of Kent, something of an
older civilization, resisting money power and imperialism and
perishing thereby.

Few, indeed, of the Liberal Party held Chesterton's ideal--an England
territorially small, spiritually great. The _Speaker_ was struggling
against odds: it was the voice of a tiny group. To Gilbert it seemed
that this mattered nothing so long as that little group held to their
great ideas, so long as the paper represented not merely a group or a
party but the Liberal Idea. In an unfinished letter to Hammond is to
be found this idea as he saw it and his dawning disappointment even
with the paper that most nearly stood for it:

I am just about to commit a serious impertinence. I believe however
that you will excuse it because it is about the paper and I know
there is not another paper dead or alive for which I would take the
trouble or run the risk of offence.

I am hearing on all sides the _Speaker_ complained of by the very
people who should be and would be (if they could) its enthusiastic
supporters and I cannot altogether deny the truth of their
objections, though I am glad to notice both in them and in myself the
fact that those objections are tacitly based on the assumption of the
_Speaker_ having an aim and standard higher than other papers. If the
_Speaker_ were a mere party rag like "Judy" or "The Times," it would be
only remarkable for moderation, but to us who have built hopes on it
as the pioneer of a younger and larger political spirit it is
difficult to be silent when we find it, as it seems to us, poisoned
with that spirit of ferocious triviality which is the spirit of
Birmingham eloquence, and with that evil instinct which has
disintegrated the Irish party, the instinct for hating the man who
differs from you slightly, more than the man who differs from you
altogether.

Of two successive numbers during the stress of the fight (a fight
in which we had first to unite our army and then to use it) a
considerable portion was devoted, first to sneering at "The Daily
News" and then to sneering at "The Westminster Gazette." . . .

There is a sentence in the Book of Proverbs which expresses the
whole of my politics. "For the liberal man deviseth liberal things
and by his liberality he shall stand." Now what I object to is
sneering at "The Westminster" as a supporter of Chamberlain when
everyone knows that it hardly lets