John Morley: “The claim for legislative power must now be brought boldly to the front.”

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

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.

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

It is a case so to speak of “limited liability.” We are bound in honour—you cannot put a legal construction upon it—to see in concert with others that these arrangements are maintained.