, that he can offer them a new and more satisfactory
system of foreign policy; and, with no misgivings, that he will
break up the torpor which has fallen upon internal affairs. Mr.
Gladstone, say his admirers, may be too much afraid of war, too
zealous for economy, too certain of the status of England as a
fact altogether independent of her action. But he is sure to
abandon those traditional ideas to which we have adhered so long:
the notion that we are a continental people, bound to maintain the
continental system, interested in petty matters of boundary,
concerned to dictate to Germany whether she shall be united or
not, to the Christians of Servia whether they shall rebel against
the Turk or obey him, to everybody whether they shall or shall not
develop themselves as they can. He is sure to initiate that
temporary policy of abstention which is needed to make a breach in
the great chain of English traditions, and enable the nation to
act as its interests or duties or dignity may require, without
reference to the mode in which it has acted heretofore. Mr.
Gladstone, for example, certainly would not support the Turk as if
Turkish sway were a moral law, would not trouble himself to
interfere with the project for cutting an Eider Canal, would not
from very haughtiness of temperament protest in the face of Europe
unless he intended his protests to be followed by some form of
action.... That impression may be true or it may be false, but it
exists; it is justified in part by Mr. Gladstone's recent
speeches, and it indicates a very noteworthy change in the
disposition of the public mind: a weariness of the line of action
called "a spirited foreign policy." ... The expectation as to
internal affairs is far more definite and more strong.... All his
speeches point to the inauguration of a new activity in all
internal affairs, to a steady determination to improve, if
possible, both the constitution and the condition of the millions
who have to live under it. Most ministers have that idea in their
heads, but Mr. Gladstone has more than the idea, he has plans, and
the courage to propose and maintai