der. At a great
meeting in Liverpool (April 6), accompanied by some of his colleagues Mr.
Gladstone roused the enthusiasm of his audience to the utmost pitch by
declaring that the government would not flinch, that they had passed the
Rubicon, broken the bridges, burned their boats. Still the malcontents
were not cowed.

(M57) The leader himself rose in warmth of advocacy as the struggle went
on. The advocates of privilege used language about the workers, that in
his generous and sympathetic mind fanned the spark into a flame. Lowe
asked an unhappy question, that long stood out as a beacon mark in the
controversy--whether "if you wanted venality, ignorance, drunkenness--if you
wanted impulsive, unreflecting, violent people--where do you look for them?
Do you go to the top or to the bottom?" Harsh judgments like this of the
conditions of life and feeling in the mass of the nation--though Lowe was
personally one of the kindest of men--made Mr. Gladstone stand all the more
ardently by the objects of such sweeping reproach. In a discussion upon
electoral statistics, he let fall a phrase that reverberated through the
discussion inside parliament and out. Some gentlemen, he said, deal with
these statistics, as if they were ascertaining the numbers of an invading
army. "But the persons to whom their remarks apply are our
fellow-subjects, our fellow-Christians, _our own flesh and blood_, who
have been lauded to the skies for their good conduct."(141) This was
instantly denounced by Lord Cranborne(142) as sentimental rant, and
inquiries soon followed why kinship in flesh and blood should be strictly
limited by a seven pound rental. Speedily Mr. Gladstone passed from steady
practical argument in the ministerial key, to all the topics of popular
enthusiasm and parliamentary invective. His impulsiveness, said critical
observers, "betrays him at times into exaggeration or incaution; but there
is a generous quality in it." Mr. Bright once talked of his own agitation
for reform as no better than flogging a dead horse. The parliamentary
struggle, led by Mr. Gladstone, brought the dead horse to life, stirred
the combative instincts, and roused all the forces of reform. Lowe was
glittering, energetic, direct, and swift. Mr. Disraeli, contented to watch
his adversaries draw their swords on one another, did not put forth all
his power. In a moment of unwisdom he taunted Mr. Gladstone with his
stripling's speech at the Oxford Union five-and-t