John Morley: “The House of Commons, like all assemblies, is even less affected by immediate displays than by the standing impression…”

Gladstone protested against the bill as “inequitable, unusual, and unwise,” and it was largely modified in committee.

A rendering less apt for this occasion finds favour with some scholars, that true virtue can never be restored to those who have once fallen away from it.

Yet he had prepared this document for the very purpose of tempting France into a declaration of war.

For this line of contention he was called an “unpatriotic trumpet of disaster,” and other names commonly bestowed on all men in all countries who venture to say that what chances for the hour to be a popular war is a blunder.